So you have low back pain and working out your lower body has become virtually impossible to do without pain. You’re sad because leg day used to be your favourite day of the week, and now you dread it because of the pain it inflicts on you – yet you don’t want to give up squats because they’re you’re favourite for building your legs.
Back pain is just that, a pain. You feel as though everything has to be put on hold until it goes away, including your strength gains. Thankfully though, through smart training, the low back pain that you’re experiencing while exercising can be reduced. I’m here to give you the dos and don’ts of training with low back pain.
Let’s get what you SHOULDN’T be doing out of the way, first:
Exercises to Avoid
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- Squat
- Deadlift (regular and stiff)
- Leg Press
- Clean and Jerk
- Good mornings
I know what you’re thinking now… how are you supposed to gain strength and size in your legs without these staple exercises? Is there any leg exercise that is considered safe?
Yes, actually, there are tons! They’re known as unilateral exercises.
Unilateral Exercises
Unilateral exercises decrease spinal load significantly.
If you have low back pain, chances are there is something misaligned in your spine or pelvis. When there is asymmetry in the spine and pelvis, this causes the body to compensate by changing it’s mechanics completely – as a result, there is excessive tension placed on the bones and soft tissue (Kyoungkyu, J & Soonyoung, K, 2016). This issue is exacerbated when doing a bilateral movement, as the pelvis is essentially “locked” in this bio-mechanically un-sound position.
So, first and foremost, you should look into getting taken care of by a chiropractor, they can best determine the degree of damage and asymmetry in your spinal column and pelvis, as well as work towards correcting it properly. I will be doing a blog post on why Chiropractic is essential to living a healthy life within the next month or so.
Until then however, I’m sure you’re going to be itching to get your leg workouts in still. I get that – but don’t be a dingus and continue to do the bilateral exercises that aggravate your back like the ones that I mentioned above. “Ya but what else am I supposed to do that will give me the same gainz as a bilateral squat?”. If this is something that troubles you, have no fear; it has been found by DeForest et. al. (2014) that the difference in muscular activity between the “regular” bilateral squat, and a unilateral squat variation is actually pretty negligible – as in, you’re going to get the same results regardless of which variation of squat you do, so you may as well do the one that causes you the least pain.
Not only do unilateral exercises take the load of your spine, causing you less distress, they also really work the stabilizer muscles in the lower body – especially throughout the hips. With these stabilizer muscles becoming stronger, it will decrease the chances of you getting re-injured, and likely increase your overall performance if and when you choose/are able to squat regularly again without pain!
Examples of Unilateral Leg Exercises
Unilateral exercises for your legs basically include any exercise where the weight isn’t equally distributed between both legs.
- B-stance squats
- Single leg RDLs
- Lunges
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- curtsey
- walking
- pulse
- reverse
- side
- Bulgarian split squats
- B-stance or 1 legged hip thrust
- Step-ups
And that’s just to name a few! There are SO MANY variations of unilateral leg exercises to choose from, so don’t fret. Reaching your lower body fitness goals IS possible, it just requires a little bit more planning when putting a workout together if you’re used to the traditional leg exercises.
Also… if your low back is actually bothering you consistently pls go see a chiropractor… your advils and icy-hot are only going to do so much for you… they’re just a band-aid for the actual problem… thnx
For more leg-building blog posts: How To Grow & Define Your Glutes, Everything You Need To Know About Squats, Top 5 Exercises For Bigger Glutes.
Until next time
xx