Why Coaches Are Terrified of Spinal Flexion (They Shouldn't Be) #training #shorts

It's the idea that bending your spine, so spinal flexion, is inherently dangerous. This belief largely originated from research that was done on cadaveric pig spines, so dead tissue subjected to thousands of cycles of flexion repetitions until structural failure. So, those findings were extrapolated to living human beings, and the result was decades-long narrative that told athletes and coaches and physical therapists to fear lumbar flexion. That disc herniations were somehow permanent, and that protecting the spine meant avoiding flexion at all costs. But what the evidence actually says and shows is that disc herniations in living humans have documented spontaneous regression rates of over 60% in some studies. So, the reality is that the spine is a dynamic adaptive structure that is capable of remodeling in response to load and with time. Living tissue is not a dead cadaveric tissue. It's the biological environment that blood supply, the cellular turnover, inflammatory regulation. This changes everything about how a tissue responds to stress over time. That doesn't mean that we're just going to throw technique out of the window and that it's irrelevant. It doesn't mean that you are going to load a novice client into end-range lumbar flexion under heavy load on day one. But what it does mean is that we have to stop treating the spine like it's made out of glass, right? We have to treat it like what it is. It's an adaptable, load-tolerant structure because when you tell a client that their spine's damaged or fragile, the psychological weight and the consequence of catastrophizing, of fear of movement, of avoidance produces like the worst outcomes that you can possibly imagine. And if you enjoy this type of content, make sure you follow me for more evidence-based pain-free strength training.