Is this true?

[Explosive]

Weight Lifting Belts: To Wear or Not to Wear

May 14th, 2008 by Mehdi Posted in Gym Equipment | Print

Do you need a weight lifting belt? Gym folklore says wearing a weight belt increases lower back safety. It also says weight belts increase abdominal pressure, which allows you to lift more weight. Let’s see if this is true.


Stuart McGill. Author of Ultimate Back Fitness and Performance & Low Back Disorders. Stuart McGill is the authority on lower back health. He has several articles on his site for those who haven’t his books yet.

One article deals with the use of weight belts. It’s adapted from the chapter on back belts in Ultimate Back Fitness and Performance. Click here to download this free pdf. View the file with Acrobat Reader.


Do You Need Weight Belts? If you don’t feel like reading the whole pdf, here are some of the key points of Stuart McGill’s research.

* If you never injured your back, wearing a belt adds no safety.
* If you injure yourself while wearing a belt, the injury is more severe.
* To get the most out of weight belts, you must lift with bad technique.
* If you want to lift a few more pounds, wear a weight belt.


Why I Never Recommend Weight Belts. Guy subscribes to a gym. Does Biceps Curls like the other guys. Gets stronger. Hyper-extends his back on each rep to get even stronger. Gets lower back pain.

He wears a belt upon recommendation of the gym people. No more pain. Back to curls, but still hyper-extending his back. Pain comes back, but worse. Doctor diagnoses him with a hernia. Weight lifting gets bad reputation again.

It was Biceps Curls, but it could have been Squats or Deadlifts. If you don’t lift correctly, you’ll injure yourself. That’s why I don’t recommend belts: they give a false sense of security. And according to McGill, injuries get more severe.


Choosing Your Weight Belt. You’ll need a weight belt to perform Weighted Dips/Pull-ups/Chin-ups. I use a leather belt with chain/caliper to attach the weight. Ironmind’s dipping belt handles up to 1000lbs (it works for Pull-ups).

I never wear a weight belt on Squats, Deadlifts or Presses. My lower back is fine. Wearing a belt messes with my technique. But if I decided to compete, then I’d train more with a belt to get used to it.

[iron addict]

Do what you want. They are standard in every strength sport where heavy loading of the core is done. If you want to believe some guy that knows more than everyone else in every sport go ahead. Go to a powerlifting meet sometime and look for the guys lifting beltless. Go to any hardcore bodybuilding gym where the guys are lifting huge amounts of slag iron and find the guys squatting and pulling beltless.

Anyone can say anything, it doesn't make it true and we have thousands of studies that measure intra-abdominal pressure, and studies that back up what is common sense. The belt is protective.

IA

[Tim]

This was written by Mehdi from stronglifts.com. Look at his lifts and experience:

http://stronglifts.com/about-mehdi/

Who are you going to trust --- people who have decades of experience, or someone who's been strength training since 2004, is 160lbs, and benches 220?

[iron addict]

The guy weighs 160, benches 220, and squats 315. If you want to make him into some kind of guru go ahead. We have a bunch of high school senior that lift way more than that. Hell we have juniors and sophomores doing that....

[Tim]

Exactly.

Even more annoying is he is now a personal trainer that charges frickin' $300/month, claims his site is the #1 strength training site on the Internet, is writing an eBook with his limited experience that will likely be pretty popular.

Helping bring the toxicity of the fitness industry into the strength industry IMO.

[Elusive]

The argument at hand is that belts are harmful because they mask bad form. Um, okay. Just make sure your form is good enough to avoid injury, and wear the belt on your top sets where 100% perfect form is nearly impossible to guarantee you stay injury free.

[LG1]

This is my 2nd blast on SL5x5. I like the results...no non-sense 5x5 program in my opinion.
I have been progressing well on it.

However, from the level of service Wes provides @ that low price...I will probably want to try sooner rather than later based on what I have read on this forum.

[iron addict]

I don't generally bash other trainers, but come on. As far as I have seen he is a one pony show. Maybe he gives extra special diet info, but his 5 x 5 could have been written by any yahoo, and I am not saying it is bad, but paying 300 bucks a month for a routine that is posted all over the net by a 160 lb guy at 12% that squats weights a high school student can is BS. Is the goal to make it to 160 with a 200 lb bench? Because that don't take a lot.

IA

[Halfway]

stronglifts.com seems an odd choice of domain name for a 220lb bencher.

