Back muscles are often neglected in exercise routines, but strengthening them can relieve lower back pain and improve posture, balance, and proprioception. Exercises like side pushups, close grip pushups, and reverse grip pushups can help, and it’s important to regularly incorporate them into your routine and track progress.
The back muscles are one of the most neglected areas in many strength training and exercise routines. Whether the reason is fear of initiating or exaggerating existing back pain or the athlete’s inability to clearly see the results of their efforts, many training plans are incomplete without incorporating specific exercises to strengthen the back muscles. This deficit can be remedied. You’ll begin the process by adopting a series of standard exercises geared toward strengthening your back muscles, such as side pushups, close grip pushups, and reverse grip pushups. Recognizing the enormous difference these exercises can make in overall core strength and back pain prevention can help motivate the athlete to continue these efforts regularly.
Strengthening the back muscles, especially those in the lower back, helps support the posterior torso and therefore the spine. This can relieve or decrease lower back pain secondary to weak musculature in the area. When back exercises are combined with a program of abdominal exercises and oblique exercises of the upper body, the entire core musculature is improved. This improves posture, balance, gait, and proprioception: the awareness of the body’s position at rest and in motion.
Most exercises designed to strengthen the back muscles will necessarily include arm movements and exercises as well. Lateral dips, or lat dips, involve using a wide grip, palms facing out, on a metal bar while seated on a weighted pulley station. Close-grip pull-ups are performed with your hands just two or three fist-widths apart, with or without weighted assistance. Reverse grip pulldowns return the athlete to the seated weighted pulley station, where the hands are reversed so that the palms face the athlete. The roman chair exercise is one of the few exercises that uses only your core, buttocks, and lower back to raise and lower your torso while in a prone position with your legs stabilized so you don’t contribute your force.
For any of these recommended exercises to be effective, they must be regularly incorporated into your exercise routine. It can be very helpful to keep an exercise journal in which to document increases in weights used or repetitions completed. Other motivational tips include before and after photos to document progress and results. Also, it’s a good idea to try a variety of exercises so that boredom and neglect are not a problem while you strengthen your back muscles.
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