Open Joint vs Closed Joint Lifting – Part 3

In part 1, I talked about the concept of the open joint lift and how it can be used to move big weights. Part 2 was about taking that concept and using it to prevent injuries to the knees. This post will further that concept and explain how to apply it to prevent and manage back injuries. If you haven’t read the previous 2 posts, please do so. It’ll make this post a lot easier to read.

The back is one of the most commonly injured areas, whether a person lifts or not. A back injury is also a lot more debilitating than most other kind of injuries – everything you do in life uses your back. Unfortunately, because we live in a sitting society, back problems are all too common these days.

Let me introduce you to the lower back first. The primary region we are concerned about, for this discussion, is the lumbar area (lower back). The spine connects to the hips and as such any movement in the hips will involve a loading of the spine. The spine is also strongest when it is straight or “arched”. Any issue in the spine is usually magnified when the spine is rounded. Therefore, we will remain in an arched position for all the lifts mentioned here. Because when arched, the spine is now a rigid structure that is more or less one big joint, the hips are where the movement occurs. Strong and mobile hips = strong spine = less chance of injuring the back. Usually the reason that people experience so much back pain is because the hips are so locked up and immobile that now movement has to take place through the spine.

Taking the ‘open vs closed joint angle’ from before, the most obvious solution to work around back pain is to use a more open joint angle at the hips. Why? When the hips are closed, the back is close to parallel to the floor. This puts the lower back under a whole lot of shear stress. However, when the hips are open, the back is more perpendicular to the floor, which results in more compressive than shear forces on the spine. As we have already seen, our joints can handle compressive forces a lot better than shear forces. So how do we use this information to train around back pain?

1) Strengthen the abs. This may seem counter-intuitive but it’s very rare that the lower back is actually weak enough to be the problem. Usually the problem is that a person’s abs are too weak to take the stress off the spine. Training the abs through stabilization (planks, ab wheel rollouts) is the best way to solve this issue.

2) Use the open hip angle to your advantage. Front squatting, the high bar back squat, clean deadlifts and trap bar deadlifts are great for people with lower back problems because they force you to remain more straight up than leaning forward.

Trap bar deadlift

3) Get off the leg press machines. These machines do not let the hips travel and more often than not a person will curl up the lower back when using these machines. Stay on your feet when lifting and you will reap the benefits.

4) Use single leg work for your posterior chain needs. The great thing about single leg work is that you cannot lift as much weight as with two legs. This greatly reduces the stress on the spine, while still giving your muscles a training effect because you can use a closed hip angle now. Single leg deadlifts, long step reverse lunges and long step Bulgarian split squats are great in this regard. You’ll probably feel soreness you’ve never felt before too.

Single leg deadlift

5) Train stabilization of the hips. If the hips are not properly strengthened, the onus falls on the lower back and various other muscles to keep the hips in check. Great way to train stabilization while still lifting heavy weights is to add farmer walks and its variations to your program. Grab a heavy weight and go for long walks with them. Michael Boyle has stated that the strongest hips he ever tested were strongman competitors  - where farmer walks is a big competition. Because you will be in a standing (ie open) hip position, the stress on the lower back is very low.

6) Use Olympic lifting variations of pulling. The snatch deadlift and the clean deadlift force you to sink your hips lower which would keep your torso more upright. It will still tax your muscles, but the pressure on the spine will be less. If the convention deadlift with its closed hips kills your lower back, try snatch deadlifting. You’ll probably find that it’s way easier on the spine, and you can still lift very heavy weights and get stronger.

Clean Deadlift

You’ll find that this list is directly opposite to the list in part 2. The less the knees travel, the more stress that’s put on the back. And the more the knees travel, the less stress is put on the back. Pick your poison and get to lifting.

Open joint vs closed joint lifting – Part 2

In part 1, I talked about the concept of the open joint lift and how it can be used to move big weights. This post will be about taking that concept and using it to manage and prevent injuries at the knees.

When talking about loads on the body, there are two kinds that we will worry about: compressive forces and shear forces. Compressive forces can be described as putting a load on your back, such as a squat. The weight pushes you down into the ground. Shear forces are a bit more confusing. The easiest way to think about shear forces is to imagine a joint moving further away from the mid-line of the body. An example would the leg extension machine. The knee and ankles are far away from the mid-line of the body, and this would put a lot of shear stress on the knees. Our body can handle a lot more compressive force than shear force. As proven by Stuart Mcgill, “the spine doesn't buckle until 12,000-15,000N of pressure are applied in compression, but as little as 1,800-2,8000N in shear will get the job done” (Cressey). This same idea applies to the knees. It’s very rare to see somebody who has knee pain when squatting get the same knee pain when standing up with the weight. It goes to follow that the more open the knee angle is, the less shear stress on the knees. This is why a deadlift will almost never hurt an injured knee, while a full squat will kill a person’s already injured knees. (Note: I am not bashing on the full squat, some people find that it helps their knees, some find that it kills their knees. More often than not, I find that it kills a person's knees. Your results may vary.)

