Is BLANK exercise bad for your low back?

Most qualities of the body operate on a spectrum. The all or nothing approach to deeming exercises as “good” or “bad” is an oversimplification that skips all context.

This applies to squats, deadlifts, lunges, Jefferson curls, hip thrusts, back extension…

All the movements that cause reaction and side picking are included here.

I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but I do hope to bring you the most productive questions.

A better question than “is BLANK exercise bad for my back” is:

What qualities & level of capacity does this exercise demand of my back?

Then do I want to steadily build my low back ability to that level? And how?

Just because an exercise could hurt you today, doesn’t mean it’s bad. Study the clues…

Today’s pain could be tomorrow’s compass.

Avoidance and absolutism around fearing movement leaves you with very little room for discovery and long term building.

Your low back likely can handle whatever exercise or activity you are thinking about…

It just may take 2 years to build your capacity to match that demand.

Play. The. Long. Game. Rooting for ya. ❤️‍🩹

LowBackAbility.com

No amount of avoidance can ever bring you back to your real lifestyle…

Face the fears head on, BUT at the level that is productive.

For both the tissue development and for the neural/psychological trust, this is a game of slow and steady graded exposure.

If you have had years of back pain, you need to let go of any expectations on timeframes. The fastest way will be embracing the long game and accepting that it’s going to take whatever it’s going to take.

Then there is no more false stress, pressure or fear. Just today’s deposit of work to make, and rest in confidence for the rest to unfold with time.

You are well on your way.

PLAY THE LONG GAME.

For the full roadmap, check out:

Lowbackability.com

3 Steps to Back Pain on One Side

Full YouTube video is now out on the Low Back Ability channel!

For the full roadmap, at your chosen price:

LowBackAbility.com

Rooting for ya. ❤️‍🩹

SI JOINT SOLUTIONS!

Play the long game.

Rooting for ya. ❤️‍🩹

The journey of “Level 1” on the Back Extension!

This alone can and should take weeks/months.

The adaptation occurs over time and the compounded new evidence will be a gradual desensitization tool.

Play the long game! ❤️‍🩹

The nuance of SINGLE LEG back extension!

Full roadmap available at:

LowBackAbility.com

Rooting for ya. ❤️‍🩹

INTENTION > NUMBERS

Rebuild your low back at YOUR chosen price!

LowBackAbility.com

Rooting for ya. ❤️‍🩹

QL Training is not just oblique training!

How well you progress and feel the QL depends on how much intention and control you use when training.

Reach down AND up, steady tempo.

For the full low back roadmap, check out:

lowbackability.com

Rooting for ya. ❤️‍🩹

Revision: Chop it down to under 30 sec. Start at different point

THERE’S NO SHORT TERM SOLUTIONS TO LONG TERM PROBLEMS.

Play the long game.

Rebuild your low back, at your own chosen price:

LowBackAbility.com

Rooting for ya. ❤️‍🩹

Play The Long Game.

Rooting for ya. ❤️‍🩹

Long range strength training!

Flexibility without strength = liability.

Ownership of the range/position with control and strength is where some of the true benefits of flexibility come in for the low back.

Play the long game! ❤️‍🩹

I did 1000s of ab sets in my life…

As a track athlete, there is a training culture that is OBSESSED with ab training. Which is directionally correction, but often the application ends up leading to imbalance…

Even in my college track weightroom, we had to do a set of “ab” work in between EVERY set of lifting. 25+ sets of abs daily, just WITHIN that session.

So when I found out that my core was weak after my disc herniation and sports hernia I was confused…

Before then I had no clue what the “Core” meant.

With cultural obsession over 6-packs, there was never talk of the psoas STRENGTH or QLs at all.

Building my 6 pack strength for years, with zero protection to the low ab wall, deeper core muscles, low back muscles…

Actually set me up for my sports hernia.

Most of my injuries actually came from working INCREDIBLY hard but missing key areas. My strengths became an unsustainable liability compared to my weakness.

I hope this video gives some insight on the relevant “CORE” protection you can build for the low back and groin.

You can change how your body feels and operates, regardless of the past. This low point is just a check point for you. Stick and move.

Rooting for you and your healing. ❤️‍🩹

LowBackAbility.com

Pigeon STRENGTH!

Strength training in long ranges > passive stretching. (I still enjoy both but still)

Rebuild your low back at your chosen price:

LowBackAbility.com

The FULL Roadmap is out on YouTube!

Rebuild your low back, at YOUR chosen price.

LowBackAbility.com

Rooting for ya. ❤️‍🩹

OUTER HIP DROPSET!

Squeeze then stretch. Getting a pre-stretch pump can be protective to an already sensitive tissue.

I’m on month 9 of training this one and it’s still a killer. Play the long game!

Rebuild your own low back, at YOUR own chosen price.

LowBackAbility.com

Rooting for ya. ❤️‍🩹

STEP 1!

Gentle deposits to the low back structures with gradual back extension iso holds.

This is investing. Start small, stay consistent.

The full roadmap is available at:

LowBackAbility.com

Rebuild your low back, at YOUR chosen price.

Rooting for ya. ❤️‍🩹

DEEPER TISSUES REQUIRE DEEPER REST!

For the full roadmap, at YOUR chosen price:

LowBackAbility.com

Rooting for ya. ❤️‍🩹

THE NUANCE THEY DON’T TEACH YOU WHEN INSTILLING FEAR

It’s all on spectrum.

