Lower Back Excercises
 

Does anyone have any simple, at home excercises for strengthening your lower back?

http://exercise.about.com/library/blbackexercises3.htm

http://www.cyclingrocks.com/photo/th...extension2.jpg

back extensions. you can also use a roman chair, but it's not necessary.

http://www.cyclingrocks.com/photo/th...70324-3962.jpg

What exactly is your problem? Are you having back pains?

I have heard that the back muscles are so strong that it is easy for them to dominate and pull that lower lumbar curve all wacky. Those strong back muscles need to be balanced by good, strong abdominals.

Don't do bicep-curls if your quads or calves are sore. If you have sore stomachs after a ride, work on the abs. If you've got sore lower-back, do back-exercises. You want them to be equally sore after a ride.

You also need to have the back in roughly the position you'd be in on the bike when doing exercises. So you need to be bent over; go from about 90-degrees bent over up to a straight back. Roman chair back-extensionss are great. Work up to holding 30-50lb weight and your lower-back should be able to deal with any loads imposed by biking.

http://j.b5z.net/i/u/2117652/i/151m.jpeghttp://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e3...RomanChair.gif
Also squats and dead-lifts are good for lower back as well: http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/catback.htm

Did someone say back??

Deadlifts
Bent-over rows
Squattage

that is all.

I've been using the cyclo-zen exercise section named "fix the back, stay in the drops", and it's done wonders for me. It has a combination of back exercises and stretches, both of which I think are essential.

alot of chores can help you out. I chop wood all winter to heat my house. In the spring, I have to till my gardens and clear blown down trees out of my forest and stack the wood for next winter. throughout the year I have stalls to clean and animals to look after. In the fall, I buck hay with some of my neighbors.

So why not try doing some work for a change?

Of course if you live in the city, you won't be strong enough to be much use to anybody, but maybe you can pick up your laundry or something?

Harsh dude! ;)

I PM'd you with a very effective one that doesn't require equipment and only takes a few minutes a day. If anyone else would like it, please PM me.

Wow! Amazing link, dude! I'm always looking for new ways to inprove my overall strength! Thanks for the link! Really great posts in this thread!

Go into the "Road Cycling" or "Road Bike Racing" section and ask their view of Bicycling Magazine... ;)

+1.

Shiny toilet paper.

What's the latin for attacking a journal rather than its content? There must be one educated person on here.

Those exercises were developed by the people who run Cyclo-CORE, and they were published where anyone can read them and do them for free. That's a service, in my book. I figure if I learn one thing a year from a magazine, then the subscription was well worth it. The environmental damage is another subject, but one which online magazines render moot. So if you disagree with the exercises which Cyco-CORE recommends, that's one thing, but ad magazinem attacks are another.

I am not now a Bicycling mag subscriber, though it was their "Over 50" issue many years ago that got me seriously training for this sport.

BTW, I can do The Plank until I get bored with it.

I know you dont want to use equipment but.... the best thing I ever did for my back was to start visiting a training studio that uses Medx lumbar machine. It's a bizarre contraption that truly isolates your lower back muscles and gives them a real solid workout. I'm told nothing else compares. You can visit the Medx web site and probably find a studio or clinic or health club near you that has one...

If you're attacking the person who says something rather than what is said, it's called an ad hominem (against the man) argument. Maybe here it should be called ad periodical.

Fine, and for most things I woud agree (such as Style Man), but what do you think about the exercise plan they give?

Road Fan

What a load of baloney. Get your back in shape by doing excercise designed to strengthen and balance your muscles. Danno is right on target.

:D
I agree that the chores are the best exercise. Not only better for developing real strength and conditioning, but also more interesting to do, and you get some practical work done. More and more fitness experts are emphasizing "functional training", but people like Denny Koll are slow to catch on to the latest developments. Also, I think the value of physical labor is lost on some people--maybe it is "beneath" them? ;)

One problem is that us city slickers don't get a lot of chances to do chores like you do, so we're stuck with the boring old exercises. One thing I do is not drive a car in the city, so I get exercise from riding my bike and walking everywhere, often with heavy loads (like my laundry or groceries) on my back. :)

Here's a book that stresses functional training and has some good core exercises:
DiNubile's main exercises for the back are (as I recall):

• Pillar stretch
• neck roll
• pretzel twist
• ab crunches
• cat
• plank
• superman

In my experience, planks are the quickest for developing overall core strength and endurance (back and ab muscles). You get in a pushup position, but with your elbows on the floor. You hold your whole body straight and rigid for as long as you can. Time yourself, and add time every time you do it. This is HARD, but it strengthens you up FAST.

And it hurts so good!

Those exercises look fine to me. I certainly wouldn't worry what a bunch of bike snobs think about a magazine that they probably have trouble reading.

The two times I have hurt my lower back came from this exercise. For some reason I did not realize it the first time, so several months later after my back stopped hurting I reinjured it agian on the same machine.

Start with the floor exercise to warm up. Get up to about 20-30 reps. On the roman-chair, start fully down and lift up to 45-degrees in sets of 10-25. Once those are easy, go all the way up to 90-degrees (relative to floor). Again, sets of 10-25. Then start hanging onto weights 5->10->30lbs should do.

It's a matter of technique then. There are plenty of people that get fitness improvements with weight workouts in the gym. From way back to ancient Greek times and the beginning of the Olympics (and earlier), people have employed weights and exercise machines to increase their fitness. Sure, there's are also a small percentage people who get injured as well. Probably due to a pre-existing condition, incomplete recovery from injury or improper technique. Going in and trying to squat 500-lbs on your 2nd session will most likely cause problems.

Similarly, if you've got a sore back, those muscles are injured. Care must be taken for as complete recovery as possible, then adequate warm-up and stretching. And the exercises themselves should be done at little effort initially to develop proper form and motion. On the roman-chair, this could be going from full hang only up to 45-degrees or so. Only after sufficient "base" training has been done do you want to increase the resistance. I suspect you may have overdone it your 1st time back. A personal-trainer comes in handy here.

I subscribed for a few years and the whole cost was paid for by one pronouncement by Style Man:

Style is Pain

He was so right. ***k me shoes? Bike shoes and no socks? Suits and ties? Bras? Starved women? You name it, that explains it.

I have to echo comments on starting with body weight for each exercise until proper form is achieved. I thought I was awesome when I started doing deadlifts and I was pulling 85lb right off the bat. So naturally I increased the weight and on my next pull, I felt like something ripped down my lower back. Needless to say, I realized I should be much more careful!