In one of my earlier posts, I commented on the fallacy that the Olympic
Weightlifting Press is a significant cause of back pain and dysfunction. An
extract from that mail read as follows:
> I added that it is even doubtful if frequent back bending is a major cause
> of the problem, because spondylolysis was not at all common among Olympic
> weightlifters who performed the Olympic Press with a marked backbend under
> heavy loads (weights exceeding 300lbs or 140kg were commonplace).
Someone from another group commented thus:
<<….Kotani, 1970 found an incidence of 30.7 percent in weightlifters who
complained of back pain. They were doing the press back then. Rossi
1990 looked at “athletes suffering from low back problems” from 1962-
1988 (most of those years included the press) and found weightlifters
3rd on a list of 30 sports with an incidence of spondylolysis of 22.68
percent… >>
Mel Siff:
*** It is interesting how much these figures differ from a study whose
results were reported by the International Weightlifting Federation in its
publication, “World Weightlifting” during the late 60s or early 1970s. The
researchers involved stated that back injuries accounted for something like 8
percent of all injuries experienced by Weightlifters, but did not give the
breakdown for the different types of back disorder. Another study like this
of American weightlifters appeared in Bob Hise’s “International Olympic
Lifter” around the same period and the incidence back injuries were similar.
Knee and shoulder injuries were far more common.
The researchers remarked that the back trauma appeared to be experienced most
often during the catch and early rising phases of the clean, where rounding
of the lumbar spine is quite common. It did not appear to be at all common
during any stage of the snatch because the fixation posture with the bar
overhead and further to the back tended to counteract any tendency of the
pelvis to tilt posteriorly.
None of those studies, including the ones cited by Chad showed that the
Press, as opposed to the Snatch and Clean & Jerk, showed that it was the
Press which was the primary offender in causing skeletal back injuries.
However, as a lifter who competed in the Press for many years and met some of
the world’s most competent pressers such as Russ Knipp, Serge Reding, Alexei
Medvedev & Arkady Vorobyev, I became very aware of pressing techniques that
certainly could put the lumbar spine at risk.
Both my coach at the time, Roelf van der Berg, who held the S African record
of 142.5 kg press in the 82.5kg division at a time when the world record was
held by the great Tommy Kono (153kg in the same division) and the Belgian,
Serge Reding (my coach for a few weeks in S Africa), who held the world
superheavy Press record of 228kg when I met him, stressed that you should
never relax the glutes or allow the lumbar spine to straighten or flex at any
stage of the lift, because of the risk of injury. The ballistic part of the
upward drive was to rely on carefully timed pretensing of the abdomen, that
characteristic double dipping action and pretensing of the shoulder girdle.
While the American Russ Knipp (world record Press of 158.5 in the 75kg div)
was visiting S Africa, he spent time with me at my former university and also
gave me much the same advice on Pressing.
Unfortunately, attempts to push the Press to even greater weights by invoking
increasingly ballistic actions of many parts of the kinetic chain (knees,
back and shoulders) sometimes resulted in lifters doing precisely what my
various coaches warned against. Instead of arching the body like a pulled
bow and pretensing the abdominal and shoulder musculature, lifters executed a
type of bastardised jerk or ‘cheat Press’ which flexed the lumbar spine
during the first dipping movement and sometimes even during the second dip.
Others indulged in excessive back bending during the second dip or layback
and executed what almost looked like a standing bench press, a type of
lifting which may well traumatise the lumbar spine.
Now, it is well known that heavy loading, especially vibratory or ballistic
loading (see Chaffin & Andersson “Occupational Biomechanics”) is especially
harmful to the lumbar spine, a situation which is exacerbated by any spinal
twisting, something that also happened during attempts to press as rapidly as
possible with a flexed spine.
This is precisely why I stressed in my original letter to this group that
technical execution of the Press was of great importance, as it is with all
heavy Olympic and Power lifts. So, if the groups of lifters studied did
experience spondylolysis to the extent reported in those studies – and if the
Press played a contributory role – then I would not be at all surprised if
the less strict form of ‘cheat’ pressing constituted a significant part of
the aetiology.
As we have noted so often before, it is often inappropriate to universally
condemn any exercise as being dangerous – it is not the exercise which
necessarily causes the major problems, but the manner in which it is executed.
Dr Mel C Siff
