I’m not sure what the story is… if it’s some kind of evil lottery we have won at CrossFit NorCal or if this is just the state of low-backs and hamstrings these days, but we have had a number of folks who CAN NOT maintain a normal lordotic arch while setting up for a deadlift. These folks tend to be desk-jockies and or competitive cyclists, although we have also seen this problem in high-functioning athletes. This problem tends to manifest in the laden and unladen squat as well, although this seems easier to control and has caused few if any injuries, whereas the deadlift, taken from the floor with a flexed low back, has proven to be at best problematic and at worst (hopefully, not surprisingly) dangerous.

We have tinkered with various stretching approaches to little avail. This was interesting to me because we appear not only to be fighting arrange of motion (ROM) or flexibility issue, but also a recruitment issue. Folks appear to not be well connected to their asses and the result is stunning. We have had some success with remedying this situation. Before we look at the fixes to this problem, let’s take a look at what we see happening with some people and what the significance is for athletics and injury development.

Baby’s Got Back

In the normal deadlift setup we have neither anterior nor posterior pelvic tilt, and have effectively locked the pelvis in place, wedding it to the spine (This is, by the way, the CrossFit definition of “core strength”). Hip flexors and spinal erectors work to anteriorly rotate the pelvis while hamstrings and abdominals work to posteriorly rotate the pelvis. An imbalance, either with regards to flexibility or recruitment can shift things out of balance, especially in loaded, physically demanding positions. A posteriorly rotated pelvis destroys the structural integrity of the low back. This can expose the disks to unequal loading that may result in rupture and the muscles and connective tissue of the low back may be exposed injury ranging from a mild strain to severe tearing.

I have a saying at CrossFit NorCal: “We fix’em, we don’t break’em.” That considered, it became pretty important that we figure out a way for folks to maintain a safe back position while deadlifting. My first approach with this situation was to take our problem clients and start with just PVC at the standing position and see how low these folks could go before losing their low back integrity. A few people had almost non-existent amounts of travel. They lost their lordotic arch immediately upon pushing the hips back and it was an odd thing to see. These guys look like they have no fannies. The back goes down… and it just turns into hamstring. The lack of glute and hamstring recruitment is pretty well evidenced even while standing, but the situation is worsened when these folks are placed in a position (like the deadlift) that calls on even greater recruitment. What we did with these folks however is slowly, incrementally, teach them how to maintain the normal lordotic curve of the back at greater and greater depths. This evolved into a type of short ROM Romanian style deadlift which greatly emphasized the activation of the glutes and hamstrings. For our less severe cases, this resulted in achieving a full depth deadlift start position after about 3 weeks of 3-day per week training.

Dr. John Fragoso was one of these folks, and although John has always been remarkably strong and explosive, he tended to drive off the balls of his feet on virtually all movements, at all loading. As a testament to his strength, he pulled a very easy 435 lb deadlift at 170 lbs… on his toes with a rounded back! After solidifying his form he recently pulled a 475 lb deadlift at 165lbs and he is good for quite a bit more. Unfortunately, not all of our folks made it as far, as quickly as John did. Some of our other folks just seemed to hit a wall with the progress they were making with the RDL.

I talked with Greg Everett about this and he suggested incorporating some aggressive hip flexor strengthening such as knee to elbows along with a modified good morning that emphasized the hips back, glute/hamstring activation of a standard Good Morning (GM) while then transitioning into a low (relatively) squat position. This allowed for a significant time under the bar AND repeated slow articulation of the hips from positions of relative flexion to relative extension but all fighting to keep the normal, safe back position.

This approach bought us more success; however, there were still a few situations in which a normal deadlift position seemed as far away as ever. We started working aggressive PNF (proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation) stretching at the end of sessions and suggested that these folks see our local Active Release Techniue (ART) practitioner… who just happened to be Dr. John Fragoso. This multi-faceted approach appears to be working, although I still have a few folks who have not reached full ROM. I’ve had this paper in the works for the better part of 6 months and decided to get this first communication out and then update folks on this situation as things progress. This mobility/recruitment deficiency of the posterior chain is a bugger to fix and greatly limits performance in everything movement imaginable. One of the guys with whom we have been working has seen a dramatic increase in his cycling ability as a consequence of his CrossFit training. We have definitely seen the greatest rate of improvement since aggressively approaching the lordosis issue. I’ll report back what progress we have made in a few months.