How to wear a weightlifting belt

Wearing a lifting belt is easy: 1) put the belt around your waist, 2) expand your chest and inhale, 3) secure the belt. A lifting belt provides stability and support to your core, but you need to use the correct breathing technique to make it effective.

Introduction

If you go to the gym regularly, you may have noticed some people wearing a gym during specific exercises.

If you wonder why some wear a belt and how to wear and use these lifting belts, you're at the right place! In this article, I'll discuss why and how you should wear a weightlifting belt.

What is a weightlifting belt, and how does it work?

A weightlifting belt is worn around your waist to support your lower back and overall core. It ensures that when pressing or pushing heavy weights, the pressure in your abdomen and core pushes off against the belt so that you'll get a more stable core (and, therefore, a more stable lower back) during an exercise.

Because your core is extra stabilized, you can lift a bit heavier. Most people can lift about 10% heavier when wearing a weightlifting belt than without one. This is not because your muscles magically get stronger when you wear the belt but because your core and, therefore, your overall body is just a bit more stable. This allows you to use the strength of your muscles more efficiently without an unstable core being the weak link while under load during a specific exercise.

Before I discuss how to wear a weightlifting belt, it's essential to understand how to breathe correctly during exercise, as this affects the effectiveness of a lifting belt.

Breathing techniques

Your breathing technique affects whether or not you use a weightlifting belt optimally.

When exerting power, for example, to lift a heavy load during squatting or deadlifting, you have inhale during the eccentric phase and exhale during the concentric phase. The eccentric phase is when your muscles are lengthening; think of when you squat down. The concentric phase is when you exert force by contracting your muscles, i.e., pushing against the ground from a squatted position to return to the standing position.

There are two ways of breathing: diaphragmatic breathing and chest breathing.

In general, diaphragmatic breathing should be the primary way to breathe during exercise, rest, and everyday life. Still, there are specific situations where chest breathing can be applied. One such case is when putting on a lifting belt.

Let's discuss both types of breathing so you'll know the difference.

Diaphragmatic breathing

When breathing correctly, your belly expands as your diaphragm contracts and (literally) moves down within your body, compressing your guts (and hence, expanding your stomach). This downward motion of the diaphragm also 'expands' your lungs by drawing air in through your mouth and airways. When breathing using your diaphragm, your chest barely expands.

Chest breathing

With chest breathing, your lungs draw air in by primarily expanding your chest without expanding your belly. In other words, your diaphragm doesn't contract, and no compression occurs in your core.

What instead happens is that your diaphragm moves up instead of down compared to diaphragmatic breathing, which now creates a vacuum in your core instead of compression, pulling your guts up in your body and flattening your belly.

With chest breathing, expansion of your chest is much less significant than the expansion of your belly. As such, the amount of air you can breathe in is much less when chest breathing than when using diaphragmatic breathing

You can try it out as you're reading this to see it for yourself:

1. First, take a deep breath by only expanding your chest without expanding your belly.
2. Once you can't breathe in more and your chest is fully expanded, expand your belly.
3. You'll notice you can breathe much more air suddenly.

Use diaphragmatic breathing while wearing a lifting belt

While wearing a lifting belt, your belly will press against the belt during diaphragmatic breathing. This creates pressure against the tight belt, resulting in compression in your core and, thus, more stabilization and support for your core muscles (your abs and lower back).

Therefore, proper breathing is critical to optimal lifting belt use. In case of incorrect breathing, such as chest breathing, a lifting belt is less effective as there is much less pressure from your belly pushing against the lifting belt. The consequence of the lack of this pressure is less stability and support for your core.

So when having a lifting belt on, make sure to breathe using diaphragmatic breathing.

How to wear a weightlifting belt

Wearing a belt is actually quite easy. Here's how you put on and take off a lifting belt:

1. Place the belt around your waist

A lifting belt is worn around your waist. You can wear it on your waistline or slightly above or below it. Experiment and find out for yourself which position feels most comfortable for you. Ensure the belt is around waist level and not on your hips or ribs.

