How A Weight Lifting Belt Helps Prevent Injuries
If you’ve tweaked your back recently, one thing that you can do, if you have a doctor’s approval, to protect your back while you still go to the gym and lift, is to wear a weight lifting belt. These belts will help your back to support itself and you will be at a lesser risk for injury by wearing the belt. But how does the belt actually work?
Lifting belts work by utilizing something known to scientists as inter-abdominal pressure. Normally your abdomen has a certain level of pressure in it. Normally you can increase this pressure yourself by sucking in your stomach and clenching your abs. What happens when you wear a belt is that the back of the belt keeps your back in strict alignment and doesn’t allow it to bow out backwards. The front of the belt meanwhile, is tightened and pushes your insides together, increasing inter-abdominal pressure.
In short, what increased inter-abdominal pressure does is it allows your spine something to rest itself against. This means the tiny stabilizer muscles in your back don’t have to work as hard and can relax, even if it’s just ever-so-slightly. This keeps your back in alignment and makes sure that you most likely won’t tweak it again.
However, it is important to note that a belt will not prevent all injuries. You will still have to maintain good form while you are lifting and engage your core. If you don’t you can still get injured even with a belt on. Or, even if you don’t get injured with a belt on, once you attempt to lift without one on you run and extremely high chance of getting injured.
Using a weight lifting belt is a great way to help protect your back and help present injuries to it heal faster. However, always make sure to use it right so you don’t end up getting even more injured down the road!