How to strengthen your lower back and glutes and avoid injuries with back extensions
Summary
Lower back extensions are a great way to strengthen your back muscles and your glutes. Here are three ways that you can do so
A strong core means a stronger lower back. But that doesn’t mean you don’t target your lower back specifically during workouts. And top among exercises for this region is the lower back extension. This doesn’t need a machine, but one of those adjustable stands which support the front of the hip as you hinge down and go back up again. Surely a great warm-up exercise, the lower back extension can be adjusted into becoming part of a larger workout as well, with progressions.
Don’t get this mixed up with reverse hyper extensions, which is mainly for the glutes. There is more detail on this in a piece I wrote for Lounge this year titled Unlock your glutes: 3 essential exercises for a stronger butt, given that glute health is essential to lower back health. The lower back extension also affects glutes in a great way, which is all the more reason to focus on both the exercises.
I’ve seen people do these in different ways, depending on their levels of expertise and strength, and always wondered what the best method was. But there is a deeper misunderstanding of this move because it might not be for everyone. So before taking the next step in the progression of the exercise, it is worth trying the most basic version to see how your back responds.
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Some of the main concerns are that it tightens an area that is usually suffering from tightness anyway, and how easy it is to overextend the back at the top of the exercise. “Moves like deadlifts, RDLs, and even good mornings are going to challenge your glutes and spinal erectors enough to facilitate growth, since they treat the hip hinge more naturally," states a Men’s Health article titled, How to Do the Back Extension.
The exercise needs a lot of discipline in form, so it isn’t for newbies or those who are still learning how to engage the glutes and core muscles. At the first attempt, make sure the hip pads are placed firmly a couple of inches below the hip line, so that the body can hinge forward in a full range of motion. Keep the legs locked in, and then engage the glutes and core before dropping, while hugging your chest, and then pulling yourself up using the glute, core and lower back strength. Making sure the other muscles are supporting the effort of the lower back means a constant engagement of them—leading to a lesser load on the spinal erectors to do all the work.
YouTube channel Squat University, which is an excellent choice to learn more about exercises which affect the lower body muscles and the back, suggests a smarter way. The reps they suggest are almost half the range of motion that most people might be doing in the gym.
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“He’s only going to lower until the point the erectors stay stable. This would mean they work isometrically to stiffen the core and stabilise the spine and the prime movers will be the hip extensors, glutes, and hamstrings. The minute you round the back, it creates a movement in the spine under load and that’s not good," says fitness specialist and founder of the channel Dr Aaron Horschig in a video titled Stop Doing Back Extensions Like This!
He adds that people should not be scared of the rounded back version, but know that it creates a load on passive tissue, which over time can lead to injury. However, rounding the upper back while doing this move seems to be activating a lot more of the glute muscle.
“Tuck your chin and round your shoulders and then press into the plate with the foot and come up just enough to squeeze your glutes at the top. It might not seem like a full range of motion but it is. When you tuck your chin and round your shoulders, it keeps you from arching your back," says strength coach Susan Niebergall, who runs a fitness channel in her name on YouTube. The progression in this would be to hug a light place to the chest and then perform them.
It is probably better to add more lower back exercises to the routine than trying more variations with the lower back extensions. Weighted good mornings are a great choice for the lower back and safer. So are Romanian deadlifts and even bent-over rows. Those are also more functional ways to hinge at the hip than doing an extension.
Pulasta Dhar is a football commentator, writer and podcaster.
