There has been some discussion again on various strength groups about the
alleged dependency dangers of wearing lifting belts or using knee wraps. My
comments on this may also be of interest her, since this issue is of fairly
widespread importance.
A good while ago, I wrote about some of the myths associated with Belt, joint
wrap and strap usage, pointing out that there are at least two distinct ways
of using these mechanical ergogenic aids:
(A) For actual mechanical support, an application which should be reserved
primarily for certain maximal or competition attempts. In this case, the aids
are applied very tightly and actually support some joint or limit range of
movement
(B) For proprioceptive awareness. In this case, the aids are loosely applied
and offer no mechanical support at all, though they may provide the added
advantage of keeping joints warm.
While over-reliance on application A may lead to the dependency problems of
stabilisation, this is rarely the case with application B, which can be very
helpful in imprinting specific kinaesthetic and neuromuscular patterns into
the nervous system.
Therefore, one needs to distinguish clearly between the different ways of
wearing wraps, belts etc before casting a blanket ban on all uses.
I have used application B in training and sometimes in competition for many
years as an Olympic lifter and have never noticed any difference in
performance or injury occurrence. I sometimes make a point of wearing lightly
applied knee wraps in colder weather because the blood supply to collagenous
inner knee joint structures is not very good and depends more on capillary
than arterial blood supply, a situation which becomes even worse when one
passes out of youth!
Use of a lightly applied belt of width no more than 10cm at the back can
assist in making one aware of the degree to which the lumbar spine is flexed
or extended, an application which can be exceptionally helpful to the beginner
or anyone who tends to flex the lower spine during heavy lifts (Siff M C
"Facts and Fallacies of Fitness").
In short, before you rush to burn one's belt or wraps, you just need to
understand the context and application in which a belt or other mechanical
lifting 'aid' may be applied and then decide what you wish to do.
Even then, research has shown that a tightly applied belt does little to
directly support any load - the assistance relates more to the increased
intra-abdominal pressure. Anyway, the occasional use of application A with a
tightly applied belt will not lead to the dreaded dependency syndrome - as
with anything, it is not necessarily the thing which may be wrong, it is the
way in which that thing is used that may cause problems.
Dr Mel C Siff
Littleton, Colorado, USA
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