Lower Back Exercises

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Part of the video series: Exercise & Fitness Tips

Summary: Before attempting to do lower back exercises that help with back pain, it's important to get checked out by a physical therapist or chiropractor first. Learn how to stretch out the hip flexors to get rid of lower back pain with help from a strength and conditioning specialist in this free video on exercise and fitness tips.

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By Ashleigh Gass
eHow Presenter

Contact: www.BrilliantAthlete.com

Ashleigh Gass is a certified sports performance nutrition advisor. She has been working in the health and wellness industry for a decade, having been fortunate to work with clients...read more

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"Hi, I'm Ashleigh Gass, strength and conditioning specialist with brilliantathlete.com. Lower back exercises -- how do you do them? Well, I'm going to assume that you're interested in lower back exercises because you've got some lower back pain. If that's the case, make sure you go to your health care practitioner and get it checked out first. That would be your physical therapist, chiropractor, or athletic therapist. Once you get cleared for treatment, here's a couple stretches and exercises that I have found to help me personally as well as many of my clients. First of all, you want to learn how to stretch out your hip flexors. Those are the muscles in the front of your hips. This is one stretch that can be very useful. So I just start with one knee back, my other leg out in front, and all I do really from here is bring my belly button into my spine and drop my hips underneath. You should feel that through the front of your thigh of the back leg, for starters. When that stretch gets a little bit easier, you can very slowly move forward and increase the stretch through the front of your hips. So that's a hip flexor stretch and will probably be an important part for your lower back exercise. There's two more that I've found to be helpful in terms of strengthening your butt. First one is a butt bridge. So all I do from here is I squeeze my butt cheeks together, and I'm going to lift my hips up off the ground, get a good butt squeeze at the top. You should feel these guys working. And then I come right back down again. And back up, and right back down. The last one that you can do, I like to call this a clam. So my knees are together at about a 45 degree angle, and I lift my top knee straight up and I tighten my butt right at the back of that movement and come back down again. Again, I come up, squeeze my butt, and right back down again. Most people find that a starting...good starting repetition is between 10 and 20 per side. So for lower back exercises, you'll find that those two will help in addition to the hip flexor stretch that I showed you. If you need more help, you can contact me at brilliantathlete.com."