How To Train Your Legs With Lower Back Pain – 4 Safest Leg Exercises

Pain in the lower back can render you helpless for days or weeks even, and to be honest, back pain isn’t particularly a sexy thing whether you are young or old.

Besides, it sucks to be a millennial with the back of a 78-year-old person. 

You don’t have to live with back pain all your life.

There are leg exercises that can help you get over your Lower back pain with ease. 

These leg exercises can help you with your back pain; front squats, high back squats, single-leg exercises, and lunges. 

However, if you don’t do these exercises in moderation, you can worsen your back pain.

We say this because excessive exercising during leg days could cause some serious lower back pain. So, you would want to avoid that

So, you could do all manner of leg exercises to cure your lower back pain and end up causing more harm to yourself.

However, as always, we got you.

We would cover vital issues relating to exercising to ease your lower back pain.

So, you may want to hold on with that squat till you read this article.

Before we get into the serious stuff though, grab yourself a FREE copy of my EBook Train Wherever The F*ck You Want!

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Why Does My Lower Back Pain Hurt When I Do A Leg Workout

Too much anything can be bad.

We understand you don’t want skinny legs to go with your glorious v-shaped upper body.

However, you have to be careful.

Doing too much can put a strain on your lower back.

Read on to see why your leg day turns to a lower back pain day. 

When You Flex Your Back Excessively

When you do deadlifts without guidance and are a novice, you can put too much strain on your lower back.

You don’t have a flexible hamstring yet, have poor body awareness, and lift excessively. 

Weak Glute Activity

When you have a weak glute, your lower back stretches to the spine to bring your upper body in a straight position.

This is because your glute helps with hip extension, and when your glutes are strong enough, they can help you reduce stress on your lower back. 

Incorrect Posture During Leg Training

When you lean forward excessively when executing leg training, you put an insane amount of stress on your lower back. 

So, you can see some of what you are doing wrong during your leg days.

Always seek help when you won’t do any exercise if you are new to fitness.

Friendly Lower Back Exercises

The main thing you have to be careful of is your movement and load when doing leg exercises.

So, when you are doing leg exercises, add loaded front movements.

These movements would reduce the load on your legs and reduce stress on your lower back. 

In addition, do more exercises that minimize excessive external loading on your body.

Also, consider including the use of machines in your movement. 

That said, we would now go into exercises that are friendly to your lower back.

Okay, so these exercises, while pleasant to the back, must be done correctly.

In addition, some are less stressful on the back than others.

So, special fitness buff, shall we?

High Bar Back Squat 

Get ready to strengthen your legs without stressing your back.

This squat variation would stress your back less than a low bar squat.

This is because the barbell you would use is positioned on the back of your torso.

It allows you to maintain a better vertical posture which puts less activity on your lower back. 

The Goblet Or Front Squat 

Barbells, Kettlebells, one weight are all ways you can execute this leg training exercise.

The barbell is used for the front squat; the kettlebell is good for a double kettlebell squat and the one weight for the goblet squat.

You can perform these exercises individually or as a part of a leg training program.

Here, there is less stress on your lower back as your upper body is more vertical.

This set of exercises are even less stressful on the back than the higher back squat. Amazing, isn’t it? 

Kettlebells are such an effective tool for exercise.

You can get a full-body workout in with just one kettlebell, I’ve got an article over here talking about the difference between kettlebells and dumbells.

Flybird Fitness

Unilateral Squats 

These would help you build muscles for your legs without the drawback of lower back pain.

That is if you do them correctly. 

Hip Thrusts 

You can build powerful glutes with hip thrusts.

This leg training exercise, like the ones mentioned before, reduces the strain on your back.

While it has movements similar to deadlifts, it doesn’t put too much pressure on your hamstring and lower back.

You can do this with a barbell, dumbbells, and a Smith Machine. 

Should You Train Your Legs If Your Lower Back Hurts 

Unless you enjoy pain, not just any pain, a searing gnawing pain, then you should continue.

If you are an average human being like us, you should stop.

Stop immediately.

When your lower back hurts during your leg training exercises, it signifies that something is wrong.

It means that you are doing those exercises wrongly.

When your lower back is strained, it means you wouldn’t maximize the potential for your legs.

Honestly, the best thing you can do training-wise, for lower back pain, is building strength in your core.

And I mean your deep core not just your abs.

Not a lot of people realize this, but your core is made up of 4 major muscle groups.

So when we sit there and knock out huge sets of sit-ups and crunches we’re only working the very front muscles that make up our core.

The most superficial muscles in the core.

You are better off doing sets of push-ups, pull-ups, planks, or squats.

All these movements are forcing you to keep all your core muscles engaged the whole time.

When we do crunches all we are really achieving is overworking our hip flexors.

And when they get tight it’s just pulling on our lower back just adding to the problem.

So to finish up, watch the video below.

I recently posted it on my feelings about crunches and a better solution to core strength.

I constantly tell people with a weak core to do more push-ups.

And when they ask how many I tell them, do 100 a day.

The reaction is always the same, so to show people 100 a day is not that hard when you break them up over the day.

I did 1000 in one day! So follow the link below and have a look at that.

Building a strong can be done with so many pieces of gym equipment.

But you don’t have space for everything right.

So just get what’s best for you.