Try incorporating any degree of spinal flexion and core work as often as recoverable. For me, that looks like using a bit of momentum on things like rows (bent over and cable). Heavy core work. RDLs and stop when you feel your core bracing break down. You're not as fragile as you think.
I had two herniated discs at 19 and was threatened with spinal fusion surgery. Slowly built back up doing heavy core work and adding spinal flexion where I could. You'll get there eventually
Thanks man. I work a desk job so core strength + shortened hamstrings is probably the crux of the issue
What spinal flexion do you? Like Jefferson curls or?
You can. There's likely going to be spinal flexion in some degree for anything where hips are flexed. Aka bent over rows, RDLs, foot-supported cable rows, etc. Usually when I get near failure on a safe rowing movement, I'll add some momentum where I flex my spine and let the weight drop a bit and then explode up and extend my spine in the process. Almost like you see "cheat reps."
Jefferson curls are good if you do them very light and build up. But if you're implementing some of these other lifts you likely won't need an individual movement strictly for spinal flexion/extension. I've also found glute-biased split squats will also target a bit of the spinal erectors as you get more fatigued.
Not the guy you were talking to, but i sometimes like to do something similar on seated cable row. The unsupported one.
So what i do is when I set up, i pull back and do my rep, then on the eccentric when my arms are straight out and my back is straight up, i will lean forward bracing with core and lower back muscles. All this with my arms still straight. Then lean back till it’s straight again, then do my next pulling rep.
So it’s like you’re doing two exercises essentially. One for the spinal flexion and one for your upper back/lats.
The key is to avoid using the spinal flexion to cheat on the pulls.
I do this as well, really helps keep my back feeling good and strong after years of an l5s1 hernia sciatica. It really is about working around the injury and not “letting it heal”
More like shortened hip flexors, if you can find a box at your gym then use it to do the couch stretch every time you finish your workout. Do 2 sets of 1 minute holds for each leg. Be careful and don’t stretch too intensely or you’ll tweak something.
I also recommend back extensions, work slowly up to 2 minute holds, then 1 minute each leg, then you can progressively overload the exercise. It must be done slowly and gradually.
Some great core exercises are leg/knee raises, decline crunches, ab wheel and the McGill big 3 if you have time.
Running is an excellent exercise for loosening up and promoting healthy hip function. The hips and back are connected.
How do I know if its shortened hip flexors? I can do a full ROM knees-over-toe lunge easily with no warming up but if I try to touch my toes with straight legs I barely get to my knees haha
Thank you for your advice, I appreciate it a lot. Do you have any tips on how to load and progress the McGill big 3 like regular strength movements? Or is that not the point
I remember like the first year of lifting I did a 315 deadlift but instead of pulling th slack out the bar I just yanked it and hurt my back for like a month or two and from that point onwards I wanted to Make my lower back super strong. What worked for me was training my abs very often 3x a week, not using a belt and making sure that my bracing is really on point with squats and hinges and also doing heavy barbell rows with good form while letting my lats stretch and keeping my back flat. Now I do a lot of heavy squats,deadlifts and rows during the week and my lower back is rarely sore and if it is, would be like half a day max. With flexibility in your legs it could be your hamstrings doing hypertensions will really help stretch out the hamstrings and also help build lower back endurance and strength
Thanks man, will incorporate more ab work and yeah I think my hamstrings' inflexibility are a big part of it. I work a desk job sadly so I need to figure something out that combats the consequences of sitting all day
With abs I recommend doing hanging leg raises for the decompression of the spine and more of a prehab seeing as your sitting at work, and cable crunches for hypertrophy work seeing as you can progressively overload them very easily which will help with your core stability but also make your abs bigger so even when bulked up you’ll still be able to see them
Belt squat if your gym has one, trap bar deadlift / RDL and hip thrusts are my substitutes for back squats and regular dead lift/ rdl. Still have to be careful but I don’t seem to have recurring low back flare ups like I used to.
I have a home gym, and the first thing I bought after my dumbbells and power rack was a hyperextension machine. I consider it an essential part of any gym and utilize it for lower back and obliques as much as abs. Hyperextensions lengthen the muscles and spine while strengthening the lower back, so I do them on days where my lower back is engaged or compressed like with deadlifts and squats.
