Train Like an Athlete by ATHLEAN-X (Video Podcast)

Pro athlete physical therapist and strength coach Jeff Cavaliere shows you workouts, exercises and nutrition plans to get you looking and moving like a professional athlete.

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How to Get a Stronger Lower Back (WITHOUT WEIGHTS!) 

04-14-2017

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If you want to know how to get a stronger lower back you have to first figure out a way to make sure the low back doesn’t have to work alone. In this video, I show you how the lower back gets a major assist from the glutes in helping you to get strong and remain strong in your pursuit of building bigger muscles, safely.

The lumbar spine or lower back is an area not known for much motion. In fact, it is supposed to be a stable area that is less susceptible to injury and able to hold up to the rigors of heavier lifting and training. If your lower back is asked to do too much work, it can easily break down and leave you on the sideline unable to get to the gym and train. In order to work to its best, the low back has to get assistance from the glutes to help with extension of the posterior chain from the bottom up as well.

In this video, I show you 4 exercises that you can do that will tie in both the lower back and the glutes to get you stronger than ever. The best part about these lower back exercises is that they require you have no equipment at all. This allows you to do these anywhere at any time. The key is to activate the muscles of the low back and glutes together, which we do on all four exercises, and then hold them for a longer duration.

The muscles of the low back are asked to fire for long periods of time throughout the day. Often, they have become dormant and underactive because of prolonged sitting. In order to keep them strong, it is important to regularly train these muscles and help to improve the endurance of them. The four exercises shown here, will do just that and they will help you to do it without requiring any expensive or elaborate back extension machines or equipment.

The first two low back exercises are performed on your back. Position your feet on the outside edges with your knees bent and then bridge up as high as you can. You want to be sure that you are contracting both your lower back and your glutes at the same time. The positioning of the feet allow you to activate the glute medius, a hip external rotator and muscle that feeds into the pelvis as well. Hold at the top for 5 seconds and repeat for 10 reps.

Move onto the single leg lat bridges. Here you want to engage the muscles of the back that feed down into the lower back and pelvis from the top. Drive your elbows into the ground and squeeze up into the bridge. From here, extend one leg out straight for 5 seconds and then the other for 5 seconds. Repeat for 10 reps.

Perform the final two exercises of this lower back workout to get a strong low back by rolling onto your stomach. Both of these will challenge your ability to maintain both a glute and lower back contraction while moving your arms. See if you can make it through the 10 reps on each of these as well.

If you want to look like an athlete you have to train like an athlete. This is something that I say all the time. One of the things that this means is that you overlook nothing in your training because you or someone you train with has led you to believe that it isn’t important. There are no un-important muscle groups. Train them all, in a systematic way and you will look and feel better than you ever have in your life. For a complete training program that does this, head to http://athleanx.com and get the ATHLEAN-X Training System.

For more videos on how to get a strong lower back and the best low back exercises after hurting your lower back, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube at http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24

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Filetype: MP4 - Size: 50.77MB - Duration: 5:46 m