Keeping YOUR Back Healthy By Keeping Your Rotation
The low back is a transitional region that allows us to generate force from the left side of our body to the right. It happens in swinging, throwing, walking, running, kicking, jumping and any other action that moves force from one side of our body to the other.
That being said, keeping YOUR back healthy will require bringing rotational strength training into your workouts. Unfortunately, very few individuals do this—all they do is lift weights or do these…
Why is it that people do crunches instead of saving time and avoiding injury by bringing in rotational strength training??
- It’s difficult to do with free weights because it is always impacted by gravity which causes any rotation of a weight to migrate down. This causes flexion of the spine which can lead to injury.
- 90% of what is shown in fitness magazines is straight plane ab training and the magazine is always right.
- People do not work on keeping the necessary mobility through the hips and mid-back (especially rotation) so when that’s lost, they have a tendency to no longer want to move that way because it’s too hard working against all that inflexibility.
- There is a fear factor because the medical profession tells people to avoid rotation even though you have to do it each and every day of your life.
- It requires learning how to move your body as a unit and, for most people, they are not willing to work on that because it requires continual practice. It’s much easier to isolate to one movement in one plane.
How do you bring rotational strength training into your workouts and start keeping your back healthy??
Resistance bands are independent of gravity so they allow us to train using horizontal vectors. This is the best way to perform rotational movements without the risk of having to flex the low back which often happens when people try to rotate with a gravity dependent dead weight.
The best way to progress at bringing in rotational strength training using resistance bands is to start doing single arm movements.
- 1 Arm Chest Press
- 1 Arm Standing Row
Once single arm movements are mastered in the sagittal plane, change your foot position to be more perpendicular to the band attachment point and continue doing the same single arm movements. This will require you to reach across your body which will bring in rotation while keeping YOUR back healthy.
Let’s Start Keeping YOUR Back Healthy
I bet you can come up with ideas on how to bring rotation into your workouts using resistance bands. Share your ideas with me below and I will make sure I respond ASAP.
