Lack of hip flexibility can make your lower back round on Squats. This stresses your back & can cause injuries like hernia. You can avoid this by working on hip flexibility doing the Squat Stretch & Leg Swings.

But hyper-extending your lower back is as bad as rounding. Reader Kabir hurt his lower back doing Deadlifts last year. He also reported back pain on Squats. Here’s a video of Kabir’s Squat technique before I gave him tips in the Forum.





Why Your Lower Back Hurts. If you’re flexible, you’ll tend to avoid rounding your back by hyper-extending it. You see this best in rep 4. Kabir’s lower back stays arched. His wrists are also not inline with his forearms.

Hyper-extending your back puts posterior pressure on your lumbar vertebrae. This is a common error on Deadlifts: pulling back instead of bringing your hips forward. But it can also happen on Squats.

How to Avoid Lower Back Pain. Stand up & hyper-extend your back. Do it. Now squeeze your glutes. Your lower back straightens. Many of you will have problems involving your glutes on the Squat. Some tips:

• Push Your Knees Out. This helps using your glutes. Push your knees to the side, rotate your hips out.
• Glute Activation. If you sit a lot, you’ll have dormant glutes. Do glute activation exercises. 3 sets of 10 reps before doing Squats.
• Posture. Also a cause for dormant glutes. Check your posture: do you have symptoms of lordosis? If you sit a lot, chances are you do.
• Lower The Weight. Relearn how to Squat correctly. Lower the weight, and focus on bringing your hips up, while squeezing your glutes.

The Proper Way. Here’s a video of Kabir’s Squat technique weeks later. Form is still a bit shaky, but he uses his glutes now. Kabir wrote:

After Squats, my lower back was feeling majorly worked, no pain, just major muscle pump and my core was pretty spent.