“Should I wear a lifting belt? Is it better to squat heavier with a belt, or lighter with no belt?”
All right. So, let me answer this in two ways. The first answer I’m going to give is based on faulty assumptions. I’m going to give this answer because this is the standard answer that’s normally given by people. The answer is this: Identify what it is that you want that session to work. So, if wearing a lifting belt increases the strength and stability through your trunk, through your torso, and torso strength and stability in that midline positioning is a weakness for you, then no, you don’t want to use that belt, because the claim is, at least, that it acts as a crutch. It takes away a weakness, brings in an artificial aid, and therefore you’re not able to strengthen that weakness.
The same logic basically says that if it’s your legs which are a weakness and you’re trying to improve your squat strength because there’s a lower body weakness as opposed to a triangle torso weakness, then yes you would use a belt, because it’s going to stabilise your torso, which isn’t a weakness anyway, and allow your legs to squat more, therefore working to develop more strength in the lower body.
So this is based on a faulty assumption that somehow wearing a belt can do some sort of muscle recruitment patterns. So what I’d like to do is I’m going to read you a piece from an article here that I’ve found, a little bit of research. This was research done in 2002 by Ivancic, et al. The title of the research study was “Effects of the Abdominal Belt on Muscle Generated Spinal Stability and L4-L5 Joint Compression Force”.
So just remember here the claim that we’re talking about or refuting is the fact that wearing a belt somehow changes the movement and acts as a crutch. So I’m going to read you a piece from the conclusion of this research.
“The effective stability of the spine was adequately predicted by the active spine stability and the effect of the belt, which accounted for approximately 34% of the effective spine stability. The study therefore demonstrated that the abdominal belt aided in the passive stability of the lumbar spine …” And this is the key element: “… and did not change the active stability for tests performed within the same experimental session.”
So what is this telling us? Well, it’s telling us that the belt is actually not acting as a crutch. In fact, the belt is helping to maintain the normal activation patterns that you would experience with no belt. So it’s allowing you to lift heavier, but it’s allowing you to lift heavier because it’s stabilising the more passive systems in the body. It’s stabilising your spine and your discs, so it’s playing a role in injury prevention. But at the same time, it’s not compromising your ability to squat or to dead lift in this case with no belt.
So what are the implications here? Well, what it tells us is that if you want to make your dead lift better, you want to make your squat better, then yes, you should be squatting or dead lifting with a belt. And training with the use of a belt, when you then take the belt away, you’re still going to get the same improvements.
So training with a belt will improve you both with and without a belt. Training with no belt, perhaps it’s only going to improve you to a lesser degree. It may only give you 80% of your potential gains there.
So the take away there would be, yes, training with a belt is a good thing. Of course don’t become reliant on it, it is there as a cue, as something that you can push against to improve that valsalva, that intra-abdominal pressure, which will help to stabilise the spine. Don’t become reliant on it. Don’t let it turn into a superstition or a routine that you can’t break with, because there will be times when you need to train without it. But if your aim, if your end-goal is to get strong, yes, you will become stronger training with a belt, and you’ll become stronger both with and without that belt.
That would be my advice, there. Again, Train with both, train with and without, because if you’re doing that, you at least improve your self awareness and you know what you’re able to handle without a belt. So maybe you knowing the maximum even without would be a good idea for competition.
