How does the founder exercise work?

Question

I sometimes experience discomfort and pain in the lower back.

I deadlift a heavy set once a week. This does not seem to be helping. And why should it? It makes my lower back able to stabilize against very heavy loads for a very short period of time. My daily life probably involves stabilizing against a light load for very long periods of time instead (could this be called postural strength?).

There is a bodyweight exercise called the founder that I believe will help. I will start doing this once a day.

But I would also like to know; why and how does this exercise work? Or does it not work? Is it roughly equivalent to a barbell only romanian deadlift?

My theory is that in order to avoid back pain one must have great muscular endurance in the lower back and flexibility and muscular endurance in the hamstrings. One way to achieve this would be do a lot (say 100 reps a week) of very light deadlifts or RDLs. The founder is roughly the same as a deadlift or RDL where one uses the arms as weight instead of a bar. A few set of heavy deadlifts a week does not cut it. What is needed is muscular endurance not strength. That does not exclude heavy deadlifts. They are useful. In the case I may have to lift eg. a washing machine.

Answer 1

I deadlift a heavy set once a week. This does not seem to be helping [my posture and back discomfort]. And why should it?

Because if your max deadlift is 60kg then maintaining proper posture against a light load is a large fraction of your strength and therefore can't last long, whereas if your max deadlift is 120kg then maintaining proper posture against the same light load is a negligible fraction of your strength and can therefore be maintained for a long time.

Deadlifting and squatting heavy also adds muscle to the back that changes your default posture drastically for the better.

Most people who are just beginning to deadlift often experience more lower back soreness than they've ever imagined. Instead of leaning into the experience, pushing through for a few months, and developing a strong back, they slow down, back off, and therefore never get the benefit of a strong deadlift. It takes a while for the postural benefits of heavy squatting and deadlifting to kick in, but they're definitely there.

It's of course possible to be quite strong and experience back pain, but the relationship of deadlifting to that problem is different for strong versus weak people. Weak people need to get strong and re-evaluate; strong people need to stay strong and develop practices like daily yoga/warm-ups/mobility circuits.

Without knowing how much someone is lifting and how seriously they're taking the practice, it's difficult to know why they aren't feeling the benefits. Your question history makes me wonder if you are over-analyzing the situation, looking for easy alternatives to a hard practice that would work if you just let it. But you've also been lifting for over a year, so hopefully you've reached some serious strength benchmarks and you just need a mobility practice.