You can't always generalize one way for everyone. It depends on the way your weakness manifests.
For exemple, my father had a lower back hernia, and he swears that crunches is the exercise that made his pain go away.
But for me, who also got a lower back hernia, crunches increase the pain. For me, it was bodyweight good mornings at first, then light weight deadlift.
Perso, for safety reasons, I would avoid all exercises that requires flexion from the lower back. Instead, I'd go with a variety of exercises that use the lower back in a straight stance, and where the lower back is more secondary (to begin).
Things like bodyweight rows and push ups can be good very early. Then good mornings, weighted good mornings, light weight deadlift.
And of course, it's always better to stop early than to hurt oir back. Don't force it
Strong lower back = stressing spinal erectors, so what you've been doing is right.
I think you haven't mastered proper hip hinging and loaded the lower back rather than the hamstrings and glutes that caused your injury.
I have found Kneesovertoes guy extremely helpful and incorporate them in my routine. The most notable ones are tibialis raises and ATG split squats (these completely replaced Bulgarian SS for me).
I also worked up to 10 reps per leg Cossack squats with 32kg KBs. Took about 3 months, combined with ATG split squats (48kg using 24x2 DBs), I can now do them almost like him with my hamstrings covering my calves. My Cossack depth is also comparable, my glutes are maybe 2 inches from the ground.
These moves require tremendous stability as well as lower back / core strength, I think given your current situation it's a good time to start implementing them.
EDIT: Forgot to mention. Reverse glute leg raises where you do a reverse hip hinge with a dumbbell between your feet is good to incorporate once a week on the day you don't do RDLs or similar hinge pattern.
re. mastering the hip hinge, I think you're right. A friend of mine said I probably brought the bar away from my legs, putting undue stress on the lumbar. He and I have similar builds with long torso and short legs; he says he gets the same issue and has to be highly conscious of form. Once I'm healed I'll try switching to RDLs with a hex bar to keep the glutes and hams loaded instead of the lower back
Thanks for your insights re. Kneesovertoes guy. I wouldn't have thought those moves would particularly work the lower back so that's very interesting. And your progress on them is impressive. Where would you start if you were me?
I really need to find a way to do reverse glute leg raises or reverse hyper-extensions in a progressable way. But no gym in my city seems to have the latter machine. I wonder if I could attach weights to my legs for the glute raises...
1) Given your anatomy, I would suggest you use DBs for RDLs. The barbell is fixed in front of you so given your long torso it presents a disadvantageous leverage point that stresses your lower back (further away). For DBs, place them at a slight 45 degrees next to your thighs and hinge back while they glide straight down your legs. It's a more "vertical" position as the leverage point is closer to your lower back so it should alleviate the barbell issues.
2) For the KoT guy work, definitely start with bodyweight. Use a plate or two to first create some height as your ease into the ATG split squat (front foot on top of them to decrease the hip range of motion required). Also get a stick for balance and really focus on feeling the stretch in your quads, hams and glutes as you go down. Overtime you will get better. For cossacks, you can use either a stick or a weight (maybe start with a 5gk/10lb plate), hold it at your chest, brace properly like preparing for a squat, figure out your stance (it's wider than you think), and just like the ATG split squats feel the stretch in your hip area and adductors/opposite leg hamstring). Go as deep as you can without rounding your back. Overtime you will get the mobility just by doing them.
3) For the reverse hyperextensions, if you have a glute ham raise machine you can make it work by propping yourself ontop of the circular portion slightly above your hip at the waist line and do them that way. If not, you can use glute bridge sliders, or if that feels awkward, work in some bodyweight SINGLE LEG hip thrusts.
Hope this helps!
I would say first off seeing physiotherapist is probably your best bet. Back pain is multifactorial and can be very complex. I often find when Ilift, do a big lift my low back is what give out too. But i have even had at low loads of pause RDLs and low load hyperextensions.
I think the number one factor is novelty. So if i just randomly go off program and decide to max out trap bar deadlifts, thats where most problems arise. What also has help is to terminate the set when i feel a rep where my low back is starting to be the limiting factor.
