Weight Training Tips and Articles

Lower Back Workouts

  Any serious weight trainer needs to perform lower back workouts regularly to avoid injuries and lift more on weight training exercises for other muscles. A weak lower back will negatively affect you on many major exercises, deadlifts and squats in particular. If you don’t have a strong lower back you will also be way more likely to hurt yourself lifting, even if you aren’t using much weight.

  The best weight training exercise to strengthen the lower back muscles is the deadlift. You should always start a lower back workout with them. Good mornings are a rarely used exercise for the lower back but is a good one to do after deadlifting. Hyperextensions should be done for high reps with no or little weight and are a great finisher to a lower back workout.

  Try a workout like this to build muscle and strength in your lower back:

Deadlifts (1 or 2 sets of 12-15 reps on light day, 2 or 3 sets of 8-12 reps on medium day, 3 or 4 sets of 3-8 reps on heavy day)

Good mornings (1 or 2 sets of 15-20 reps on light day, 2 sets of 10-15 reps on medium day, 2 or 3 sets of 5-10 reps on heavy day)

Hyperextensions (1 or 2 sets of 20-30 reps during each lower back workout to finish off with).

  This workout should allow you to strengthen your lower back without overtraining as long as you get enough rest between workouts. You may want to try your deadlift one rep max every now and then on your heavy day to test your strength.

Building A Stronger Core

  If you’re into weight training it’s very important to have a strong core. The core is made up of the muscles in the midsection area of the body, including the abdominals, obliques, and lower back. Strengthening these muscles will help your body support and stabilize more weight on many major weight training exercises for other muscles, especially ones that involve many muscle groups like squats and deadlifts. Strengthening your core will also help you avoid injuries and improve your posture.

  To build a stronger core you need to perform abdominal and lower back workouts regularly. For your ab workouts do exercises such as crunches and leg raises, along with some ab training on a core ball. The abdominals recover quicker than most muscle groups so you can train them as much as every other day. For the obliques you should do some ab exercises where you twist on the way up, whether it’s on an upper ab or lower ab exercise. You can also do some side bends with a dumbbell in one hand or on a cable machine, or on an ab machine that allows you to do some more direct oblique training. Deadlifts and hyperextensions are great for building strength in the lower back. Some exercises for other muscles like dumbbell bench presses for the chest can be done on a core ball to build more core strength. Training the abdominals and lower back will also help you get a ripped midsection if you don’t have too much body fat covering them up.

  Even you’re more concerned with lifting as much weight as possible than getting ripped you’ll still need to strengthen your core so you can handle those weights. You’ll be glad you did.

Lower Back Weight Training Exercises

  One of the most important areas of the body to strengthen through weight training is the lower back. The lower back muscles help support your body while performing almost any weight training exercise, whether you’re training your upper body or lower body. Having a weak lower back will negatively affect the weights you can use on many exercises, especially the major compound ones that help build the most muscle size.

  The best weight training exercise for strengthening the lower back is without a doubt the deadlift. Deadlifts are a great exercise for the lower back, as well as the quadriceps, hamstrings, and even the upper back and trapezius to a lesser extent. When you deadlift you should try to use your leg muscles to get the weight off of the floor and the lower back to finish a rep at the top. Get your butt low to the ground and keep your lower back arched instead of bent. Use chalk instead of lifting straps to assist your grip when you deadlift because you could pull a forearm muscle if you use straps.

  Another great, though underused, exercise for the lower back is called the good morning. you put a barbell on your trapezius/upper back area like you would while squatting and bend forward with your butt stuck out so you don’t actually bend the lower back too much. Use your lower back and hamsting muscles to lift the weight back to the starting position.

  Hyperextensions will also help you gain lower back strength. Get on a hyperextension apparatus and bend down and raise the body until it’s parallel to the floor to perform a rep. If you want you can use a light weight help to your chest for added resistance.

  Be careful not to overtrain the lower back. Trying to do exercises like squats with sore lower back muscles won’t do you any good and may put you at risk of an injury.

  Once you’ve built up some strength in your lower back you may be surprised by how much more weight you can handle on certain weight training exercises.