This week I was helping load some stuff into the back of a pickup truck, and as a not-tall person, the table I was lifting didn’t quite clear the bed. So I went up onto my tiptoes and extended a little through my back to get it high enough. Absolutely nothing happened.
But I did scare the hell out of an onlooker who seemed certain I was about to explode every disc in my spine simultaneously. It’s a pretty good example of what I’ve heard called glass back propaganda. If you’ve ever been told you should always keep your back perfectly neutral and only lift with your legs, there’s a good chance you’ve been exposed to it.
In strongman, we love our atlas stones. When you start to lift an atlas stone, your back is going to be rounded. There isn’t a way to get low enough to the ground to pick up a giant concrete sphere without your spine flexing. Then, as you stand up to load it, you’re probably going to extend through your spine to get the height necessary.
In this picture, I’m extending through my spine. And yet somehow, I survived.
Your back isn’t made of glass. It’s made of bones, discs, ligaments, muscles, and tendons that are designed to move. Flexion, extension, rotation, and side bending aren’t design flaws. These are all normal movements your body is capable of performing.
Where people get into trouble isn’t because their back moved. It’s because they asked their body to do something it wasn’t prepared to do. That’s true for just about every tissue in the body.
If you’ve never trained your shoulders overhead, pressing a heavy dumbbell might feel terrible and unstable. If you’ve never sprinted, deciding to run all-out after your dog is going to be a rough experience. The answer isn’t “shoulders should never go overhead” or “humans weren’t meant to sprint.” The answer is that our bodies adapt to the demands we regularly place on them. Your back is no different.
When you progressively expose your body to different positions under appropriate loads, it gets better at tolerating those positions. Your muscles get stronger. Your connective tissues adapt. Over time, movements that once felt sketchy become completely ordinary.
Now, before someone screenshots this out of context… I’m not saying to pick up every object with your back shaped like a shitting dog because “the internet said spines are strong.” Technique still matters. We want movement that is controlled, efficient, and appropriate for the task. If you’re lifting something heavy, bracing well and creating tension are still really good ideas.
But there’s a huge difference between saying, “Let’s make your body stronger in the positions you’ll actually encounter in life,” and “Never let your spine leave neutral.” One message builds confidence, while the other builds fear.
The goal isn’t to create a body that only functions in one perfect position. The goal is to create a body that’s resilient enough to handle the messy, unpredictable movements of real life. Because sometimes you’re loading atlas stones. Sometimes you’re picking up your kid. Sometimes you’re grabbing a box from an awkward shelf. And sometimes you’re just trying to get a folding table into the back of a pickup truck.
If lifting a table that weighs less than ten pounds sends you into a spiral because your back extended a little, maybe the problem isn’t your back. Maybe it’s that you’ve been taught to think it’s fragile like glass.
