Bodybuilders will continue to believe what they want. When I started training in Jan 1959 people told me I would injure myself from lifting weights. I scoffed at them. I even did Olympic weightlifting and represented UBC and won my big block letter through that sport. I never came close to injuring myself. We had a couple of 'Strongest Man on Campus' contests that I organized and won both times. I set a new deadlift record then for the deadlift with 525 pounds. All done naturally. I didn't injure myself and continued to scoff at others when they cautioned me. Sometime in the early 1960's my lower back would get sore from time to time. Especially if I was riding in a car with my legs higher than my hips. That always ended in agony. So I came to accept that my lower back was strong but I had to be careful how I sat, etc. That recurrent back pain has stayed with me ever since. Did deadlifts do the damage? I have no idea. Perhaps.
If you examine the deadlift then pulling the weight from the floor to about your knees seems okay. However, finishing the movement requires one to rotate the shoulders backwards and this is the dangerous part. If you are lifting a maximum and that weight is substantial then you are asking for spine problems. Forever afterwards you will feel pain in the middle of your spine and adjustments can ease the pain. It remains forever a weak link in the spine.
So I shudder when I see others recommending that silly exercise to beginners. It has no place, in my opinion, in any exercise program. None at all. If you want spinal erectors there are exercises that can target that area. The traps are better trained with more specific exercises but, again, a lot of stress goes on the spine. The spine can be damaged by doing barbell full squats. Putting a barbell behind the neck is placing huge loads on the spine. Sometimes you get a bit stuck coming up in a squat and you bend forward. Danger! Perhaps leg presses are a safer movement for quads.
If someone is a beginner why on earth would they do all those exercises? Do about 3 or 4 exercises for your body and go home. A pulling movement such as close grip pulldowns to the top of the chest, Pec deck or some effective chest push movement, a leg press and that is it. No abs, no shoulders, no arms, nothing else. Do 5 maximum sets on those movements after plenty of warmup and do them twice a week. Eat sufficiently to gain weight and watch yourself grow. Later on you might want to change some of those exercises and routines. For a month just do arms and one leg movement. That's it.
Ah, free advice from a professional in the gym industry. On these discussion boards my advice means almost nothing. There is too much information out there and no way to assess what is good, or what one should do. Most people haven't got enough experience or a good enough brain to make those decisions. Just about everyone posting on discussion boards think they know plenty about bodybuilding and training. The truth is there are not many true experts out there. I would bet that many so-called experts disagree about basic things. Imagine if that happened in medicine or engineering! So, bodybuilding is not a science but some sort of art/witchcraft that has been handed down by pseudo-experts. Use that information at your own risk. I suppose if you have to ask questions on discussion boards you are a lost soul. Pray tell how you are going to know which answers are correct and what is nonsense?