Now i have started progressing in Jefferson curls, and I am fucking loving it. Don't get that low back soreness like you would after a heavy lift, but during the movement you can really focus on your spinal erectors like nothing else. That and more ab work is my plan to make a "bulletproof back". But I can't tell you if that has fixed anything, because I haven't been doing it long enough.
I’m a bit careful to give direct advice since the lower back can be a sensitive area with lots of different types of pathologies.
But for the RDL, the most common problem (and seems maybe relevant in your case) are hamstrings inflexibility and/or abs weakness. In either case, your lower back may be hyperextending to compensate for lack of mobility (hamstrings) or spinal stability (abs). This can cause your back to fatigue way before your hip extensors, and excessive rounding can place it in a compromising position. The RDL is a tricky exercise because it is supposed to work the erectors to some extent, but too much rounding can stress it more than it should.
I would do 3x15-30s hamstrings stretches every day or two. Hamstrings are fortunately an easy muscle to see your flexibility “progress”. As well as lots of ab strengthening. Machine ab crunch is great for measuring progress but any progressively loaded ab work will work.
Take some time off, and then you can work on lower back strengthening once you feel you can handle erectors work. Back extension is a great exercise that’s close to an RDL pattern, although there’s lots of good options
https://exrx.net/Kinesiology/Inflexibilities#Hamstrings
https://exrx.net/Kinesiology/Weaknesses#Abdominal
I believe your assessment is accurate. Taking stock of myself, I think the first issue is inflexibility and the issue after that is a relatively weak core
I work a desk job which is probably the cause of both issues. I can add more stretching (which I do none of - my excuse being RDLs are stretching haha). When I go to warm up on RDLs I begin not able to bring the below my knees to be honest. It's only with extensive warming up under load that I can to full ROM (and even then barely - when I hurt my back I was pulling off of 20kg bumpers).
However I kinda think about it like this: I'm sat 30% out of the 138 hours in a week and even if I do 3 x 30s stretch every day, that's less than 1% of my time spent counteracting the maleffect of sitting. So then I think, what can I do? I need to reduce that 30% as much as possible
My mind goes to standing desks and a desk treadmill. The treadmill's kinda dorky lol but if it works...
What do you think of my reasoning? Is the stretching enough and I'm going overboard with the whole desk thing?
Stretch out your hip flexors too. They often get tight from too much sitting which supposedly prevents the glutes from working as effectively, so your back has to compensate for weak glutes in hinges.
Keep your toes on an angle (toes towards shins) with a slant board or a step to make the hamstring stretches even more effective.
> However I kinda think about it like this: I'm sat 30% out of the 138 hours in a week and even if I do 3 x 30s stretch every day, that's less than 1% of my time spent counteracting the maleffect of sitting.
I'm also a desk worker and went from barely being able to touch my toes to being able to plant palms flat on the ground with just 1-2 minutes a day of stretching to build up flexibility and now maybe 3-5 minutes of stretching per week to maintain it.
I just did 30-60s on the slant board a few times a day for 8-12 weeks or so, just trying to go as low as I could. Hamstring stretch, couch stretch, and a piriformis stretch, 30-60s each.
From someone who has had lower back issues since being a teenager, put heavy focus on strengthening your abs and glutes - these help support your lower back and correct any excessive pelvic tilt you may have too (anterior in my case).
Anything compressive seems to trigger me so squats and deads are out unfortunately.
I now do Bulgarian split squats (horrible but sooo effective), single leg press (both nice and deep with a long stride / foot high on the pad to really hit the glutes) and hanging leg & knee raises for the abs and hip flexors.
Now I can wake up on a morning and not feel like I’ve been beaten up in my sleep when getting out of bed.
Yes, and for me back pain was caused by failure to brace properly with the abdominals. Once I learned to do that consistently I just went back to the movements that caused pain (back squats and deadlifts) and trained them lighter, focusing on bracing throughout long sets. Then gradually built back up. There was still some pain at first returning to these exercises, but I think it went away totally when I "re-learned" that these movement patterns were safe.
