I might be the biggest advocate of loaded hinging, or at least a close second to you, for a lot of the same reasons. To me, a loaded hinge transfers to so many things but like you say, requires a specific pattern of breathing and bracing. If people struggle with the traditional barbell deadlift, other alternatives like a hex bar (trap bar) deadlift, kettlebell deadlift, or even kettlebell swing would all work better than not hinging at all. The most important thing though is to make sure any injury is healed up; next would be to really ingrain that proper breathing, bracing, and loaded hinging.Sakly wrote: ↑September 13th, 2024, 4:56 pmI'm an absolute advocate of deadlifts, but form must be on point. If this is ensured, deadlifts are the most powerful exercise to get a stable core and develop power throughout the whole body. If your back doesn't feel good or gets bad from deadlifts, this is often a sign of missing stability, mostly due to wrong breathing.
I'll caveat it with the fact that my anthropometrics / leverages are such that I'm built to deadlift. I've always been able to deadlift with relatively high volume, relatively high intensity, and relatively high frequency compared to most, and in ~17 years of training a loaded hinge, I've never had an injury or tweak from it. I can't say the same for other barbell lifts, the squat being the worst for me.