Should you wear a lifting belt?
Roll back a few years and I would have answered that wearing a belt was cheating, along with wearing wrist wraps and any other ‘lifting aids’.
Fast forward and my opinion is very different to this.
So what is the reasoning behind wearing a belt?
When I’m talking about lifting belts I don’t mean those cheap thin/material belts these do hardly anything.
The point of wearing a belt is to stop the spine from going into excessive flexion (rounding) and it can help to provide more stability if you learn how to ‘breathe’ into the belt which helps to increase intra abdominal pressure. It helps to provide feedback of bracing by giving you something to push against with your abs
Watch someone lifting a heavy weight, you’ll see them take a big breath into their belt,hold this breath to maintain that pressure, then they will either breathe out on the way up or not at all until they finish the rep.
Now we know what a belt does, when should you use one?
Not on bicep curls or the chest press machine, on a serious note belts can help with performance and reduce injury risk this doesn’t mean you need to wear a belt on every lift you do.
My advice would be to wear a belt during your working sets on your main lifts such as squats and deadlifts particularly when you have loads that are over 85% of your maximum. Below these intensities I wouldn’t say it’s totally necessary to wear a belt but it may help, particularly if you are a competitive powerlifter who needs to become accustomed to wearing a belt.
For example if you have calculated your %’s based off your max with a belt then decided to lift without one this will actually alter the intensity your are lifting at.
What kind of belt should I get?
A lever or prong belt are the two types I recommend with a thickness of 10-13mm anything thinner than this really isn’t going to provide much assistance
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