[ThomasH]

I'm 16 years old, a HS senior and have had to deal with injury. On top of that my main focus is football, so lifting takes a back seat. But I still manage to post similar stats to his after 2 years of training (If you weren't to count time off due to football or injury it would be more like 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 years)

[ang.1]

"Choosing Your Weight Belt. You’ll need a weight belt to perform Weighted Dips/Pull-ups/Chin-ups. I use a leather belt with chain/caliper to attach the weight. Ironmind’s dipping belt handles up to 1000lbs (it works for Pull-ups)."

im surprised he can even do BW dips but i guess if you only weigh in at 160 it isnt too hard.

[Gonzomedic]

Maybe the guy is trying to make a whole bunch of $$ by saying stupid shiite? Pretty funny stuff though!

[Explosive]

LOL, I figured that would be the answer. Ill go with you guys :D

[Butosai]

The argument at hand is that belts are harmful because they mask bad form. Um, okay. Just make sure your form is good enough to avoid injury, and wear the belt on your top sets where 100% perfect form is nearly impossible to guarantee you stay injury free.


I don't really understand how belts masks bad form. If you have bad form to begin with, your form is still going to be bad with a belt. It's meant for stability, safety, and strength purposes.

[The Capitulator]

This guy's advice always pops up on forum discussions and the answer is always the same - he is, for all intents and purposes, a twink, and most of his advice reflects that. I'd say he is one small step above the average gym instructor (curteousy of the semi-decent 5x5 routine he has put up) but that isn't saying much.

[Sinister]

Looking on the forum at weaklifts.com and they have a "100kg Squat Club"...bwhahahaha.
He also insists on squatting 3 times a week. What a douchebox !!

[slyfox115]

I'd tell him to throw 600-700lb on the bar and squat it without a belt. Then when he's picking his guts up off the floor I will be there saying "I told you so".

[B.Money]

I am personally on the no belt end of the argument especially for beginner lifters, for a few different reasons, but the facts remain that there are way more strong ass powerlifters that wear the belt than ones that don't.

[iron addict]

Been to any powerlifting meets? I have yet to see a single person squat beltless at any meet I have been to. Watched a couple guys pull not a lot of weight beltless.

Can you give your reasons why a beginner should not wear a belt squatting or pulling. Strength is somewhat relative to bone density and muscularity. Beginners can't use that much weight usually, but also don't have the muscularity, bone density and connective tissue strength advanced guys do.

Hurt is hurt at any stage of the game and a beginner that has crap form is as, or more likely to acquire a long term injury as a guy that has been in the game some time and is not yet lifting bone crushing poundage's. Once at elite level lift levels, things tend to "happen" eventually.

IA

[Angra Mainyu]

new goal: be stronger than the guy who made stronglifts. hahaha im almost there

[B.Money]

I don't believe I have ever seen a belt less squat at a meet, but like you said there are some deadlifts.

My opinion on the matter may change in the future (happens all the time), but as a beginner or someone lifting "light" weights can be seen as a problem IMO for a few reasons.

-first and foremost the biggest one that stands out to me is the question, why don't we have a "built in" belt? I am not a super religious person, but my feels are that (God, or whatever you believe created us, or evolution) would have us very well suited for lifting heavy objects even from the beginning of time, and when you look at the body as a whole, its perfect. Everything is exactly how it should be. It looks like the more we learn about the body the more we learn how perfect it really is and how everything has a purpose. I strongly believe if a belt is something we NEED to have in order to lift relatively heavy objects (again thinking along the lines of building things with rocks, and carrying heavy objects in general like you could picture back in the day) that (God, evolution, whatever.) would have given us an actual belt in order for us to safely move heavy things. The reason why I separate beginners from advanced lifters, is that there is doubt in my mind the body is made to lift EXTREMELY heavy loads (1000lbs equipped squats as an example...) so this may need "helpful safety equipment" beyond what was given to us, but I can very well picture strong ass dudes from the ancient times, who job is to carry stones as a lifting, squatting 400lbs with no belt. We pretty much know that heavy lifting was part of mans life in early times, and if wearing a belt is needed to lift heavy things, wouldn't we have evolved eventually with this belt? Just my thoughts, but that's the reason why I have a mental line drawn between beginners and a powerlifter moving around weights that our ancestors never touched.

-second thing is FOR ME the belt SEEMED to lead me to nothing but injury, that's an individual thing of course, could have possibly been an entirely different thing causing the injury's but I noticed when I did the unthinkable (taking out the belt) lower back strains were a thing of the past. Like I said though that's just me, somebody else may have opposite results. What I saw happening with me was I was able to move around a lot more weight with the belt, and injuries would come more suddenly being that IMO I was using more weight than I was ready for at that given time.

