Back Injury Prevention - The Most Important Safety Training You Will Ever Do

There are several very important factors when it comes to back safety training. Back injuries are the result of cumulative stress, learning takes place over time, and there is no perfect lift. When you combine these factors with four simple back injury prevention steps, you will have a successful back safety training program.

How many times have you heard someone say - I was just bending over to pick up (insert light object here) and my back went out? Was it this light object that caused the injury or was it the cumulative stress that their back has been through over many years? Back injury prevention starts with developing safety habits that will last a lifetime. Making safety a constant habit lowers the stress on the back and in turn lowers the chance of back injury. Proper procedure with every single lift is the key.

Teaching the habits of back injury prevention takes time. People by nature need to be reminded constantly in order to learn. There is no magic bullet when it comes to safety training. Simply watching a training video might engender the proper behavior for a while, but most likely learning will be forgotten unless there are constant reminders - periodic meetings, safety posters and face-to-face reminders on how to lift are all important.

When teaching back safety it's important to remember that there is no perfect lift. In the real world there are a million little things that get in the way of a perfect lift and, simple put, people aren't perfect. This needs to be part of your training philosophy. The job of any back safety trainer is to give people the skills to do the best lift possible under the circumstances and over time give them the tools necessary to reduce the chances of an injury.

There are four simple steps to train your employees:

When muscles are cool they just don't work as well. Stretching and warming up will make the work easier and it will reduce the chance of injury. Also, it's important to stretch in the middle of a work day. When a person has been working for awhile, their muscles will fatigue. Stopping for a few seconds and performing a compensating stretch can deliver valuable oxygen to the muscles that helps them continue their work.

When lifting a load, keep it as close to your body as possible. In this position, the load is at its lightest. The closer the load is to the lifter's center of gravity, the lighter the load is on the back. This allows the lifter to keep the natural curves in their spine. This is called "The Power Position". This allows the back to withstand far more stress than when the curves are flattened out.

When the position of the lift doesn't allow for "The Power Position" it's important to "build a bridge". When a person lifts with their body weight out in front of their lower back, the back must lift the entire upper body weight as well as the object being lifted. Support the upper body weight on a leg or other object, the weight of the upper body is taken off of the back and the demands of the lift are reduced.

Reaching and twisting dramatically increases the risk of injury when lifting. Always move your feet first when initiating a lift. If your feet move first then your upper and lower body will be in synch. The cause of most reaching and twisting is a lift that starts with the upper body rather than the feet. When you move your upper body first, the trunk, and the lower body are going in different directions and the demands on the spine increase dramatically. When you turn your feet first, the rest of the body follows, everything is moving in the same direction and the demands on the spine are dramatically reduced.

Back injury prevention training is some of the most important training you will ever do. Back injuries plague people and organizations with reduced productivity and quality of life. Making a back safety an every day and every lift habit, will reduce cumulative stress on the back and in turn reduced the chance of injury. These simple procedures can help us all avoid the debilitating effects of a back injury.