Reasonable Alternatives to Squats and Deadlifts

edickson76 wrote: »

Spadesheart wrote: »

Cool, went to the doc, he checked out my back and it's just muscular he believes, but thinks I should rest it for a couple weeks. So actually, until then he said no squats, deadlifts, or anything that cause lower back pain.

So at least for a couple weeks I'm back to the original question. Does anyone have any reasonable Alternatives to squats and deadlifts that I can do for a couple weeks that won't engage that area so I can let it heal?

Quads: leg extensions
Hamstrings: leg curls
Back: chest-supported rows

Comment on your general approach to training: current research strongly suggests that taking sets to failure or even near failure is suboptimal. A better approach is leaving reps in the tank (up to about 4). This is why @Chieflrg was telling you to use a program that involves autoregulation like the Bridge programs. Taking sets to failure is far more fatiguing with not the best tradeoff in terms of hypertrophy. Also risk of injury increases because technique breaks down near and at failure. Make sense?

Cool, I am doing all 3 of those currently haha. I guess I'll just do them twice or something.

The rule in my current plan is essentially "Do all sets at the same weight to the perscribed rep range, if you can hit all 3 sets to the max of that range, you can move up in weight at the smallest increments." This is very much less to exhaustion than I used to do, as I used to do every set to exhaustion. This one would realistically only make the last one exhaustive which is better I think.

I will likely look at the bridge next, this one just had a lot of similar exercises so it was an easier transition.