Sitting at a desk — or any chair surfing — are a unavoidable reality of modern life.
Upside: we can concentrate for long periods and work in comfort.
Downside: sitting damages posture.
We end up with:
Forward head → reduced breathing & core stability (diaphragm inhibition).
Slumped shoulders → decreased overhead range, increased chance of shoulder injury.
Tight hips → weak glutes , excessive strain on lumbar spine, back pain.
So on Swings, instead of hips driving the movement, the lower back strains. A common “fix” for tight hips is stretching hip flexors . When I first learned about this in 2001/2, it felt great —until it didn’t. The looseness never stuck . Research shows hip flexor stretching temporarily enhances deep abdominal activity, but it declines when training ends. Sitting then maintains tightness, creating a loop. At the same time, I used abdominal bracing for core stability. Which helped—until it didn’t. A hard brace raises hip joint forces. Research shows strong bracing lowers shear at the lumbar spine but increases hip compression by 8–12%. It also reduces hip-knee flexion and elevates ground reaction forces, shifting stress to hips instead of glutes.
Combine tight hip flexors, weak glutes, and max bracing, and you get aching backs and damaged hips. That’s how I damaged both labrums after years of stretching and bracing.
The Fix: Restore Anticipatory Control
In a balanced body, the deep core engages milliseconds before moving an arm, leg, or kettlebell. This pre-activation , or anticipatory postural adjustment , is also called reflexive stabilization.
Studies show the Transverse Abdominis and Multifidus activate promptly in pain-free lifters but respond slowly in those with back pain. Conscious bracing can’t substitute—once the bell moves, you’ve only more info got milliseconds. If the reflex is off, shear forces hit when load peaks, often causing that “lightning shock” in the lower back. So, how do we restore it? With specialized movement drills that re-train feed-forward activation.
One of the highly recommended is the Dead Bug, proven to restore pre-emptive stability . We use this and additional exercises in the Stability phase of the SSP Model (Stability–Strength–Power) from Systematic Core Training for Kettlebells.
The prescription:
A short 5-minute session of stability training before KB sessions.
A brief 10-minute period after.
Then progress to Strength and Power.
This reactivates the deep abdominals, re-strengthens them with the pelvic floor and diaphragm, and recovers the ability to create intra-abdominal pressure (IAP) to protect the spine in Swings, Cleans, Squats, and Snatches.
Should You Ever Brace?
Yes—on challenging, deliberate lifts like Deadlifts, Squats, and Presses. But bracing should build upon reflexive stability, not take the place of it.
Stay Strong,
Geoff Neupert.