How We Train The Spine

July 24, 2025

So what I take into consideration when training the spine is, number one, there's basically six different ways that the spine can move. It can flex. It can extend. It can laterally flex right. It can laterally flex left. It can also rotate right and also rotate left. 

Now, obviously, there's different variations of that. Like, you can laterally rotate and/or you can laterally flex and rotate to the same side. So there's different combinations, but those are the six basic movements that the spine makes. So when thinking about training the spine or training your back, we want to be able to hit all of those to some degree at a level of stimulus that's high enough for it to matter, right? And there's different ways that we can do that.

We can do that very slowly, like with very slow moves. We can do it with high rep moves. We can do it with impact, with something like impulse. We're rotating, we're lateral flexing, we're extending, etc. But the point is, when we're training something like the spine, we want to look at everything that it can do. And instead of just training rotation, or just training lateral flexion, or just training extension, or just training flexion, we actually wanted to train all of that because they all play into and onto each other. 

So, if you want to fully function, I start to look at everything that I can do and start training all those different things that I can do and many different types of exercise inputs, like again, the high reps, the impulses, the loads, etc.