Your lower back may very well be doing absolutely nothing that you tell it to do.

Learning how to control the muscles that set the curve of your lumbar spine may be the most important thing you learn this year,

because I can't think of a more important part of your body to have under control, can you?

More than any other piece of the support structure, it directly determines your lifting efficiency.

We teach a lot of people to do the basic barbell exercises in our weekend seminars.

In groups that range from 20 to 30 people, we have been

since 2006 showing thousands of people from every demographic group you can name how to squat, bench,

press, deadlift, press, and power clean.

All of these movements demand the use of an extended or arched lower back for efficiency

of force transfer and production and for safety. Now I will admit being guilty of having said on occasion

that safety is for pussies, but that is just my peculiar way of saying that safety is actually

a byproduct of efficiency, which you are expected to utilize anyway.

And this arched low back position, the extended lumbar spine,

is inherent in the effective use of the spine as the transmitter of force.

For power produced in the hips and legs

and apply it at the shoulders, upper back, and down to the hands.

And in every group we teach, there are always, without exception,

at least a couple of people that cannot either produce or maintain a lumbar spinal extension.

In other words, when I ask them to arch your lower back or do an anterior pelvic tilt

or to stick out your butt or to make your tailbone touch your middle back

or any number of other artful commands designed to stimulate the attendee to produce the desired

low back position, there will be at least a couple of people who cannot do it,

...