Name: Playbook - TrickStrong RX - Lower Back Mobility
Uploaded: 2025-04-08T19:59:01.938Z
Duration: 45 min
Description: Lower Back Mobility

James

This is a lower back mobility routine complete with a warmup, stability, control exercises, joint work and static stretching. Do this a few times per week if you are feeling limited in your movement due to lower back stiffness!

This is a great mobility drill that addresses many areas! The knee pull helps to improve hip and knee range of motion. The lunge is great for hip flexor and quad lengthening. Lastly, the rotation further mobilizes the hip and improves spinal mobility. 

Rotate towards the front leg.

Knee Pull to Lunge Rotations

This is a great drill to include in a warmup, core or mobility circuit. 

This combines the benefits of a downward dog stretch with a dynamic plank. Inch worms are excellent for total body mobility, stability and coordination.

Inch Worms

The Bird Dog exercise is typically done from a quadruped (all-fours) position. 

It is a great core exercise that incorporates anti-rotational and anti-flexion stability which is important in not only maintaining positions in tricking (such as variations, eagles), but in safely taking off, landing and other athletic movements with spinal stability and control.

This exercise can be progressed by performing it from a plank position. 

💪Challenge yourself with either version of this amazing core exercise.

🤸‍♀️These are great to do not only during your conditioning sessions, but before movement to activate the core in an effective and dynamic way.

Form Tips
✅Maintain neutral spinal alignment
✅Stack wrists directly under shoulders
✅Maintain level trunk 
✅Move symmetrically between arms and legs

Bird Dog

For the sideplank clamshell, start on your side with your knees bent. Make sure your knee, hip, shoulders and ears are in one straight line. You also want to support yourself with your bottom forearm, making sure your elbow is stacked under your shoulder. 

Raise into a sideplank, making sure you fully lift up and there is no sag in your bottom hip. The clamshell comes in when you spread your knees apart and keep your feet together. 

Drive this motion by squeezing your glutes together and maintaining that tension throughout the rep. Try not to let yourself arch in the lower back. Go to your available range of motion, which will improve over time. 

For holds, you can stay in the sideplank the whole time while performing the clamshells (the hip movement). This is a lot more challenging for the bottom leg to stabilize.

Side Plank Clamshell - Holds

Actively pull your chest through your arms with the muscles between your shoulder blades. Roll your palms towards the ceiling to increase lat lengthening.

Active Lat Stretch

Get into a quadruped position. Slowly alternate between arched back to rounded back positions, feeling movement at each vertebrae.
 
Look up as you arch, look down as you round and push through your arms.

With Cat Camel, we are training spinal mobility and hip/spine dissociation, which is important for proper articulation with movement. We want each segment of your spine to be able to move and interact with each other. Typically after injury, segments of the spine have reduced range of motion. 

The old adage – if you don’t use it, you lose it – applies here. 

Our ability to compensate and use only certain parts of our spines can trick us into thinking we are more mobile than we are. These areas that have forgotten how to move can lead to other issues if left unaddressed.

Cat Camel

Tail wags are often helpful for those who feel low back stiffness or tightness. 

To perform this drill, stay in neutral spine and alternate between tilting your pelvis to left and right, like wagging your tail.

With this movement, we are training spinal mobility and hip/spine dissociation, which is important for proper articulation with movement. We want each segment of your spine to be able to move and interact with each other. Typically after injury, segments of the spine have reduced range of motion. 

This can happen from disuse of this type of motion as well. The old adage – if you don’t use it, you lose it – applies here. Our ability to compensate and use only certain parts of our spines can trick us into thinking we are more mobile than we are. These areas that have forgotten how to move can lead to other issues if left unaddressed.

Tail Wags

CARS stands for Controlled Articular Rotations. This refers to actively creating mobility within our joints. 

The hip is a ball and socket joint. We really want to move it in a 3 dimensional way, rather than stretching only in linear planes. 

The easiest way for you visual learners is to probably follow along and feel free to replay this video to understand the motions involved here. 

Steps: 

1.	Hip Flexion – Knee towards chest

2.	Hip abduction – hip out to the side

3.	Hip Internal Rotation – Turn hip inwards (ankle faces outwards)

4.	Hip Extension – Bring hip behind you, while maintaining hip internal rotation from Step 3 until you tap your knee on the ground

5.	Hip Extension – Bring hip back up behind you

6.	Hip External Rotation/Abduction – Turn hip outwards (ankle facing inwards) while keeping it as high as you can

7.	Return to starting position

Hip CARs - Quadruped

One of my favorite mobility drills! It is so effective in helping with the common movement restrictions we have in the hips and spine. 

