8 Exercises To Avoid With A Painful Lower Back (And What To Do Instead)

Share this blog:

Only when your lower back starts hurting do you realize how much you use it on a day-to-day basis. Nevertheless, you still want to stay in shape and do as much as you can to minimize the pain. Therefore, I thought it would be a great idea to discuss some popular back exercises that could be problematic for your long-term health.

Before we dive into the list, please do recognize that not all back pain is the same. There’s a difference between having sore lower back muscles and having a hernia. If you do suffer from serious pain, I always recommend visiting a medical professional and having them create a plan for your recovery. The list below therefore purely serves as an initial guideline.

Crunches

Everybody knows what it means to do good old crunches. It’s probably the most recognized ab exercise in the world. However, if you have a painful lower back, doing crunches is likely one of the worst things you can do. This is how the Harvard Medical School describes the exercise for people with a painful lower back:

They push your curved spine against the floor and work your hip flexors, the muscles that run from the thighs to the lumbar vertebrae in the lower back. When the hip flexors are too strong or too tight, they tug on the lower spine, which can create lower back discomfort.

Source

Instead of doing crunches, try planking. This exercise is very effective at increasing your core strength but also allows your back to be in a neutral position. Therefore, it’s not likely it will cause more injury and will still strengthen your core and lower back. The only thing to keep in mind is to not push this exercise to its limit. You want to finish it with good technique which will prevent injury.

Standing Toe Touches

Standing toe touches both work your core and stretch your hamstrings. In that sense, this is a solid movement. However, if you have lower back pain, doing standing toe touches isn’t your best bet. That’s because the rounding of the lower back puts more stress on the discs and ligaments. On top of that, you risk overstretching the muscles in your lower back, which will increase pain levels.

If you want to stretch your hamstrings, try doing them seated with a straight back. Stretch one leg out with your heel on the floor and flex your foot. Depending on how your back and hamstring feel you can also try to lift your leg up a bit (keep a straight back) as this will stretch your hamstring more.

Deadlifting

Deadlifts, or any variation, are a fantastic exercise in itself. That’s because this one simple movement, which requires you to pick up a heavy load from the floor, works many muscles simultaneously. In some cases, training deadlifting can actually help reduce lower back pain because it’s such an effective exercise to strengthen the muscles in your lower back (source).

However, you need to have enough strength in your lower back to begin with. Furthermore, it also depends on what kind of lower back pain you’re experiencing. Some people with back pain may benefit, while others will only increase their pain levels when deadlifting.

Finally, deadlifts require very good technique. If you don’t have good technique, you end up curving your lower back and carrying the load with the discs and ligaments in your lower back. Because you’re carrying heavy weight, this could lead to serious injury.

What to do instead of a deadlift depends on what muscles you’re trying to train.

• If you’re trying to train your glutes, try doing hip bridges where you lay on your back on the floor, put the soles of your feet on the floor, and drive your hips into the air.
• If you want to train your lower back specifically, try to see if back extensions (with or without a machine) work for you. You can do these while lying on the floor or using a machine that allows you to bend over at the hips. For additional inspiration, also read this blog post: 8 Fantastic Back Exercises For A Strong Back.
• If you’re trying to train your legs, reverse lunges can be a good exercise because they keep your spine stable. Instead of stepping forward (like you would with a normal lunge), you step backward, which makes it easier to stabilize the spine.

Squats

Squats are another exercise that can be great or awful depending on what kind of lower back pain you’re suffering from. If you have a weak lower back, and that’s what’s causing you pain, squats performed with your body weight or with a light weight, can be a great exercise to strengthen your core, legs, and back.

However, if you suffer from disc-related pain, such as a hernia, squats may cause more pain because they produce a lot of pressure inside the abdomen (source).

If you’re unsure about squats, try to see if you can do some bodyweight squats first. If this is not the case, reverse lunges (as we just described in the deadlift chapter) could be a great exercise.

Leg Lifts

Whether leg lifts are a good exercise depends on the level of core strength you have, as well as what kind of back pain you’re suffering from. The main problem with leg lifts is very well described by WebMD in this quote:

Exercising to restore strength to your lower back can be very helpful in relieving pain, yet lifting both legs together while lying on your back is very demanding on your core.  If weak, this exercise can make back pain worse.

Source

Because this exercise also produces a lot of pressure inside the abdomen, it can make disc-related problems worse.

Leg lifts mainly work your lower abdomen. If you want to train your core, I suggest just doing planks as described at the beginning of this article since this exercise will work your entire core, as well as the lower part that’s targeted while doing leg lifts.

Superman

Superman’s aren’t an issue if you have a healthy lower back. However, they can put too much strain on your lower back when it’s already in pain. This is surprising since this exercise is performed without any weight, which makes it look quite harmless.

The issue with this exercise is that it requires you to lift both the front of your body and your legs at the same time. This can lead to overextending your lower back, which will cause more harm than good (source).

Instead of doing a Superman, where you lift both your legs and your upper back from the floor at the same time, try doing back extensions. With this exercise, you only lift your upper body from the floor, and you keep your legs and feet on it. This reduces the risk of hyperextending your lower back but still strengthens it.

Twisting Ab Exercises

If you have lower back pain, you want to get the muscles in your core and lower back stronger by using stabilizing movements. The last thing you want to do is twist and turn your spine, as this will put a load on the muscles and your spine in awkward positions, which can lead to more pain. Exercises like Russian twists are therefore not a good idea.

Instead of doing twisting ab exercises, try doing static ones. We already explained that doing planks is a great alternative to doing crunches. If you also want to train the sides of the core, try doing side planks. It’s basically a regular plank, but you open up your body to one side while leaning on one arm and one leg.

Leg Press

Leg presses can be a great exercise to build leg strength, but if you have lower back pain, it can definitely be too risky. That’s because of a couple of reasons. First, leg presses are performed with quite a heavy load. This means that poor technique can lead to injury relatively quickly.

Secondly, there’s a problem best described by Health Digest:

The tucking of the pelvis at the bottom of the squat movement flexes the lumbar spine and loads the disks and ligaments.

Source

Just as with the squats, an alternative to the leg press would be to do (reverse) lunges. Depending on your strength levels, you can add some weight or not.

What To Do If You Still Experience Pain?

As stated, going to a medical specialist is the first course of action if you have serious lower back pain. However, if you’ve already done this and you’d like to get more support for your lower back on a daily basis, a lower back brace may be helpful.

Lower back braces help your muscles stabilize your spine. Because of this, they minimize the risk of hurting yourself and can be a confidence booster during exercise or daily activities, at least in the short term. If you feel this could be useful, you can check out some lower back braces on Amazon by clicking the button below.