Each month Elite Strength will provide training tips to assist you in your workouts or nutritional suggestions that can assist in your eating habits. This page will also serve as a question and answer page.
This month
we are talking about lower back training. It is important to remember
when strength training you are only as strong as your weakest link.
An often overlooked area, the lower back is a key component in balance,
core strength, and posture of the body. Many people, in a quest to
look good, will train the abdominals with great intensity while forgetting
about the lower back. This causes an imbalance in strength in the
mid-section. This person may look great with tight abdominals, but
when they go to pick something up from the floor they end up injuring their
lower back. With an imbalance of strength, the abs can handle a great
amount of work while the lower back cannot withstand the strain.
Thus causing injury to the lower back.
There are many ways of strengthening the lower back. Doing squats, front squat, cleans, snatches, and deadlifts will all strengthen the lower back, but they entail mainly isometric strength. It is also recommended that you perform a dynamic strengthening exercise.
This month we will talk about hyperextensions. Hyperextensions are performed on a special bench in which you hook your feet under a set of pads and rest your hips on another set of pads in front (see picture below). This exercise is often done wrong: During the exercise many people tend to bend downward at the hips. This is not a bad exercise if you are trying to work the hips, as in a glute-ham raise, but we are attempting to work the muscles of the lower back. Hyperextensions should be performed by resting the hips on the front pad with the knees slightly bent and bending downward at the waist. Bending at the waist and letting the back roll downward will ensure that you are working the erector spinae group or lower back muscles.
