For anyone questioning the safety of deadlifting based on this post, I encourage you to continue deadlifting - it's a great exercise that contributes to overall health and fitness, but first I want to expand on the above implicit disclaimer in the parent:
>Ex-professional weightlifter of about 10 years here
This implies a number of things:
1. First and foremost, it implies the use of much higher weights and workloads than what a typical non-professional stronglifts or starting strength type lifter might be using. This is related to the next two factors: potential use of performance-enhancing drugs, and potential obesity. Without these two factors, you'd plateau at lower and safer weight, close to your natural limit.
2. It implies the potential use of performance-enhancing drugs. Performance-enhancer use is incredibly pervasive in today's professional athletic world. Their use will push you beyond your limits; the limits of strength, and the limits of what's safe and healthy.
3. It implies potential obesity: competitive lifting requires massive amounts of food in order to fully recover and continue lifting as much as possible. Teamed with performance enhancers, one might achieve a strength level, body weight, and muscle mass far higher than one's bones and ligaments evolved to handle.
So if you're using good form, not eating inordinate amounts of food, and not using performance-enhancers, you can safely and healthily deadlift. You will move less weight than the professional, but it will be weight that your body is more naturally capable of handling.
We've had deadlift scaremongering for decades with yet any solid proof to be produced against its use in general, non-PED using populations, as part of a general strength training and conditioning program.
I don't care what Hall or Oberall say - most of us are lightyears away from their numbers or from those kinds of environments. (I'm also asking for proof on Hall's negative stance on deadlifts, since I can't find anything about it)
To add, the best strength training programs I've tried use submaximal loading most if not all of the time, adding a further layer of safety: not only are you not pushing yourself past your limits with PEDs or insane training tonnage, you're purposefully staying below your natural limits.
Keep deadlifting with exquisite form and reap the benefits!
The "if you're using good form" is a pretty huge caveat. It's only natural for form to suffer as you try and push yourself harder, but there are not many exercises where bad form so consistently leads to such debilitating injuries such as slipped disks.
This is anecdotal evidence I know, but I can think of two friends that have gotten slipped disks from doing deadlifts in 2019, and this was during personal training sessions from "ex-Olympians" that cost $100s an hour.
>Ex-professional weightlifter of about 10 years here
This implies a number of things:
1. First and foremost, it implies the use of much higher weights and workloads than what a typical non-professional stronglifts or starting strength type lifter might be using. This is related to the next two factors: potential use of performance-enhancing drugs, and potential obesity. Without these two factors, you'd plateau at lower and safer weight, close to your natural limit.
2. It implies the potential use of performance-enhancing drugs. Performance-enhancer use is incredibly pervasive in today's professional athletic world. Their use will push you beyond your limits; the limits of strength, and the limits of what's safe and healthy.
3. It implies potential obesity: competitive lifting requires massive amounts of food in order to fully recover and continue lifting as much as possible. Teamed with performance enhancers, one might achieve a strength level, body weight, and muscle mass far higher than one's bones and ligaments evolved to handle.
So if you're using good form, not eating inordinate amounts of food, and not using performance-enhancers, you can safely and healthily deadlift. You will move less weight than the professional, but it will be weight that your body is more naturally capable of handling.