The three exercises covered here are progressions from the herniated disc exercises covered in this video

After your lower back starts to become less painful and you’re moving around a little better you’ll want to progress to more active, functional exercises. These three herniated disc exercises are a great place to start.

Forward lunge

The forward lunge is a great exercise to work on when you have a herniated disc for several reasons. It works the legs and trunk simultaneously without putting excessive force through the disc. The lunge opens up the hips without bothering the disc. You can tweak the lunge so it works the quads or the gluts and lumbar extensors.

The best way to work the lunge if you have a herniated disc is with increased hip flexion, reaching down towards your front foot when you lunge forward. You’ll also want to alternate between left and right lunges to distribute the load through your spine.

Start with 16-30 reps total, alternating. So you will be doing 8-15 reps with each leg. 2-3 sets total.

 Push-up

People don’t usually think of the push-up as a back exercise. If done in a specific way it’s a great exercise to stabilize the spine without too much force through the disc.

Once you get in the push-up position move your lower back around and find where it’s the most comfortable. Lock this position in by keeping your abdominals and gluts tight. Then start doing your push-ups. Do reps to substitution. This simply means doing reps until your trunk and glut muscles fatigue and your lower back starts to slip out of that comfortable position. Terminate the set right when this happens. Do 3-4 sets. Remember, we are using the push-up to work the muscles that stabilize the spine, not to work the chest and shoulders. Sure, you can grind out more reps but you’ll have to allow your back to move out of its neutral range. Don’t do this.

Single leg hip hinge

This exercise works the legs and all the lumbar stabilizers simultaneously. The key is keeping the natural lumbar lordosis maintained throughout each rep. If you need to hold onto something to help you balance do. You’ll do 5-10 reps on each leg and 2-4 sets on each leg.

Do these exercises daily. You’ll notice less back pain after doing them. Each exercise will train the muscles that help stabilize and protect your spine while training your body to move in ways that improve disc health and promote healing.

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