Andy Bolton with 1000+lbs, spine not collapsing yet

Another way to determine if a leg exercise will create a lot of shear force is to determine shin angle, or knee travel. In a full squat, the shin angle will be as acute as it can possibly be, while in something like a box squat the shin angle will be more perpendicular. The more acute this shin angle, relative to the feet, the more shear stress will be placed on the knees. The above principle still applies - the knee is far away from the midline of the body. This is also a reason why people with long femurs will find squatting painful, their knee has to travel a lot further than a person with short femurs.

So how do we use this information to keep our knees healthy and pain-free? Here are some guidelines:

1) The obvious solution: strengthen the back of the body. The reason knee pain is so prevalent in today’s society is that people are just plain weak through the posterior chain – the lower back, glutes and hamstrings. These muscles are very important when it comes to preventing back and knee injuries. The quads pull on the patella and if the hamstrings and hips are not strong enough to offset that pull, there will be problems. Ok now that we’ve got that out of the way…

2) Use the open knee angle to work around the knee problem. The conventional deadlift is a great way to strengthen the back of the body and stay pain free through the knees. Other exercises that work great in this regard are the box squat and Romanian Deadlift. They both (done right) involve very minimal knee travel and so place very little shear stress on the knees. Great for rehab and for getting stronger with bad knees. 

Notice the shin angle

3) Give up squatting for deadlifting variations. Hear me out before you form a pitchfork mob. Squatting will always entail a more vertical spine than a deadlift. This automatically makes the knees travel. Deadlifting during a bad knee period will provide the same training stimulus on the legs, and make sure you remain strong during the injury. Chances are you will come back from the injury with a stronger posterior chain and climb to a higher squat.

4) Front squat or low bar squat in the presence of knee pain. They both have been shown to reduce shear stress on the knee, and will give you a squatting stimulus.

5) Stay off the leg machines. The leg muscles are never meant to activate in isolation, and forcing them to do so will lead to problems down the line. Using these machines once in a way, or in addition to compound movements on the feet like the squat and the deadlift is fine. Exclusively using them is not.

6) Deadlift. Seriously.

Less shear stress than the back squat

The next part will be about the spine and how to use the open concept angle to prevent and manage back injuries.

Open joint vs closed joint lifting – Part 1

I was watching a video of Tony Kono where he was explaining why squatting into the deadlift is wrong. The reasoning behind this struck me as extremely simple but powerful. He explained that the more open a joint angle is when lifting a weight, the more force can be exerted. In the case of the deadlift, the optimal alignment for open joint angles are hips inbetween the shoulders and knees, while the shoulders should get on top of the bar. 

Notice the relationship between the hips, shoulders and knees.

Based on a person’s anthropometry this could change where the hips would be closer to the knees in case of a long torso, or the hips would be closer to the shoulders in case of a short torso. But this doesn’t change the fact that a person should strive to create that perfect relationship between all the joint angles where they can remain as open as possible, to ensure maximal force production. After all, everybody can stand up with more weight than they can lift off the floor. This is the reason why a person can lift the most weight in the deadlift – it’s a lift where joint angles can be kept as shallow as possible. 

Powerlifters, whose very sport depends on maximal force production, are masters of the open joint angle. Look at a powerlifting squat vs an Olympic lifting squat – the knee angle of a powerlifter is kept as open as possible while the Olympic lifter flexes the knee as much as possible.

Shallow knee angles let you move massive weights.

Or the powerlifting bench. To keep shoulder flexion down, the bar is brought as low as humanly possible. If your intent is to move massive weights, you must master the shallow joint angle concept.

Stay tuned for part 2, which will be about injury management and prevention using the concept of open and closed joint angles.

Deadlifting cues for the long limbed lifter

A very popular cue for deadlifting is “hold on to the bar and push the earth away”. While this is a great cue for people who are natural squatters (usually below 6 feet with short femurs and a long torso), it often doesn’t work for people who aren't natural squatters (usually above 6 feet with long femurs and short torso).  I had a 6 ‘7 basketball player at my gym come up to me and tell me his deadlift is terrible because  “I don’t understand what it means to push the earth away”. When I checked on his form, he was literally treating his deadlift like a squat, the bar got too far away from him, he got his hips almost down to knee level, and it was a squat. The quickest way to muck a deadlift up is to treat it like a squat.

Proportions matter

As a 6 ‘4 lifter with extremely long femurs, I never understood the ‘push the earth away’ cue either. Reason being that squatting is a very foreign concept to a long-femured individual. Ask a tall person to squat and it usually looks like a giraffe trying the limbo. If this is you, and you just can’t seem to get the ‘push the earth away’ cue right, try the opposite. Treat the lift as a pull. Imagine yourself as a human crane and you’re lifting the weight up to put it somewhere else. I’ve found that this typically resolves a lot of issues with longer limbed lifters. When a long-torso person deadlifts, the hips will typically be lower - almost like a squat - because the shoulders have to be over the bar. However, a long-femured person would have higher hips because it doesn’t take much to get the shoulders over the bar. As soon as I told the basketball player to stop pretending it was a squat, and just pull the bar up, his lift looked picture perfect. Long limbed individuals are natural pullers off the floor. Stop pretending it’s a squat and think of yourself as a human crane. Try it out and see if it works for you.

Be like the crane