-This may be a total shot in the dark here, but while I was concerned about hernias I remember reading articles saying that the most common hernia (cant remember the spelling) is a hernia going through the bottom wall, into the scrotum. At this time I thought I was developing one coming through the abdominal wall, but upon some research it sounds like MOST (not all of course) of the time the weakest link is the bottom, and not the actual abdominal wall (unless of course you have a pre-existing hernia, or surgery that your guts will push through). Being that a hernia through the bottom is the most common, and that hernias are caused by pressure in the abdomen, it made sense to me that wrapping a belt around my gut causing less expansion of my abdomen would cause more pressure of downward pressure....resulting in more of a chance of a hernia. Like I said, that's totally something I thought up on my own and may not be relevant at all but maybe worth discussion.

-Discussions like this, and many more http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ND9WklPKtG0 but of course this dudes not a powerlifter, or olympic lifter.

Like I said, my view may change, happens all the time with things, and for most people the belt may be needed, maybe even for me, also like you said, I don't know if I have ever seen a powerlifter squat serious weight without a belt! Those are just some of the concerns I have had that go through my mind.

[president_fad]

i <3 my inzer lever belt :)

[iron addict]

-first and foremost the biggest one that stands out to me is the question, why don't we have a "built in" belt? I am not a super religious person, but my feels are that (God, or whatever you believe created us, or evolution) would have us very well suited for lifting heavy objects even from the beginning of time, and when you look at the body as a whole, its perfect.

God also didn't build us with a big ass weight on a squat bar or weight in our hands pulling from the floor. Most of us are actually not very suited to lifting heavy things or high threshold activity. A cat can jump 10 times+ their height. If a human can get 3 feet of air he's a God.

Some people have bodies that do well without belts, most don't. Beginners have a lot of ideas that get thrashed as they gain experience. What do you squat and pull?

IA

[KGM]

i <3 my inzer lever belt :)

x2

[B.Money]

God also didn't build us with a big ass weight on a squat bar or weight in our hands pulling from the floor. Most of us are actually not very suited to lifting heavy things or high threshold activity. A cat can jump 10 times+ their height. If a human can get 3 feet of air he's a God.

Some people have bodies that do well without belts, most don't. Beginners have a lot of ideas that get thrashed as they gain experience. What do you squat and pull?

IA

I agree, like you said I am still just a beginner and my mind VERY likely will change a lot on a lot of things just like it has in the past already!

I am proud to say I squatted a very easy 365 (a 40lb PR) at 180lbs last week with more in the tank at the new gym (amazing what some lifting atmosphere can do) and have not tested my deadlift 1RM yet (hopefully I will soon). Few months ago it was at 425 and I hope to hit a big PR on that in the next week or so. I am thinking a 405lb USAPL depth squat will fall in the next couple months (they were really strict on depth on the meet I went to) along with a 500lb pull, that is if everything goes well! we will see...

The 365 was without a belt but having said that, I will wear a belt in a meet, and probably a little while leading up to it just to get used to it and to get the most out of it, usually it seems I can squeeze 20lbs out of it on squats and over 20lbs on my deadlift. Maybe that's not the case anymore, maybe only a few lbs but I will take what I can get!

[iron addict]

Very good lifts for your level--Great job:D I predict when the weights get a bit heavier you will see the light:D Perhaps not, some peoples bio-mechanics work well beltless. But to say a belt is not protective is ignoring the facts.

Wesley

[B.Money]

Thanks IA, appreciate it! Gotta say I owe it all to this site, if it weren't for you guys I would be on BB.com on Ronnie Colemans routine! :D

I definitely cannot discredit the belt, like you said, I personally don't think I have ever seen a real heavy squat done without one--so there must be a good reason why. Can't help but to speculate though!

[iron addict]

The reason is pretty simple, they lift more weight with more safety. Wait until you hit your first big squat where you really lose core stability during the lift. Not saying it doesn't happen with a belt, but it is much less likely. Most big squats are done pushing the abs into the belt.

IA

[Explosive]

i <3 my inzer lever belt :)


I ordered mine the other day. Im excited to try it out. Sucks i have to wait 3-4 weeks for it :redhot:

[Shawn Bellon]

The guy weighs 160, benches 220, and squats 315. If you want to make him into some kind of guru go ahead. We have a bunch of high school senior that lift way more than that. Hell we have juniors and sophomores doing that....

They actually made fun of me on that board saying I used bad for, didnt know how to train etc. Oh and I am very wrong for using machines. Only free weights matter. WTF? My wife is stronger than most of those guys AND been lifting since 1992.:lame:

That board is a little cult. Very narrowminded.