What is the best way to lift?
It’s such a hot topic over the past 10 to 15 years with the emergence of proper manual handling and lifting.
We have a lot of clients coming in that have physical jobs, whether they are builders or a tradesman or do a lot of lifting for work and one of the most common things that we hear is that the manual handling training is fantastic but it’s just not practical. It’s very difficult in a workplace environment due to time pressure and the demand to get things done, especially at the moment the tradesman are flat out out with a huge list of jobs and demand from clients all over the country.
Bricklayers, they do a repetitive movement, sometimes 300 bricks or blocks per day and more, twisting, bending, turning. Using their spines in all different directions can over time put a lot of stress.
A lot of the bricklayers that we see are working six-day weeks and have been for the last two, three years since lockdown doing the same thing every single day.
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What is the best way to lift?
From an anatomical perspective as a human being, we’re designed to use our glute muscles in order to provide extension from the floor.
We should bend the knees, keep the chest upright, the elbows locked into the body. Push the hips down into more of a crouch position and keeping the back as flat as possible.
You should brace the shoulder blades, pin the shoulder blades back, put the shoulder blades down and try to squeeze the buttock muscles, keeping the back as flat as possible and trying to push the floor away, maintain that position and using the glutes to extend the torso rather than just jerking up with a curved back.
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What are the common ways to cause a back injury by lifting?
This is often one of the most common injuries that we hear about that people enduring this caused a muscle spasm in the base of the spine for lifting. It can be lifting something too heavy. It can be pulling out a tree root or doing a mundane task by picking something off the floor and the back just says, “I’ve had enough.”
One of the most common mistakes we hear people make is they didn’t bend their knees, which means the full force goes right through the base of the spine and that is the pivot of the seesaw rather than being through the hips. This puts enormous amount of stress on the lower lumbar spine in the discs and this will take up majority of the weight.
Another issue is having the back curved and again this causes flexion of the spine. This puts pressure on the discs causing them to take up too much stress.
Another one we hear is that the centre of gravity is wrong, and the person is too hunched forwards, not being able to drive that extension through the centre of the hips and again the back takes up too much stress.
It’s really important that if you do have a back injury, that you use a proper support if you’re doing any sort of heavy lifting. You don’t want to become too over-reliant on this because it’s going to switch off the vital core muscles you need to build stability in your spine.
Some of the ways to build that core stability would be using a plank exercise, a bird, dog, dead bug exercise. You can find out more about here. They would build up that active and also static core strength in order to try to get the back stronger and that’s when the deep core stabilises.
If you do find yourself lifting wrong and having a back injury, it’s really important to stop lifting for two to three weeks. You want to keep your body moving in order to allow the muscle fibres to heal but not putting excess stress for your body.
If you would like to get more information on how to help yourself to lift properly, please let us know.
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