Most guys that don't get it right will lift the chest instead of arching the low back, or lean forward by slightly flexing the hips without changing the position of the spinal components. I'll say, "Arch this part of your back," then watch carefully to see what he moves. This tactile cue is sometimes sufficient to trigger a contraction of the lower back muscles. Here's what typically happens: After I identify the guys who have a "quiet" lower back, I'll stand beside the worst one and place my thumb and fingers on the muscle bellies of his erectors at the level of about T8, and then trace the muscles down to the sacrum. If you can't arch your back when you want to while standing up without any weight on your back, how in the hell will you be able to control it when controlling it gets hard? What is more important for lifting heavy weights is that unless you can produce a voluntary concentric contraction of the lumbar muscles to set your lumbar spine into hard extension, you won't be able to reliably control those muscles isometrically under a load. Until you can identify lumbar extension – what it feels like to have your lower back in a position where the erector muscles are in contraction – you won't be able to assume this position when you want to, or when you have to, like in a squat or at the start of a deadlift. Their kinesthetic sense for the position of their spine is undeveloped, and they may think it's arched when it's really in flexion.Īn awareness of back position is necessary for the control of that position. The reason that many lifters can't arch their low back and hold it there in a squat or deadlift is because they actually don't know what position their back is in. It's also, of course, important to know how to fix it if you are. The thing you need to know is why so many people aren't able to voluntarily assume this position and whether you might be one of them. It's been well documented why the low back needs to be in the normal lordotic – the extended, or "arched" – position to bear a load. There are always a couple that have no idea of this position, and once they're shown how to do it, will tell me that this is the first time they've ever voluntarily assumed this position. Many of these kids grow up to be relatively normal-looking adult males without ever learning to use the low back correctly. Many tall, skinny kids (maybe most of them) can't even bend over without rounding the low back into complete flexion, as if reluctant to bend the knees but quite happy to round the spine. So I just save time and only check the guys. The biggest problem with many women is an exaggeration of the arch into overextension, which is probably a worse position than flexion under load. It's a normal posture for any woman not swaddled in a burqa, a display position learned when they're young. I don't ask because I've never met a female who couldn't immediately, and with pride, produce a voluntary lumbar extension. I don't even ask to see them demonstrate this position – not because I'm leery of an inappropriate-behavior accusation (although this has happened, funny story, I'll tell you sometime). Interestingly, all the women can do it perfectly. On the contrary, this is my particular way of saying that safety is a byproduct of efficiency, which you're expected to use anyway. I'll admit to being guilty of having said, "Safety is for pussies," which some have taken as simple barbell-bravado. All of these movements demand the use of an extended – or "arched" lower back – for efficiency of force transfer and production, along with safety. We've spent the last four years showing thousands of people from every demographic how to squat, bench press, deadlift, overhead press, and power clean. We teach a lot of people to do the basic barbell exercises in our weekend seminars. I can't think of a more important piece of your body to have under control, as more than any other piece of the support structure, the lower back muscles directly determine your lifting efficiency. Your lower back may be doing absolutely nothing that you tell it to do, but learning how to control the muscles that set the curve of your lumbar spine could be the most important thing you learn this year. Many trainees don't pay much attention to their lower back, except for when they happen to injure it deadlifting or moving a sofa on the weekend and they're forced to shuffle in Monday morning like the office Quasimodo.īut according to Coach Rip, your efficiency in every major lift is determined by the development of your lower back musculature – and the degree of control you have over it.
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