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Handling activities are a source of musculoskeletal injuries?especially to the back?and have been the subject of numerous studies and prevention efforts over the years. Handler training is a common avenue for prevention. Training consists of teaching basic guidelines that take shape through standard techniques that handlers should apply at all times. Some recent studies have called into question the effects of such training, while others bring a fresh perspective to the reality of handling work. Handlers with years of experience use more diverse techniques than what is taught in training. Their challenge is not so much to apply a predefined technique as to adapt it according to the variability of the individual situations. Guided by the results of studies on work in real situations, we proposed to update manual handling training. To this end, we defined a general competence, consisting of four dimensions that should guide learning in training: 1) finding the best possible compromise, 2) determining how to organize their work, 3) collecting information to guide the actions, and 4) solving the problems that emerge from the different configurations that can arise in handling situations. Each of these dimensions is reviewed. As a management tool for learning, the concept of action rule is proposed both to get some distance from the action, and to provide support for communication.