A short coaching video by Ben Greenfield presenting the "chalk outline drill": a neurology-informed visualization exercise aimed at reducing lower-back pain during deadlifts. The speaker instructs listeners to mentally outline the lower back, color it calming purple/blue to reduce vigilance/aggression/pain responses, then perform deadlifts in a visualize-lift-repeat loop until the pain diminishes.
I use a drill that I call the chalk outline drill and I force you to be able to manipulate your brain space related to what you're doing. So maybe you have like a real issue with like lower back on deadlifts, but literally nothing else in your back never hurts. We can approach that from a neurology perspective. And look, you've had so many hippocampal memories associated with this part of your sensory motor cortex that we have substance pe just kind of slip into this motor pattern now because it's happened so many times. So what I've want you to do is make this chalk outline and envision the lower back portion of your chalk outline in a calming purple or blue and allow yourself to disengage feelings of vigilance, aggression, pain or whatever negative you have pent up in that low back. Then open your eyes, get ready and perform a successful deadlift and then do it again back and forth until that pain degrades.
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