Tl;dr

The health of your lower back starts with stability, not strength. Prioritising posture, balance, and alignment is key for long-term spinal health and lower back pain recovery.

If your spine is deconditioned, begin with gentle exercises like bird dogs and mini hip hinges to activate your core, glutes, and lower back muscles. Then gradually progress to light weighted hip hinges, deadlifts and suitcase carries to build stability before adding strength.

 Why is stability more important than strength for the lower back?

If your spine is deconditioned, i.e. you haven’t been physically active for a while, or if your lower back has been injured, it’s important to realise that you can actually make things worse if you try to put too much force through it too quickly. Instead, your first priority should be stability, getting the muscles around your spine to start working appropriately. Only once this stability is established can you safely add strength.

Think of it this way: strength...

If you’ve been following the 12-week program, by the end you’ll be ready to take on kettlebell workouts. These are more dynamic than traditional core exercises, helping your body resist movement and develop true core stability.

But if you don’t have kettlebells yet, don’t worry. The full 12-week program is designed to prepare you for them. Once you’ve built that foundation, kettlebells add a new level of challenge that makes your core stronger and more adaptable.

Why are kettlebells good for core stability?

Kettlebell training works so well because the weight moves dynamically around your body.

Every time you swing, pass, or control the kettlebell, your core has to resist unwanted movement. That means keeping your torso stable while everything else is moving around it.

A simple exercise:
Start by standing tall, holding the kettlebell with both hands, and slowly passing it around your body.

Without guidance or training, most people will find they sway with the movement. But that’s...

If you’re over 40, flexibility is key to safer, more effective strength training.

Mobility work doesn’t just help you move better - it also prevents injuries, improves posture, and supports your back so you can get stronger without setbacks.

Why does range of motion matter in strength training?

When you lift weights, your joints need to move freely through their natural range. Without enough joint range of motion, or flexibility, your body has to “borrow” movement from somewhere else.

Unfortunately that is often your lower back.

Take the deadlift as an example – lifting a weight from the floor.

It’s primarily a hip extension: your hips bend and then extend to bring you upright. But if your hips are stiff, your body cheats, to make up for that lack of range of movement.

When that’s the case, you will either:

• Bend your knees too much, turning it into a squat, or
• Round your lower back, which increases the risk of pain or injury.

Both compensations make lifting less efficient...

When most people think about fixing their back pain, they jump straight to stretches or core exercises. But there’s one overlooked area that can make a huge difference - your hips.

That’s where an exercise called the hip aeroplane comes in. It’s perfect for improving hip mobility, stability, and balance, all of which directly affect how your lower back feels.

Why your hips matter for a healthy back

Your hips and lower back are very much connected. When your hips move well and stay strong, your lower back doesn’t have to overcompensate. But when your hips are stiff or unstable, your back ends up doing more work than it should.

And this can lead to pain.

The hip aeroplane works three key muscles that protect your back:

• Glute Max – your main powerhouse muscle in the buttocks.
• Glute Medius & Minimus – smaller muscles around the sides of your hips, that control stability and side-to-side movement.

When these muscles are strong and active, they take pressure off your spine during...

I often talk about how your spine, low back, and core muscles work together to support movement, stability, and strength.  But here we’re digging deeper to look at the interconnections. How do they actually work together? And do we need to strength-train them like we do our arms or legs?

We’ve covered what the muscles of the spine and core are. But a deeper question still hangs in the air: how do they all actually work together?

The short answer is ‘not exactly’, but let’s start by looking at the role of these different muscle groups.

Multifidus and your spinal communication system

Let’s talk first about multifidus, and the other small muscles that span the transverse and spinous processes of the spine. These aren't your power generators. Instead, they’re densely wired with neural structures, and their primary job is to offer postural feedback, not strength.

This deep layer of ‘stabilisers’ act as a communication system between your spine and your central nervous system (CNS). The...