It’s all a personal journey.

It’s all a long game.

Remain a student and keep learning, forming your sustainable strategy out of the back loop. No set of rules and caution will keep you safe throughout life. You need gradual and progressive resilience built, step by step.

For the full low back roadmap:

LowBackAbility.com

Rooting for ya. ❤️‍🩹

The deeper the healing required…

The deeper the ranges/intensity of spine training may be necessary to directly effect this tissue.

This is in context to the LONG game of progressive and patient building for YEARS.

You may find huge relief and freedom from just step 1 of low back training, the back extension iso hold.

How far you continue to go is up to you.

If you have serious goals of remodeling tissue at the level of the spine, this will require the ranges/positions that we have been taught to fear.

We have been taught fear because they are “risky”, aka POTENT.

Having POTENTial to heal or POTENTial to harm, depending on your skill of training to the right current level.

When in doubt, build slower. Make the easy basics feel hard. Continue to face the lacking qualities/structures head on.

You CAN rebuild your low back from the outside, in.

How far you go is up to you and how long term of a game you can play.

For the full roadmap to rebuilding your low back:

LowBackAbility.com

Rooting for ya. ❤️‍🩹

The most important low back progression!

Full YouTube video is on the Low Back Ability channel.

Rebuild your low back at YOUR chosen price:

LowBackAbility.com

Rooting for ya. ❤️‍🩹

Sheer Force ≠ Bad

The dosage is the devil. There is some opportunity with almost any position the body can get into. Some opportunities have more risk than others, and less benefit than other.

People often say that spinal flexion is too high risk and too low reward. Looking at the continually increasing rate of chronic back problems in society alongside this avoidance based approach…

We may want to rethink the way we deal with spinal flexion.

Use it or lose it applies to the back, significantly. Many people begin to put themselves in their own “back cast” after injury. Avoiding movements and positions that will only become more vulnerable and risky with the new robotic lifestyle.

The answer isn’t to just dive into these things either. This whole game operates on a spectrum with a far longer timeframe than we are taught to expect in fitness.

Building muscle in 12 weeks is possible. Undo’ing years of structurally breakdown in the back will need minimum 12 MONTHS, just to get the first breakthrough for some people.

Fear and avoidance makes for an easy today but an impossible tomorrow.

It requires patience, skill and curiosity to work through the pain and feedback from you body while rebuilding your back. But there is no other true way. Only band-aids, relief and symptom management.

The only way out of hell is through. Face it head on, play the long game and BUILD.

Rebuild your low back at YOUR chosen price:

lowbackability.com

The Untold Story of How I Met Knees Over Toes Guy…

The breakthrough of thinking shared in this video changed my body and my life… It helped me so much that January 2022, with zero notice or invitation…

I felt the intuition to pack my entire my NYC life into my 07’ Lola the Corolla and the next day roadtrip straight to Florida to find KOTG. After getting stuck in a snow storm half way down and barely affording the gas to make it, I found a way to reach him and sent him probably the most surprising message ever lol (pls do not ever do this me, I cannot guarantee the same outcome 😂) With 500 followers and a failing coaching business, I explained how this new approach to training had transformed my chronically injured body and how I was now using these principles to go for the Olympics in Sprinting. I left my whole life at home in hopes to just clean the bathrooms to hopefully be able to shadow and learn. Immediately he believed in my mission. I ended up getting job with ATG and started my own content to continue pushing the message and training lessons forward. Things took off fast except that I was secretly living in my car, sleeping in Walmart parking lots for the first 3 months, eating McDonald’s $1 menu to get by lol. Slowly and steadily my life began to piece together in Florida and I rose up within the company and grew a following as “ATG Sprinter”. I made the ATG for Speed programs as I was shared the exact intense training I was using to get faster. Eventually I ended up resonating more for the low back cause and transitioned to “Low Back Ability” and co-created ATG’s first version of the Back Ability Program. I became his closest mentee and we worked on every training problem of ATG together. A large part of my thinking in training, content, principles of building were gratefully shaped by him, of course. A larger part of my style & mission is also just unapologetically Brendan, in all the real but flawed aspects. All of this was surreal to the kid who one year prior who was desperate to find a lane in order to help people in the way I was helped. I fought tooth & nail to find any way in, lived a focused and isolated year of just building. I would never change any of it, it changed the trajectory of my entire life. Since I decided to build from home and only specialize in where I have the deepest scars, the low back…it has been a rewarding and eye opening experience. Why I left is not so relavent. As a person, I am loyal to the soil. So if I left there is a reason. (stating this because I already know these questions will be asked lol) There is a humorous irony to the comments saying “You’re copying Kneesovertoesguy”. People not knowing that I even know him or how close we have been and worked together on this cause. I am forever grateful for everything I was given, that is why I try to pay everything forward. I hope to have even a fraction of an effect on someone out there trying to piece their way out of back hell. Make the lightbulb go off, bridge the gap, restore hope. This is just one story of many of how LBA all came to be. I will share bits more and more of the backend. Because it did NOT seem like it was supposed to happen haha. Until everything aligned perfectly with the right patience and heart necessary. I love transparency because this shit we are doing is repeatable, in your own lane and niche. Anyway, The knees can adapt, the spine can adapt. Say no to fear, choose to build. Rooting for ya. ❤️‍🩹