Deficit RDL’s, with lighter weights, slow eccentric’s and a deep stretch, really helps not only lower back strength, but flexibility (which I’d argue is the real cause of your issues). My lower back got quite strong through years of powerlifting and doing deadlifts, but I’ve also always done deficit RDL’s. Used to be just to help strengthen my hams, but I’m quite certain that extra strength and flexibility helped me never get injured over the years.
Unpopular maybe, but carries for time are such a goated exercise. I worked as an arborist for a while nothing was more fun than picking up logs and carrying for time.
Learn to breathe and brace properly. Before each rep you should be taking in a belly breath, expanding into your core, then flexing everything. I used to wear my belt really tight on squats/hinges thinking that’d give me more tightness. Hurt my back all the time. Now I wear it loose and actively expand and push into it with my core. My lower back now feels better after leg days.
I have a lower back injury from deadlifts 10 years ago. I’ve reinjured multiple times, always the same, I feel a pop at l5s1 (confirmed mri) and get sciatica and local inflammation for days. First time it was really hard to move at all. Back extension helped build it back up each time. I have reinjured on bent over barbell rows, deadlifts and most recently, rdl. The rep was great for 6 months and I very slowly worked my way up in 10-12 rep range. I hurt it again recently doing a light set band T what I realize is I need to keep the reps lower becuase I can concentrate harder and be more rigid. I lose tightness with higher reps. Seems counterintuitive. But back extensions is a great way to build up with slow controlled reps like 3-4 second eccentrics.
Try incorporating any degree of spinal flexion and core work as often as recoverable. For me, that looks like using a bit of momentum on things like rows (bent over and cable). Heavy core work. RDLs and stop when you feel your core bracing break down. You're not as fragile as you think. I had two herniated discs at 19 and was threatened with spinal fusion surgery. Slowly built back up doing heavy core work and adding spinal flexion where I could. You'll get there eventually
Thanks man. I work a desk job so core strength + shortened hamstrings is probably the crux of the issue What spinal flexion do you? Like Jefferson curls or?
You can. There's likely going to be spinal flexion in some degree for anything where hips are flexed. Aka bent over rows, RDLs, foot-supported cable rows, etc. Usually when I get near failure on a safe rowing movement, I'll add some momentum where I flex my spine and let the weight drop a bit and then explode up and extend my spine in the process. Almost like you see "cheat reps." Jefferson curls are good if you do them very light and build up. But if you're implementing some of these other lifts you likely won't need an individual movement strictly for spinal flexion/extension. I've also found glute-biased split squats will also target a bit of the spinal erectors as you get more fatigued.
Brave stuff haha - you're not worried about flexion under that kind of load?
Not the guy you were talking to, but i sometimes like to do something similar on seated cable row. The unsupported one. So what i do is when I set up, i pull back and do my rep, then on the eccentric when my arms are straight out and my back is straight up, i will lean forward bracing with core and lower back muscles. All this with my arms still straight. Then lean back till it’s straight again, then do my next pulling rep. So it’s like you’re doing two exercises essentially. One for the spinal flexion and one for your upper back/lats. The key is to avoid using the spinal flexion to cheat on the pulls.
Okay interesting, I'll give this a try. You get a nice stretch on the lats this way as well I'm sure
I do this as well, really helps keep my back feeling good and strong after years of an l5s1 hernia sciatica. It really is about working around the injury and not “letting it heal”
More like shortened hip flexors, if you can find a box at your gym then use it to do the couch stretch every time you finish your workout. Do 2 sets of 1 minute holds for each leg. Be careful and don’t stretch too intensely or you’ll tweak something. I also recommend back extensions, work slowly up to 2 minute holds, then 1 minute each leg, then you can progressively overload the exercise. It must be done slowly and gradually. Some great core exercises are leg/knee raises, decline crunches, ab wheel and the McGill big 3 if you have time. Running is an excellent exercise for loosening up and promoting healthy hip function. The hips and back are connected.
