Don't isolate the Erector Spinae muscles! Do THIS instead.

Your low back hurts so you do what any normal person living in today’s world does - you get your Google on.

You learn that the muscles in the lower back are called the “erector spinae” and so you take the next reasonable step. You search for exercises and stretches that target these erector spinae muscles.

But eventually, whether during your current flare-up or in prior ones, you realize that just stretching and strengthening these muscles does not help you feel better.

What gives!?

Well dear reader, in this article I’ll explain why it’s not your erector spinae that’s the problem. It’s other muscles up and down stream that are more likely causing your discomfort.

So leave your erector spinae alone, read on and focus on these other muscle groups that will make a much larger impact on how you move and feel.

Function of the Erector Spinae Muscles

If you look at the erector spinae muscles, you’ll notice that they are not a very big muscle group. Compare them to the chest, hamstrings, glutes or quads. They are miniature in comparison.

The size of a muscle is not everything (that’s what she said). More fluid and graceful movement requires adequate strength but it also includes balance, coordination, psychology and many other factors.

But when you are deciding which muscles to isolate for strength and flexibility training, the bigger ones matter more.

Flexible hamstrings will do more for your movement than a flexible anterior tibialis. Stronger lats will do more for your movement than stronger middle traps.

Does this mean that smaller muscles don’t matter? No, they just shouldn’t be isolated in strength and flexibility training unless you have a very good reason to. 

The erector spinae muscles are incredibly important in stabilizing and properly transferring force from your lower body to your upper body.

It is not weak or tight erectors that cause low back discomfort, it is a low back that cannot stabilize and properly transfer this force to other parts of the body.

An easy way to explain and visualize this is through a hip hinge, or in more simpler terms, bending down.

If you keep your low back in a neutral position as you hinge down, there is no loss of energy in this part of the body. Force can be transmitted from your lower body to your upper body efficiently.

On the other hand, if your back is excessively rounded or arched, force is lost in this lumbar area. The result is that the low back takes on more tension than it would if the spine remained neutral.

This is what happens with many different movements. The low back just does too much. Other larger and more capable muscles don’t contribute enough, and the low back has to pick up the slack.

For some people, this means rounding the low back, while for others, it means arching the low back and flaring the rib cage.

This is why I don’t recommend people stretch or strengthen the erector spinae muscles all that much.

They don’t need to be isolated because for most people, they are already doing too much.

The key is understanding how to maintain a more neutral and healthy spine position when you’re performing full-body movements. This is how you build a stronger and more resilient lower back.

Don’t stretch your Erector Spinae.

There is no shortage of erector spinae stretches out there on the internet. Usually, it is some movement that puts the spine into lumbar flexion (a rounding of the low back).

This is fine. There is nothing wrong with flexing your low back and stretching it. Many people fear rounding their low back. Somewhere they’ve heard that rounding the low back is bad and it should never be done.

The fear of rounding your low back is worse than actually rounding your low back. Sure, you probably shouldn’t deadlift a ton of weight with a rounded low back.

But the bigger problem is a lack of movement options. Most people who flex their spine when they bend do it because they can’t NOT do it.

In other words, this is the only option available to them because of weak muscles elsewhere in the body.

It’s not lumbar flexion that’s the problem, it’s the inability to do movements in any other way.

Instead of stretching the erector spinae, I recommend you first figure out what a neutral low back position feels like for you.

My favorite way to do this is through the cat/cow exercise. By going through the two extreme positions, you start to identify what a neutral spine position feels like for you. .

Once you get better at understanding this neutral position, you integrate it into full-body exercises.

Erector spinae exercises, kinda.

You don’t need to isolate the erector spinae muscle group in order to build more resilience in the low back. Instead, you need to teach your nervous system how to rely on other areas of the body to absorb tension.

This can be done with many different exercises and just about any movement you do at the gym is an opportunity to check-in on what your spine is doing.

But there are a few exercises where reliance on the erector spinae is more common than others. The first is one we already examined - the hip hinge.

A loaded version of the hip hinge is referred to as the Romanian Deadlift, or “RDL.” This is an excellent exercise to start teaching your erector spinae how to properly stabilize.

I highly recommend you record yourself to see what your low back is doing. As long as it’s in the same position as what feels like neutral in the cat/cow, then trust that you’re doing it right. This is true even if things feel a bit wonky after the exercise.

Sometimes, the only way forward is through a bit of discomfort. As long as the pain is not in the 7-10 intensity range, I would stick with it and it should feel better in future training sessions.

The second exercise I want to share is the goblet squat. The squat is one of the most difficult movements for my long-femured frame and it's a movement I spend a lot of time working on.

A compensation in my squat is rounding my low back in order to get depth. Because of the inability of my hips to flex and rotate, my erector spinae would just round as much as humanly possible to get me down.

As the mobility of my hips begins to improve, my low back needs to round less. Both the goblet squat and the RDL build more function in other areas of the body so the low back needs to do less work.

This will not only improve how you perform these exercises but it will also improve your overall movement. That’s why variations of the squat and hip hinge have been used in fitness for many years - they work.

Closing Thoughts

There is a lot of conflicting information out there telling you what to do about an achy low back. Stretch it, strengthen it and now I come around and tell you to do neither of these things.

What I discovered in my own path to movement freedom is that the only way I’ll know what works is to try it. I can read all the articles and watch all the YouTube videos but at a certain point, this is all just information overload.

The only person you need to trust is yourself. Listen to your body and see what works. If nothing changes in a few weeks or months, then change it.

Your body knows more than Google - you just need to learn how to listen to it.