Or if you experience tightness while exercising, you may want to pay attention to your form.
In severe cases, degenerative joint disease may even result from losing range of motion.
Also important: Never stretch past your comfort level, and remember that paindoesn’tequal gain.
Grace Canaan
This isn’t the Presidential Fitness Test, and you have nothing to prove or win.
Everybody’s body is different and everyone has a different starting point and end limit.
7 Basic Lower Back Stretches
So what stretches are best for the lower back?
Grace Canaan
Extend arms to the side in a T at shoulder height, palms facing up.
Place a cushion on the floor beneath knees for more support and a less intense stretch.
Return knees to center and repeat on the other side.
Grace Canaan
Child’s Pose
Start on the floor on hands and knees.
Drop your head and chest down to the floor.
Hold for 30 seconds, breathing deeply into the low back before releasing.
Grace Canaan
Tight hips or painful in your back?
Widen the angle of your knees and/or place a pillow or bolster under you for support.
Hold for five seconds.
Grace Canaan
Hold for five seconds.
Lie face up on the floor with both knees bent, feet flat on the floor and hip-width apart.
Lift both knees up into tabletop (shins should be parallel to the ceiling).
Grace Canaan
Reach and wrap hands behind left thigh and slowly bring left knee toward chest.
You should feel a deep stretch in the right butt cheek.
Hold for 15 seconds.
Windshield Wipers Movement.Candra Huff
Release and switch sides, repeating three times.
Lift left foot up (bring left heel toward glutes) and grab with left hand.
Gently pull left heel up and in toward butt.
Side Lying Open Book.Candra Huff
Keep knees aligned and don’t let back arch back or round forward.
Hold for 15 seconds.
Release and switch sides.
Figure 4 Windshield Wipers
Candra Huff
Begin this movement by executing the figure four stretch.
Then, rotate your knees to one side.
Hold briefly and rotate your knees to the other side.
Side Lying Open Book
Lie on the ground on one side.
While keeping your bottom arm on the floor, reach your top arm up and back.
Accessed November 5, 2022.