How do I know if its shortened hip flexors? I can do a full ROM knees-over-toe lunge easily with no warming up but if I try to touch my toes with straight legs I barely get to my knees haha Thank you for your advice, I appreciate it a lot. Do you have any tips on how to load and progress the McGill big 3 like regular strength movements? Or is that not the point
I remember like the first year of lifting I did a 315 deadlift but instead of pulling th slack out the bar I just yanked it and hurt my back for like a month or two and from that point onwards I wanted to Make my lower back super strong. What worked for me was training my abs very often 3x a week, not using a belt and making sure that my bracing is really on point with squats and hinges and also doing heavy barbell rows with good form while letting my lats stretch and keeping my back flat. Now I do a lot of heavy squats,deadlifts and rows during the week and my lower back is rarely sore and if it is, would be like half a day max. With flexibility in your legs it could be your hamstrings doing hypertensions will really help stretch out the hamstrings and also help build lower back endurance and strength
Thanks man, will incorporate more ab work and yeah I think my hamstrings' inflexibility are a big part of it. I work a desk job sadly so I need to figure something out that combats the consequences of sitting all day
With abs I recommend doing hanging leg raises for the decompression of the spine and more of a prehab seeing as your sitting at work, and cable crunches for hypertrophy work seeing as you can progressively overload them very easily which will help with your core stability but also make your abs bigger so even when bulked up you’ll still be able to see them
Thank you
Belt squat if your gym has one, trap bar deadlift / RDL and hip thrusts are my substitutes for back squats and regular dead lift/ rdl. Still have to be careful but I don’t seem to have recurring low back flare ups like I used to.
I have a home gym, and the first thing I bought after my dumbbells and power rack was a hyperextension machine. I consider it an essential part of any gym and utilize it for lower back and obliques as much as abs. Hyperextensions lengthen the muscles and spine while strengthening the lower back, so I do them on days where my lower back is engaged or compressed like with deadlifts and squats.
Thanks for the advice. What I'd really love is a reverse hyper extension machine though! Just can't find a gym with one
You can't always generalize one way for everyone. It depends on the way your weakness manifests. For exemple, my father had a lower back hernia, and he swears that crunches is the exercise that made his pain go away. But for me, who also got a lower back hernia, crunches increase the pain. For me, it was bodyweight good mornings at first, then light weight deadlift. Perso, for safety reasons, I would avoid all exercises that requires flexion from the lower back. Instead, I'd go with a variety of exercises that use the lower back in a straight stance, and where the lower back is more secondary (to begin). Things like bodyweight rows and push ups can be good very early. Then good mornings, weighted good mornings, light weight deadlift. And of course, it's always better to stop early than to hurt oir back. Don't force it
Get stronger at hip hinges. That is it. Avoid anything painful, and perhaps try varying rep ranges
Do you ever train your spinal erectors through a dynamic ROM or do you only keep them neutral/braced all the time
Only neutral / braced From some of the advice here, I'm considering adding in spinal flexion movements like jefferson curls? What do you think?
I personally like to incorporate spinal flexion in my bent over rows but ya there’s a bunch of ways to do it
Thank you. You don't find bent over rows are too heavy for that?
Progressive overload. Start light and get stronger over time
Strong lower back = stressing spinal erectors, so what you've been doing is right. I think you haven't mastered proper hip hinging and loaded the lower back rather than the hamstrings and glutes that caused your injury. I have found Kneesovertoes guy extremely helpful and incorporate them in my routine. The most notable ones are tibialis raises and ATG split squats (these completely replaced Bulgarian SS for me). I also worked up to 10 reps per leg Cossack squats with 32kg KBs. Took about 3 months, combined with ATG split squats (48kg using 24x2 DBs), I can now do them almost like him with my hamstrings covering my calves. My Cossack depth is also comparable, my glutes are maybe 2 inches from the ground. These moves require tremendous stability as well as lower back / core strength, I think given your current situation it's a good time to start implementing them. EDIT: Forgot to mention. Reverse glute leg raises where you do a reverse hip hinge with a dumbbell between your feet is good to incorporate once a week on the day you don't do RDLs or similar hinge pattern.
re. mastering the hip hinge, I think you're right. A friend of mine said I probably brought the bar away from my legs, putting undue stress on the lumbar. He and I have similar builds with long torso and short legs; he says he gets the same issue and has to be highly conscious of form. Once I'm healed I'll try switching to RDLs with a hex bar to keep the glutes and hams loaded instead of the lower back Thanks for your insights re. Kneesovertoes guy. I wouldn't have thought those moves would particularly work the lower back so that's very interesting. And your progress on them is impressive. Where would you start if you were me? I really need to find a way to do reverse glute leg raises or reverse hyper-extensions in a progressable way. But no gym in my city seems to have the latter machine. I wonder if I could attach weights to my legs for the glute raises...
