What Are the Bird-Dog Exercises for the Spine?

The bird-dog arm and leg extension is a safe way to build a ring of muscle around your middle of your torso. Stuart McGill, director of the spine biomechanics lab at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, has world-class athletes doing this exercise, according to Paul Scott’s article “You’re Sitting on a Time Bomb” in Men’s Health. If you’re chained to an office chair, flexing your lower back every time you sit down can put your spinal column at risk of injury. To keep your spine stable and prevent back pain, strengthen the muscles and ligaments supporting your spine with the bird-dog exercise.

  1. Type of Exercise

    • The bird dog is a low-intensity body weight exercise in which you can recruit the deep stabilizing muscles of your spine and hips. You can develop motor control as well as proprioception, or a better sense of the positioning of your lower spine and pelvis in space. When you perform the exercise, keep your spine in the neutral posture and your pelvis still. The bird dog will strengthen not only your spinal stabilizers but also your abdominal muscles, back, arms and legs. It’s particularly effective for athletes who must stabilize one area of the body while moving limbs.

    Step-by-Step Execution

    • Get on all fours, exhale and extend your right leg straight behind you. Your leg should be parallel to the floor and in line with your back. At the same time, extend your left arm so it’s pointing directly in front of you. Your arm should form a straight line with your body and right leg. Brace your abdominal muscles and hold the bird-dog position for about 10 seconds. