Brace Yourself: Building a Quality Lower Back

By: MuscleSports.net

Strengthening and building your core muscle will greatly boost your performance level!

One of the powerlifting and strength world maxims is that you can't do a damn thing in strength sport if your lower back is weak! For the powerlifter who is judged on his/her weight totals, a weak lower back musculature will not only hinder your workouts but cost you contest victories. SO FIX IT!!!

Your lower back is the base of all your power and strength, without it you can't do anything! Think about it when you hurt your shoulder for a example, you find work around that don't disturb the injured area. It the same for almost any other injury that you may encounter during training. Hurt you lower back and there goes your workouts fro the next weeks or months. A strong lower back is also your key to training longevity and safety. If you injure your lower back as we said earlier your whole body is effected.

There is also an interesting paradox when strengthening the lower back, in that those exercise that tend to strengthen the lower back are also those exercise that can potentially injure your lower back: deadlifts, stiff legged deadlifts, squats, hyper extensions - you know lower back exercises! The Paradox of Training!

When putting together your back workout alway include lower back training. On Day #1 your going to be doing more lat work, adding stability and width upper back and traps we will be adding in DB Rows and some Hyper Extensions to include the lower back into your training. Day #2 where it's more geared towards thickness and rows incorporate deadlifts to begin the workout to simulate all the muscle along the spine and traps to ready the body for the heavy rowing that coming soon.

Remember to warm-up throughly before you began heavy sets to build that mass. Most powerlifter think they can handle bodybuilding esc workout but always seem to get injured handling those so called light weights.. Take your lat exercise down to 8 reps on your heaviest sets and your rows down to as low as 5 reps. On deadlifts always shoot for at least 3 reps and on some day try to see what a single feels like. Challenge yourself to a little each and every workout and you will be surprised at how strong and thick your lower back will become as you build the back of your dreams.

Sample Routine #1

One Arm Dumbbell Rows 4 sets 12-8* reps
Front Pulldowns 3 sets 12-8* reps
Hyper extensions 2-3 sets 15-10* reps
Dumbbell Shrugs 3 sets 12-8* reps

Sample Routine #2

Deadlifts 5 sets 8-3* reps
Barbell Bent Rows 3 sets 12-8* reps
V-Bar Pulldowns 3 sets 12-8* reps
Barbell Shrugs 2-3 sets 15-10* reps

Exercises marked with an asterisk(*) have weights and reps pyramided, the poundage increased and repetitions decreased with each succeeding set. All working sets should be performed with as much weight that can be handled correctly.

Tags: strength life conditioning