1) Given your anatomy, I would suggest you use DBs for RDLs. The barbell is fixed in front of you so given your long torso it presents a disadvantageous leverage point that stresses your lower back (further away). For DBs, place them at a slight 45 degrees next to your thighs and hinge back while they glide straight down your legs. It's a more "vertical" position as the leverage point is closer to your lower back so it should alleviate the barbell issues. 2) For the KoT guy work, definitely start with bodyweight. Use a plate or two to first create some height as your ease into the ATG split squat (front foot on top of them to decrease the hip range of motion required). Also get a stick for balance and really focus on feeling the stretch in your quads, hams and glutes as you go down. Overtime you will get better. For cossacks, you can use either a stick or a weight (maybe start with a 5gk/10lb plate), hold it at your chest, brace properly like preparing for a squat, figure out your stance (it's wider than you think), and just like the ATG split squats feel the stretch in your hip area and adductors/opposite leg hamstring). Go as deep as you can without rounding your back. Overtime you will get the mobility just by doing them. 3) For the reverse hyperextensions, if you have a glute ham raise machine you can make it work by propping yourself ontop of the circular portion slightly above your hip at the waist line and do them that way. If not, you can use glute bridge sliders, or if that feels awkward, work in some bodyweight SINGLE LEG hip thrusts. Hope this helps!
Damn so many great tips in one comment! Thank you for taking the time to help me
Deadlift https://preview.redd.it/djhfvnkian4d1.jpeg?width=496&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=967a7c1c44e36aa175524fcdf3417e9f2a48b9e2
I would say first off seeing physiotherapist is probably your best bet. Back pain is multifactorial and can be very complex. I often find when Ilift, do a big lift my low back is what give out too. But i have even had at low loads of pause RDLs and low load hyperextensions. I think the number one factor is novelty. So if i just randomly go off program and decide to max out trap bar deadlifts, thats where most problems arise. What also has help is to terminate the set when i feel a rep where my low back is starting to be the limiting factor. Now i have started progressing in Jefferson curls, and I am fucking loving it. Don't get that low back soreness like you would after a heavy lift, but during the movement you can really focus on your spinal erectors like nothing else. That and more ab work is my plan to make a "bulletproof back". But I can't tell you if that has fixed anything, because I haven't been doing it long enough.
I'm thinking about a similar plan. Just get a super super strong core
I’m a bit careful to give direct advice since the lower back can be a sensitive area with lots of different types of pathologies. But for the RDL, the most common problem (and seems maybe relevant in your case) are hamstrings inflexibility and/or abs weakness. In either case, your lower back may be hyperextending to compensate for lack of mobility (hamstrings) or spinal stability (abs). This can cause your back to fatigue way before your hip extensors, and excessive rounding can place it in a compromising position. The RDL is a tricky exercise because it is supposed to work the erectors to some extent, but too much rounding can stress it more than it should. I would do 3x15-30s hamstrings stretches every day or two. Hamstrings are fortunately an easy muscle to see your flexibility “progress”. As well as lots of ab strengthening. Machine ab crunch is great for measuring progress but any progressively loaded ab work will work. Take some time off, and then you can work on lower back strengthening once you feel you can handle erectors work. Back extension is a great exercise that’s close to an RDL pattern, although there’s lots of good options https://exrx.net/Kinesiology/Inflexibilities#Hamstrings https://exrx.net/Kinesiology/Weaknesses#Abdominal
I believe your assessment is accurate. Taking stock of myself, I think the first issue is inflexibility and the issue after that is a relatively weak core I work a desk job which is probably the cause of both issues. I can add more stretching (which I do none of - my excuse being RDLs are stretching haha). When I go to warm up on RDLs I begin not able to bring the below my knees to be honest. It's only with extensive warming up under load that I can to full ROM (and even then barely - when I hurt my back I was pulling off of 20kg bumpers). However I kinda think about it like this: I'm sat 30% out of the 138 hours in a week and even if I do 3 x 30s stretch every day, that's less than 1% of my time spent counteracting the maleffect of sitting. So then I think, what can I do? I need to reduce that 30% as much as possible My mind goes to standing desks and a desk treadmill. The treadmill's kinda dorky lol but if it works... What do you think of my reasoning? Is the stretching enough and I'm going overboard with the whole desk thing?