Don't forget to rotate your head with the rest of your torso by looking at the ceiling.

Rotate towards the front leg.

Lunge with Thoracic Rotation

The quadratus lumborum, or "QL" muscle attaches to the last rib, the lumbar spine and the pelvis. The QL hikes the hip up. When the feet are planted, it can help us produce side bending at our spine. 

However, the role of the QL is primarily to stabilize the pelvis and spine. It can get tight and cause pain or dysfunction with frequent sitting or standing (especially when leaning to one side), repetitive kicking, jumping and landing. 

Often, the QL gets tight due to reduced lumbopelvic (or "core") stability. Therefore, it’s typically a good idea to include stability work in combination with this stretch when there is chronic tightness of this muscle. Side planks are excellent for this. 

To perform this stretch, reach down for your opposite foot while keeping both legs grounded. You should feel lengthening in your lower back.

It can also be done in a seated position by performing a side bending motion.

QL Stretch - Standing

The couch stretch is a great way to open up the front of your hips, really getting into your hip flexors, quads and even abdominal muscles. It’s called the couch stretch because we put our foot up on a surface to do this one. 

I actually prefer doing this one with a wall if you can handle it. If it’s too much knee bend for you, you can simply have your leg on a platform that isn’t as high. 

You want to tighten the glutes on the side you are stretching. This adds a huge difference in relaxation from the hip flexor muscles due to neurological inhibition. 

You also want to engage your core and tilt your pelvis so you are not arching at the lower back. 

The TFL is a hip flexor muscle often really tight on us that can cause ITB tightness and glute inhibition. 

To bias it in this stretch, you’re going to raise your hand on the same side you are stretching, rotate towards that side and lean away. You should feel this around your pocket area, which is where the TFL is located.

Couch Stretch - TFL Bias

The hip 9090 stretch is called this because of the 90 degree angles your hip will make. 
The hip is a ball and socket joint. This means that in order to train our mobility in an effective way, we will want to explore and be less linear with this stretch. 
You can improve internal rotation at the back hip by rotating towards It or by leaning backwards. We want to explore our restrictions in a 3-dimensional way, so I encourage you to rotate, move around, lift your arm overhead and play around with this. You should feel a deep stretch in your groin, but it should not feel sharp. You should not feel this in your knees either. 
By improving our hip internal rotation, we can really help with low back, knee pain and ankle pain as restrictions in hip mobility can often manifest as increased stress and pain with jumping, pivoting and landing.

Hip 90/90 - Back Leg Stretch

The hip 9090 stretch is called this because of the 90 degree angles your hip will make. 

The hip is a ball and socket joint. This means that in order to train our mobility in an effective way, we will want to explore and be less linear with this stretch. 

The front hip is in external rotation. By keeping our lower back straight and leaning forward, we stretch the external rotators of the front hip and allow more opening. Try to find your restrictions and spend time with them, remembering to try slightly different angles. I like to spend at least one to two minutes on the front leg before working on the back leg.

You should not be feeling any pain in your lower back, hips or knees.

Hip 90/90 - Front Leg Stretch

Frog stretch is great for opening up the hips in a supported position. 

I like performing a contract-relax if there is no pain associated. To do this, push your knees into the ground to contract your inner groin muscles (adductors). 

After a 5 sec hold, relax and try to go further into the stretch. Maintain a normal breath.

Frog Stretch

Dead hanging is a great drill for so many reasons! It can help improve overhead mobility, lat and pec tightness, upper body and core stability, grip 
strength and can even help decompress the spine. 

To perform this correctly, stay engaged with your grip, core and scapular muscles. When we dead hang without muscular support, we not only miss out on the opportunity to improve overhead stability, we can also irritate our shoulder by hanging our entire body weight on the ligaments and joint capsule. 

Make sure that you stay engaged by squeezing your shoulder blades down and in while squeezing the bar.

It is usually more difficult to hang in a supinated (palms up) position as this position requires more pec and lat mobility. If you can handle it, it can be a great way to improve shoulder, elbow and wrist mobility as well.

Neutral and pronated grips are also useful to train as they stress our upper body and grip differently. Change up your grip angles for best results.

Lower Back Mobility

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