Why Practice Matters in Ergonomics Training
Safety briefings and workplace posters fail to prevent musculoskeletal injuries because passive learning lacks muscle memory; bridging the gap requires hands-on practice with immediate feedback.
- By Carrie Taylor
- Jul 28, 2026
Every single adult I've ever met has learned to DO something, and most of them have mastered some specific skill. Some of my friends are great violin, guitar, or piano players, or amazing vocalists. Some more athletically-inclined friends can shoot a basket or strike a pickleball with remarkable accuracy. Professional movers make lifting and carrying look like choreography. I recently learned how to center a block of clay on a wheel.
All of these skills were learned through adult learning principles: someone showed us, we tried it, we received feedback.
Whatever task we've mastered, our experience proved that to learn how to do something new, we need to learn about it (see it done, understand the logic behind it), practice it, and get feedback about whether we're doing it right. No one has ever perfected a skill without practice.
And yet, when we set out to teach people how to lift safely, push a cart without twisting, or fit two parts together without bending that little tab, we often act like telling is enough. We put up posters or work instructions, and maybe demonstrate. Then we expect people to just get it. That gap between telling and training is where injuries happen — and it's a gap practice can close.
We tend to assume that manual tasks don't carry the same stakes as, say, a surgical procedure. When a lifeguard, surgeon, or traffic controller is trained, they're allowed to make mistakes in a safe environment before they're put to the test in the real world. Lifting crates or pushing two parts together just doesn't feel like it belongs in the same category. But that assumption doesn't hold up.
If a new worker sustains a back injury because no one took the time to train the new batch of team members how to shoulder a ladder, the stakes were real all along; we just didn't treat them that way. New workers have to absorb a lot of information in a short period of time, and a well-documented feature of how memory works is that unreinforced information fades fast; without practice and feedback, much of what's said in a one-time briefing won't survive the day.
There's an old saying, often attributed to Confucius: "What I hear, I forget. What I see, I remember. What I do, I understand." You want workers to do, and to understand, not just how to get the task done on time, or how to avoid errors, but how to do it with minimal strain on the body.
Telling isn't enough.
Showing isn't enough.
Let them do it. Make sure they understand when they're doing it correctly.
We're not talking about shooting free throws or playing a concerto. We're talking about smaller, quieter skills:
- placing the hands so a load is balanced
- adjusting a backrest so the lumbar support aligns with the lower back's natural curve.
- setting a stable stance so energy isn't wasted fighting for balance
- pushing with the forearm instead of the hand to optimize leverage
- resting the load on the sill of the trunk while repositioning the hands
These are skills that, once mastered, can significantly reduce strain and sprain injury rates. An ergonomic work strategy gives a worker a biomechanical advantage that makes the task feel easier — not just safer, but genuinely requiring less effort. If we're promoting a technique because it's safer, it's worth the extra few minutes to make sure workers actually master it.
In practice, this doesn't require a simulation lab. It can be as simple as a supervised trial run — a worker lifts the ladder, shoulders it, and gets immediate, specific feedback on hand position and stance, right there on the floor, before they're expected to do it unsupervised.
This philosophy should sit at the root of all coaching and technique training: every lesson should include a practical, hands-on experience, so workers don't just hear about the ergonomic strategy — they feel why it works.