How to Strengthen Your Lower Back

In this video, I'm going to show you how to strengthen your lower back. Hi, I'm Glenn Dawson with ResetU Fitness, and if you thought I was going to show you how to do hyperextensions, you're wrong. Stick around, I'm going to show you how to solidify your lower back and strengthen it so you never have to worry about lower back pain again. So before I show you how to strengthen your lower back, which I will in a second, you have to understand how the lower back works. Now, the lower back muscles, your lower erectors, they're these thin little muscles here. They're not very strong, they're just there to stabilize. Think about your back like a structure, like a skyscraper. Now, if that skyscraper has a foundation that's off and it's tilted, that entire skyscraper is going to have tension on every single joist all the way up, just like you may have tension on every single joint all the way up. Now, strengthening that lower back that's just there to stabilize doesn't make any sense. The problem in most cases is the glutes and hamstrings aren't firing or the hips are out of alignment. and that foundation is off, causing you dysfunction. So before we strengthen, we have to mobilize. So we're going to start that now. All right, so the most common type of pelvis out of alignment problem that we see is an anterior pelvic tilt, which means the pelvis is tilting down and forward and the hip flexors are really tight. So what we're going to do is we're going to stretch out that hip flexor in a lunge. Make sure your back knee is padded, put your arms above your head, and and then drop the hip forward. As you do this, you don't want to create too much extension, so turn your abs on, flex them a little bit. If you don't know how to flex your abs, act like you're taking a poop. That's a secret way to turn your abs on. Now, once you've done this for like 30 seconds, rotate over the front hip and really open up that hip. And make sure again that you're not creating too much extension. If your lower back has been in pain, it's going to flare it up a little bit. So keep everything nice and tight here. As you turn. I want you to hold that stretch for 30 to 90 seconds. Then we're going to go into our stretch number 2. All right. The second most prominent hip issue is the hamstrings and glutes are super, super, super, super bound up in the hip capsule's off. So we got to do a Spider-Man stretch to do that. The first thing I want you to do is to open up the hip capsule. So what I'm going to do is from that lunge position that we had before, I'm going to place my hand inside my inner thigh. And keep my chest up so my spine stays straight. Then I'm going to push away and look away 5 times. Now, if this is really bound up, go ahead and just do this for me 10 times and don't push too hard. The goal isn't to just break your hips into alignment like you're some mean chiropractor. You want to be nice and easy with it, soft and delicate. Let it open on its own and just know after about 10, it's going to open. Now, once it's opened, take the arm that you're using. So for me, it's my right arm and place it right next to the ankle on the leg that's forward like this. Now, if you can't reach that, go ahead and just go as close as you can. But we really want to get in there deep and keep your chest up. You don't want to round your spine at the bottom. Again, 30 to 90 seconds. And all you got to do is do these stretches twice a day. You'll see a huge decrease in lower back pain and you'll actually be able to access your glutes and hamstrings, which we're going to do now. All right. So the first strengthening exercise we're going to do is we have to turn on your glutes. Those glutes hold the pelvis in alignment and your big glutes do all the work so your lower back doesn't have to. Now, if you don't have big glutes, think about how much work your lower back has to actually do. Now, this exercise should actually strengthen your glutes and actually strengthen your lower back. They work together as a team. Think about your glutes as like this really, really, really strong muscle man holding a huge heavy object and your lower back is just a stabilization muscle. So think about this really strong man handing this really strong object like a coffee table that he can easily hold to like a 4-year-old kid. The kid's going to be collapsed by it, right? The kid's not supposed to do that. The kid could stabilize it, can hold it and make sure it doesn't fall over, but he can't lift it. That's why we got to strengthen your glutes. So the first thing you're going to do, just the glute bridge. Now there's a lot of different types. The first one I want you to do is just push through your heels. Your heels will activate your glutes, and I want you to hold for 30 seconds. This will create stability through your hips, and I want you to do at least 3 reps of this. So this is the first movement. If you