Lower Back ST

**Edge** · Posted On: 11/17/2003 6:51am

:icon_salu

**Ronin** · Posted On: 11/17/2003 6:52am

You mean "hyper extensions" ?

**Ronin** · Posted On: 11/17/2003 7:05am

The best exercise for your lower back WITHOUT weights are those, but if you really want to strengthen it, go deadlifts, if you start off light, there is no need to worry about your lower back, also, make sure you are taught the proper mechanics of the deadlift. I would avoid good mornings.

**Chudo** · Posted On: 11/17/2003 9:36am

Deadlifts are one of the best exercises you can do for overall strength. They specifically target the entire back as well as quads/glutes. Deads are infinately more usefull for building back strength than hyperextensions. You might consider alternating deads with hypers. Or warming up your back a little further by doing hypers before deads.

Power cleans are a really good exercise for the back as well. they hit more of the upper back than the lower but they really warm up the lower in the meantime. I usually do power cleans then go right into deadlifts.

**Nid** · Posted On: 11/17/2003 6:44pm

The lower back is quite a tricky mother effer to truly work (like any other muscle would). It is to your posterior what your adominal is to your anterior. The opposite of the ab crunch is not a good morning, or a dead lift. Those require that your spine be straight (not bend back the opposite way, which is what you want). In the process of executing those it requires that your lower back muscles maintain an isometric contraction (which is better than nothing), but you are not achieving, even close, the full range of motion; and I feel it's of particular value in the case of the spine if you are trying to get it back in working order. All back extension machines seem to mimic a good morning in one way or another which is much more a hamstring movement.

The best thing to use would be the roman chair. But not the one angled at 45 degrees. The one in which your body, when straight, is paralell to the floor. That way gravity provides a load for the lower back when it is actually extending (crunching the opposite way, which is actually pretty good way to put it) for at least part of the ROM.

Of course, if you have the fancy new MedX lumbar extenstion at your disposal, use it!

**Nid** · Posted On: 11/17/2003 6:50pm

Power cleans are a really good exercise for the back as well.

Gotta disagree with that one. Ballistic movements have no place in the realm of general strength training...not unless it is meant to be an athletic display in an of itself. You are drastically reducing the load on the tissue as force and momentum increase. Great for making it *easier* to move a mass, not so great for making muscular inroads; which is the goal here.

**Nid** · Posted On: 11/17/2003 6:54pm

Hard to add resistance, but not a bad place to start.

But if you're not injured or particularly feeble, I'd just go right into light dead lifts. Sumo is my own preferred way, unless you have a hex bar.

**Chudo** · Posted On: 11/18/2003 8:43am

Doing power cleans is how I gained just about all of my upper back thickness and trap development. They are also a great warm up for heavy deadlifts. If you don't know the value of power cleans in back development then you have either never done them or have never done them properly. They are a gutt wrenching exercise so most people shy away from them. But for overall back development they are awesome. To say that deadlifts don't strengthen the lower back is the same as saying that bicep curls don't work the biceps. Pure rubbish. The requirements for working the lower back are not that it be the opposite of a crunch.