How to do the reverse hyper to build glutes while protecting your lower back. Lock your arms, retract your shoulder blades, and imagine your armpits moving toward your underwear as you lift. A decline setup with modest load keeps tension on the glutes and reduces lumbar strain.
How to do a reverse hyper. First thing is her arms elongated and nice and long. When you come up from the glutes, you also want to retract through the thoracic. So I'm going to get you to do a couple of reps of that, Lauren. So as you come through, see how she's pulling up through the glutes, but she's also pulling up through the thoracic as one. So imagine your armpits are going into your underpants. So if you want to be technical about it, you're depressing your lats as you do it, as she puts her glutes up. So go again, nice and high. You can see here that this— she has to be using her glutes here. So this is kind of the inverse of, say, a hyperextension or a 45-degree extension where you're using back. In this position, come back down, she— to stabilize that position, she has to be using the glutes. Some other things about this particular piece is this has 3 variations. The one I like to use when I weight the reverse hyper, if I'm trying to enhance the glutes, is putting it at a decline axis. The other thing we want to do is is we do always want to add a little bit of load. And the reason why we want to add a little bit of load is to get the swing of that moving us forward. This will reduce the range of motion that Lauren has, but it will keep tension throughout the glutes the whole time and really reduce any, any of the lower back involvement. And when you're getting on this machine, put one, one leg on the ankle and then hop up on, and then you're going to put both legs through. So that's the safest way, the easiest way to get in. And arms locked and going through. And you're going to see here just really utilizing her glutes as she does this. So just run it through 5 more reps. 1, 2, 3, don't go too high, 4, 5. Keep those arms locked, keep those arms locked. That's it. All right, and relax. And hop out. And always be careful when you're doing— if you have developed any momentum here, making sure you're stopping the swing before you get off.
