Never Squat Again?

Have you ever been told by a healthcare provider that you should stop squatting, deadlifting or even lifting altogether? Or even been told that it is overall bad for your health or joints? For some, that may be the case in an acute injury. It may be the case to avoid doing a certain exercise for time being until symptoms die down.  

But if we sit back for a second and truly think about what lifting does, it makes the body more resilient and certain lifts are actually quite practical to daily tasks. 

If you were told to stop squatting.. How do you get in and out of a chair, on and off the toilet or out of a vehicle without squatting? 

If you were told to stop deadlifting.. How do you pick up your child, grandchildren.. Pick up a load of laundry, do your gardening.

If you were told not to lunge.. If you are getting up off the ground.. More than likely you are in a lunge position. 

If you were told not to lift anything overhead.. What about getting something out of or putting something into the kitchen cabinet overhead or changing a lightbulb.

Any and all exercises can be related back to daily life activities and tasks. For example, farmer carries or suitcase carries relate to carrying grocery bags. Sidenote, if you make more than one trip from car to house to carry groceries in.. you're doing it wrong.

Maybe it is not the lift or the exercise itself, maybe it is we are doing it improperly and we need to spend time on form, or the load demand is too much for right now and we have to work our way up to a certain weight.  

With all this being said, there are certain instances where we should stop an exercise altogether until symptoms calm down, like an acute disc herniation. We calm down the symptoms down and we work our way back to doing the lift. Or maybe in a certain population like our stenosis patients, that an extension exercise is no longer viable based on the imposed demands on the spine. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t variations to the extension exercise or a better way to do the exercise. Because an exercise hurts, doesn't mean you should stop it all together, maybe it just needs another set of eyes to see how you move. 

Here at Maximum Performance, we believe that exercise is vital to your overall health and well-being. We are here to help you move better, achieve your goals and get you doing what you love to do without restrictions. We will put you through an examination to determine if an exercise would be beneficial to you or put you through the lift that is bothersome to see how you move. Sometimes a simple tweak to form is all it takes.

If you have ever been told to stop doing an exercise and to rest with no alternative, it may be time to try out a provider that believes in the power of exercise. There is no one size fits all solution for your pain, but if rest or stop lifting altogether is the only solution you've been told.. maybe it's time to try another provider. Your body is made to move, to lift and to do great things.

Don’t hesitate to reach out if you have questions on if you should be doing a certain lift, we are here to help.