Posture and corrective · Arched lower back
Your lower back arches under load. Do not let anyone tell you to arch harder.
There are two opposite faults at the lower back and they take opposite cues. Getting the wrong one is the most common bad advice in a gym.
What it looks like
How you know it is this one.
- Your lower back drops into an exaggerated curve as the load goes on — most visible the moment your arms go overhead, and often at the top of a press or the bottom of a squat.
- Ribs flare forward. From the side there is a gap where there should be a line.
- It is often paired with a hip that sits tipped forward, which is why it shows in a squat and a press rather than only in one of them.
Where it comes from
Three places to look, and the fault is usually not where you feel it.
What is usually tight
The hip flexors at the front of the hip and the muscles running down the lower back, which together tip the pelvis forward and hold it there.
What is usually weak
The deep trunk muscles and the glutes, which are supposed to stop that tip. If they are not holding, the spine takes the load instead.
Why it shows overhead
If the shoulders cannot get the arms fully overhead, the body borrows the range from the lower back. The arch is the compensation, not the cause.
Be careful here
The part most advice gets wrong.
The mistake this page exists to stop: there are two faults at the lower back — arching too much, and rounding. They look different and they need opposite cues. “Arch your back” is a correct cue for somebody whose back is rounding and an actively harmful one for somebody already arched. If the advice you have been given does not start by establishing which one you do, it was not advice about you.
And a hinge is exempt: in a Romanian deadlift your trunk is meant to come forward with a flat back. That is the movement, not a fault, and anything judging it as one is judging the wrong thing.
What VeraForma does about it
Find it, then fix it, then check it is still fixed.
It finds it. The free movement screen films you doing a handful of movements on your own phone and names what it sees, with the line drawn on your body so you can look at it yourself rather than take our word for it.
It writes the work. What the screen found shapes your corrective programme — what to release, what to wake up, in the order a trainer would do it — and that work goes inside your sessions rather than being a separate chore you skip.
It keeps watching. The camera is on your normal working sets, not just the test. If it keeps seeing this in your everyday training the corrective work changes to match; when it stops seeing it, that work steps back on its own; and if it comes back, so does the work.
And a person settles it. If you think the camera called a rep wrong, say so and a NASM Master Trainer looks at that exact photo. His verdict stands, not the software’s.
Where it shows up
The movements this one turns up in most.
Keep reading
Related pages
VeraForma is coaching, not medicine. This page describes what a movement screen looks for and what training tends to do about it. It does not diagnose anything, and if something hurts, see a doctor or a physiotherapist first.
