Save Your Low Back with Ultimate Sandbag Exercises

We recently moved to Las Vegas, I know, LAS VEGAS! Anyone that knows us would think of Las Vegas as one of the LAST places you would find us. We fell in love though, with the outdoor side of Nevada and this new community we literally just stumbled upon. One of my favorite things to do is to walk the dogs through the area and see the beautiful mountains. Well, that and we have actually a pretty cool community gym (yes, they even have Ultimate Sandbags!). 

Dwight loves to go on our adventures big time!

We don’t have a lot of people up here yet, but I in passing by I see some well intended people working out. Sometimes being a fly on the wall, you learn a lot. The other day Jessica and I saw an older couple working out. We could hear that the husband was fighting the classic shoulder and low back problems. Sadly, he was trying to do something good for himself, but in actuality he was doing some even greater damage to his body! Don’t worry, we gave him some advice (not sure if he took it), but helping trying to educate people is important. 

One of the exercises we both immediately made him stop was the classic cable twist. His wife, who we aren’t sure was or is a trainer (hope not), was cuing him to not rotate his hips or feet. Oh my goodness, no wonder why he kept rubbing his back between sets, heck, I was rubbing my back just watching!

That is because a lot of people believe to work the core muscles they need to rotate on their low back. That is one of the worst things you can do for it because your low back doesn’t have a lot of rotation to it! That means the spine just gets wrenched upon which is why so many people ache after doing things like Russian twists, or in this case, the WRONG types of cable rotations. 

People hurt their backs a lot of different ways in the gym. Bad squats, deadlifts, even presses and rows. Those tend to be easy to spot, but something even some of the more knowledgeable trainers I have met miss, is not teaching proper rotation. If you need to know even more, you should read Jessica’s great article on the why’s you need to rotate right HERE. 

What can be challenging is teaching how to rotate well. That is because proper rotation requires internal hip rotation (the ability to turn the hip in towards the midline of your body). That can be a struggle because many people lack the ability to perform good internal hip rotation. 

So, what are we left to do? We shared some great ideas in this video to help build internal hip rotation. 

While we work on this pattern we can begin to cement proper rotational mechanics. This takes HUGE pressure off of the low back and puts it into the right places of our hips and core. One of the best ways to accomplish this is with our DVRT Ultimate Sandbag Training Rotational Press Outs. The beauty of this drill is that it gives us great feedback upon if we are rotating well and our ability to transmit force through the ground, up our hips, into the core, and finally come out in the upper body. In other words, how good rotational work should actually be done! 

The key of this DVRT Ultimate Sandbag Training drill is to pattern one side at a time. Eventually we get a very powerful action, but at first we want to make sure you move as a cylinder not begin to reach out from the body. That means we have a strong plank to maintain throughout this series.