So often I’m asked by people about how to work the sides or lateral parts of your core. It’s one of the most common things I see missing in the people I work with, and I’d go so far as to say it’s the missing link to core strength and stability.

In this article I’m talking about the most effective core exercises you can use to easily access those lateral muscles and to make your core strong at 360 degrees.  And I promise you it’s nothing complicated.

 Effective core exercise - Side plank

The classic exercise might make you groan, but the fact is it’s simple and works hard for you. If you've watched any of my other tutorials, you’ll see I don't verge too far away from the fundamentals. I try to keep it straightforward so most people can do it. Some people might think the side plank is a bit of a waste of time. It’s something they've done for years. And they perhaps feel it’s not ‘advanced’ enough for them.

That couldn’t be further from the truth.

‘Stick to the basics’ is a phrase ...

In this tutorial, I am discussing and demonstrating the use of a kettle bell to perform a favourite dynamic core exercise for strength and stability.

What do we mean by dynamic core exercise?

Traditionally, workouts involve static exercises, allowing us to work on only one, or at least a limited number of muscle groups at the same time. Dynamic core exercises use movement patterns that engage multiple muscle groups simultaneously offering a much more efficient and effective way to train core muscles for strength and stability.

How to perform this dynamic core exercise for strength and stability?

As you’ll see in the video, this exercise involves moving the kettle bell around the body. This is known as ‘around the world’.

When you’re performing this, you’re aiming for a sort of anti-rotation movement, so you're trying to keep the body nice and solid and let your arms do the work.

You’ll feel that each position of the rotation is working the different muscles in slightly differen...

The importance of maintaining and improving your bone health as you age cannot be underestimated. Here we’re looking at movements that will help to strengthen your bones, reduce fracture risk, and promote overall health.

Perfect if you know this is an area you need to focus on this year.  

Build bone density with these 3 effective exercises

1. Back squat

For this exercise I’m using a barbell. You’ll see from the video that the barbell should sit on the upper part of the back, just above the shoulder blades, not on the neck. This is important.

Take the barbell off the stack, then take a couple of steps back. That's your start position.

To perform the back squat correctly you’ll need to bend at the knees, flex at the hip and maintain a neutral posture through the spine. Don’t worry about dipping too low, just go down as far as you can, making sure to push your knees outwards as opposed to letting them collapse in.

If you’re unsure, watch my demo above.

Why is a back squat partic...

Have you been told you should be doing strengthening exercises for your weak lower back?

Before you do, read on to find out why strengthening lower back muscles in the traditional way should be avoided, and why there’s a better way when it comes to choosing exercises for low back strength.

Often when we talk about rehabilitation and muscle strength, we look at individual muscles and what we can do to put force through them to build them up. But it’s time we took a wider perspective on it.

I came across this quote from Gray Cook’s book, Movement:

“It's common to seek stabilisation programs that attempt to train stabilisers like prime movers, using concentric and eccentric movements. This assumes that strengthening the stabilisers will cause them to stabilise more effectively.  Common strengthening programs are applied to muscles with a stabilisation role which will increase the concentric strength but have little impact on the timing and recruitment which are the essence of stabilis...

Three beginner exercises for core endurance training

Core endurance is the ability to hold a position, or to use a muscle, or group of muscles, over a period of time while resisting fatigue.

There are three basic exercises that I always recommend for building core endurance. These are the plank, the side plank and a single leg bridge. Let’s just say your goal is to hold a plank for a minute, a side plank for 45 seconds and a single leg bridge for 45 seconds each side.

Of course you won’t necessarily be at that stage at the moment, that’s where we want to get you to. That’s a kind of marker in the sand, if you like.

You might think that the first step would be to hold the exercises for as long as you can, ensuring you have the correct position and technique and gradually building up to the desired durations above.

But actually, we find that’s not necessarily the best way, or the most efficient, to go about increasing core endurance.

By far the best way to build core endurance

Ins...