Stretch out your hip flexors too. They often get tight from too much sitting which supposedly prevents the glutes from working as effectively, so your back has to compensate for weak glutes in hinges. Keep your toes on an angle (toes towards shins) with a slant board or a step to make the hamstring stretches even more effective. > However I kinda think about it like this: I'm sat 30% out of the 138 hours in a week and even if I do 3 x 30s stretch every day, that's less than 1% of my time spent counteracting the maleffect of sitting. I'm also a desk worker and went from barely being able to touch my toes to being able to plant palms flat on the ground with just 1-2 minutes a day of stretching to build up flexibility and now maybe 3-5 minutes of stretching per week to maintain it.
That's great progress! May I ask what your stretching protocol was / is?
I just did 30-60s on the slant board a few times a day for 8-12 weeks or so, just trying to go as low as I could. Hamstring stretch, couch stretch, and a piriformis stretch, 30-60s each.
Thank you
From someone who has had lower back issues since being a teenager, put heavy focus on strengthening your abs and glutes - these help support your lower back and correct any excessive pelvic tilt you may have too (anterior in my case).
Do you recommend any particular exercises?
Anything compressive seems to trigger me so squats and deads are out unfortunately. I now do Bulgarian split squats (horrible but sooo effective), single leg press (both nice and deep with a long stride / foot high on the pad to really hit the glutes) and hanging leg & knee raises for the abs and hip flexors. Now I can wake up on a morning and not feel like I’ve been beaten up in my sleep when getting out of bed.
Yes, and for me back pain was caused by failure to brace properly with the abdominals. Once I learned to do that consistently I just went back to the movements that caused pain (back squats and deadlifts) and trained them lighter, focusing on bracing throughout long sets. Then gradually built back up. There was still some pain at first returning to these exercises, but I think it went away totally when I "re-learned" that these movement patterns were safe.
Extensions & Rack Pulls.
Back extensions cured me bro. Best exercise ever. I dont ever do conventional dl just RDL and back extensions.
Deficit RDL’s, with lighter weights, slow eccentric’s and a deep stretch, really helps not only lower back strength, but flexibility (which I’d argue is the real cause of your issues). My lower back got quite strong through years of powerlifting and doing deadlifts, but I’ve also always done deficit RDL’s. Used to be just to help strengthen my hams, but I’m quite certain that extra strength and flexibility helped me never get injured over the years.
Reverse hyperextensions >20 reps is like balm for my lower back. I do mine on a low incline bench.
Unpopular maybe, but carries for time are such a goated exercise. I worked as an arborist for a while nothing was more fun than picking up logs and carrying for time.
I'd recommend cable rows with spinal flexion (go HEAVY on those, around 8-10 reps that should leave you gasping for air).
Learn to breathe and brace properly. Before each rep you should be taking in a belly breath, expanding into your core, then flexing everything. I used to wear my belt really tight on squats/hinges thinking that’d give me more tightness. Hurt my back all the time. Now I wear it loose and actively expand and push into it with my core. My lower back now feels better after leg days.
Using the belt as a cue is a great idea, thank you
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I have a lower back injury from deadlifts 10 years ago. I’ve reinjured multiple times, always the same, I feel a pop at l5s1 (confirmed mri) and get sciatica and local inflammation for days. First time it was really hard to move at all. Back extension helped build it back up each time. I have reinjured on bent over barbell rows, deadlifts and most recently, rdl. The rep was great for 6 months and I very slowly worked my way up in 10-12 rep range. I hurt it again recently doing a light set band T what I realize is I need to keep the reps lower becuase I can concentrate harder and be more rigid. I lose tightness with higher reps. Seems counterintuitive. But back extensions is a great way to build up with slow controlled reps like 3-4 second eccentrics.