A handy rule of thumb is to ensure your navel is in the middle of the width of the belt.

2. Inhale deeply by chest breathing

Before tightening and loosening the belt, you need to make as flat a stomach as possible to put the belt on properly. Contrary to what you might expect, it's best to take a deep breath rather than exhaling completely to flatten your belly.

The trick is to use chest breathing to take a deep breath and simultaneously flatten your belly. With chest breathing, as I discussed earlier, your chest enlargement will draw air into your lungs and cause your diaphragm to move upwards, creating a vacuum in your core and flattening your belly.

3. Secure the belt

At the point where your stomach is flattest and you can't breathe in more through chest breathing, secure the belt tightly.

You should be able to insert just one finger (with some effort) between the belt and your obliques. Wearing the belt tighter will be uncomfortable or even painful, while wearing it looser will make it lose effectiveness.

4. Taking off: inhale and unbuckle the belt

The belt is taken off in the same way you've put it on. Take a deep breath with chest breathing and actively flatten your belly. Next, unbuckle the belt and take it off completely.

F.A.Q.

When to start using a lifting belt?

Should you wear a lifting belt already if you are a complete beginner or have only been doing strength training and fitness for a few months? Well, I'd say no.

Why?

Suppose you still need to gain experience with resistance training and have yet to develop your strength. In that case, it's usually better to advance through the beginner stage of your fitness journey without much use of accessories such as lifting belts of knee wraps.

In the beginning stage, it's much more critical to pay attention to and focus on developing the right technique, maintaining correct breathing, improving your mind-muscle connection, performing an exercise at the right speed, and many other aspects. Wearing a belt has no added value in improving all these basic things and may even make you dependent on the accessory.

It is much better to first master the correct technique and gain some training experience first, to get a natural feel for all exercises and the way your body's dynamics work.

Another reason not to wear a lifting belt initially is to learn to control the stability of your core without a belt. Exercising without a belt emphasizes good core stability and strength, which you need to develop first anyway.

Should you wear a lifting belt all the time?

Occasionally you see people in the gym who seem to be wearing a lifting belt all the time, but is that wise? After all, a lifting belt will provide stability and support to your core, so why not wear it constantly?

Not wearing a lifting belt all the time is to avoid becoming dependent on the lifting belt and to develop your core muscles and stabilizers naturally. If you wear a lifting belt during your entire workout session, regardless of which exercises you do, you teach yourself a certain form and stability dependence on the lifting belt during your workouts.

Recall that lifting belts are often stiff and worn tightly, and with the correct breathing technique, pressure is created on your core, which acts on the lifting belt, thus making your core more stable. Your freedom of movement around your waist is also somewhat limited while wearing a lifting belt. If this becomes the norm for you because you're wearing the lifting belt all the time, you may develop an imbalance in your posture and/or muscles, particularly around your abs and back muscles.

I advise you to wear a lifting belt only while doing heavy sets of specific exercises requiring extra balance and stability in your body. Examples of such exercises are, of course, deadlifting and squatting, but also the overhead barbell press, heavy barbell rows, and when going for a heavy PR during bench press.

Conclusion

Wearing a lifting belt provides extra stability and support to your core when doing heavy lifts. It's pretty easy to put on a lifting belt, but you need to make sure to breathe correctly during usage by using the diaphragmatic breathing technique.

On the other hand, when actually putting on or putting off a lifting belt, it helps to flatten your belly by inhaling with the chest breathing technique.

If you're still a beginner in fitness, I advise you to learn the lifts and exercise without any lifting belts or other accessories first to develop a feel for the movements and learn and understand what feels natural for your body.

Once you're past the beginner stage, which is usually after a year or 2 or 3, and you start to lift seriously and heavily, a lifting belt will provide your benefits and extra stability during specific lifts.

I hope you enjoyed this article and learned a thing or two. If you got any questions or remarks, feel free to contact me!