start to feel your lower back turn on, it's actually a bad sign. I want you to really focus on getting your hips up and driving through your heels. Once you've done 30 seconds, lower your hips and elevate them again. From this position, it's also super safe. You don't have to worry about your lower back doing too much of the work or being out of alignment because you're going from a flat ground with your back being flat. The next one, we're going to get into some dynamic movements and really show your body how to work correctly. It's going to be a little bit more difficult. So really do this glute bridge and focus on those glutes activating. In keeping your pelvis in alignment. And you guessed it, more glute work. See, the pelvis can be out in a bunch of different ways. If these glutes aren't firing here, it collapses the pelvis in and you have another low back problem. That's where your SI joint flares up. So what we're going to do to strengthen is we're going to use all of your core, your abdomen on your side, your shoulder, connect it all together with your glutes and really just guard your lower back. So from here, we're going to go to a side plank with your knees bent. So a bent knee side plank. We're going to do a reverse clamshell. So from here, you're going to lift this bottom hip up. The bottom hip is really doing all the work and then lift your opposite leg in the air. You're going to hold this stable for like 5 seconds and then lower slowly. Remember, the goal is to stabilize. So you want to do this for at least 3 reps to stabilize. You may feel yourself shaking and be like, man, this is really more difficult than Glenn makes it look. It's okay. I have super strong glutes. Great ass. You want to get there so that your lower back doesn't have to do any of the work. Obviously do both sides. And then we're going to finish with 2 more moves. All right. Second to last movement we're going to do. Since most people with back problems have tight hips, —need to lengthen and stretch out their hips and their glutes and activate—we're going to do a reverse lunge. And if you sit at a desk or you have lower back pain from anything else, you should probably do a reverse lunge or a back lunge every single leg workout for the rest of your life. Promise you. I literally program this in every single program for anyone who sits at a desk. All you have to do is step back, create a 90-degree angle with your front leg, and then push through this front heel to activate your glute in the front leg. And pull yourself up. Now, as you're doing that, you're stretching this other hip, so you get a double whammy. You get the stretch here in the hip flexor, and you get the glute to fire, solidifying your lower back. Now, I don't want you to lean forward. If you're having trouble with this, use an assist. I like to use a barbell or even a TRX or some kind of strap so that your upper body can kind of help with the movement. And then make sure the front knee is straight. You don't want that front knee to collapse in like this. That doesn't look good or feel good. Keep it straight or out. That way you know that your outer glutes are firing. Once you've mastered this, you'll probably never have back pain again. One more. All right, so last but not least, we're going to solidify the squat pattern and get the glutes to fire instead of the lower back. You don't want your lower back to kick on. So what we're going to do— this, this is a very strong abductor hip circle band. You don't want to use this one. We're not going to use this one. We're going to use a lighter one. It doesn't take much to get access to these glutes, ladies and gentlemen. So go with a lighter band and you're going to focus on your knees externally rotating. So pushing out beyond your toes, arms out in front. We're just going to do some air squats. I want you to do 3 with a very slow tempo, like a 1-5-5 tempo. Or a 5-5-5 tempo. So you're going to squat for 5 seconds, descend for 5 seconds, drilling those knees out away from center. Pause at the bottom for 5 seconds, keeping your back straight. If you're tilting over like this, this isn't an exercise for you, right? There's another problem. You need an assessment. Go see our assessment video for that. If you can do this, though, sit here 5 seconds and then slowly raise for 5 seconds. Again, you're just gonna go 5-second descent. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. 5-second hold. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. And 5 seconds up. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. And I would do that until failure. Make sure that you include that in your workouts as a good finisher to get your hips to move the way they're supposed to. Now, if you have any questions, drop in the comment section. Or if this gave you results, make sure you let me know. I want to help. And then last but not least, if you haven't subscribed, you're missing out. Do so now.