Summary The purpose of this document is to provide all stakeholders and workplaces concerned with preventing musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) related to manual handling tasks with an integrated prevention strategy for manual handling. Combining training and intervention, this strategy is based on the understanding, observation and analysis of five action principles. These action principles are common to all the handling techniques used by workers. Each of them has specific observation indicators, which identify the compromises that workers must make to achieve their goal of safeguarding their health and safety, in terms of demands or effort.