Your Lower Back doesn't need traditional strengthening exercises

Have you been told you should be doing strengthening exercises for your weak lower back?

Before you do, read on to find out why strengthening lower back muscles in the traditional way should be avoided, and why there’s a better way when it comes to choosing exercises for low back strength.

Often when we talk about rehabilitation and muscle strength, we look at individual muscles and what we can do to put force through them to build them up. But it’s time we took a wider perspective on it.

I came across this quote from Gray Cook’s book, Movement:

“It's common to seek stabilisation programs that attempt to train stabilisers like prime movers, using concentric and eccentric movements. This assumes that strengthening the stabilisers will cause them to stabilise more effectively.  Common strengthening programs are applied to muscles with a stabilisation role which will increase the concentric strength but have little impact on the timing and recruitment which are the essence of stabilisation.”

Put simply we’re making the wrong assumptions when it comes to strengthening some of the muscles in our body. We need to stop thinking about the muscles themselves and instead look at the roles they play – whether that’s primarily movement or primarily stabilisation. 

Strengthening the lower back from the perspective of stabilisation

When we determine that in order to strengthen a weak lower back we need to strengthen the muscles, we’re essentially treating them, and training them, like the prime movers in the quote above.

We’re trying to strengthen them using a concentric (muscle lengthening) or an eccentric (muscle contracting) movement.

Whereas, if we look at the anatomy of the spine, and the role of the muscles around the spine, we see that they are much more involved in stabilisation.  

Think about it this way. Higher up the back we have the thoracic spine with the rib cage that does a great deal of stabilisation. But lower? The lumbar spine doesn’t have that. It has five lumbar vertebrae that stack on top of one another. And what’s stabilising them?  The muscles of the lower back.

And as stabilisation is about timing and recruitment, not about eccentric and concentric movement, we need to focus on a different kind of exercise - isometric – which means more of a static contraction of the muscles, maintaining length while generating force.

So we need to train stabilisers for stability, and we need to train prime movers with movement, which is the traditional style of training.

Thinking about strengthening the lower back muscles from this perspective, we start to look at balance type exercises. These might be static or dynamic, but they won’t require a lot of movement at the spine.

In the video above I talk about this from the perspective of lots of the other larger muscles, both primary movers and stabilisers.

How do we bring stability to the spine?

Let’s talk about the Golgi tendon organs.  If you’re not familiar with these, they detect force going through a muscle or tendon. And if they detect too much, they’ll dampen it down. This is an unconscious protective mechanism. Sort of like the fuses you have in appliances at home. If there’s too much electricity flowing into the appliance it gets shut down; or the fuse blows.

So when we talk about a weak lower back, there is a good chance it is not actually because a particular muscle is weak. It could be because we’re trying to put too much force through the muscles and the Golgi tendon organs are dampening the signals. Which means it’s not weak, it’s just perceived to be weak.

In turn, that means logically it doesn’t actually need strengthening.

So, if we can change the Golgi’s perception that there's too much force going through it, it won’t switch off. And if it doesn’t switch off, the force will continue to go through the muscle and allow it to naturally strengthen.

That's why strengthening exercises in some respects are futile because they're working against what the body is trying to do. Because when you add load to the lower back and start doing back extensions there will be some adaptation. But the body is always going to be fighting against it because it perceives instability or a problem in the area.

Simple exercises to stabilise the lower spine

It’s important to note here that we’re not talking about managing pain in the lower back, this is different. This is about instability through the spine and there won’t necessarily be pain involved with that.  

So increasing stability is about training timing and recruitment. It’s balanced, or partly balanced, training.

Think simple exercises like balancing in the half-kneeling position, with one knee on the floor and the other foot out to the front. If you have steady posture in a static position, it shows that the muscles on either side of the joint are communicating with one another to hold the joint in place. If you wobble a little while holding this it shows the muscles aren't timing and recruiting properly.

Once stable in the static position, we add in movement. We’re aiming for good balance, good control and smooth movement.

When it comes to rehabilitation we bring in other exercises that train the ability to brace. That means exercises like planks, side, planks, bridges etc. We train the muscles to turn on and off when we go into a balance position, focusing on being steady and allowing the muscles to respond and maintain that steady posture.

I go into loads of detail about this towards the end of the video tutorial. Discussing several simple exercises, including the ones I would usually use as part of a consultation and assessment.

In summary though, when we are strengthening muscles we only really need to strengthen prime movers, not necessarily stabilisers. Because as long as we bring stability to stabilising muscles, their strength comes back naturally and they start working together, making a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

If you’d like to know more about this subject or my consultations and assessments, you can find information about my How to Overcome Low Back Pain Online Coaching or arrange to work with me face to face if you’re around the Bristol area.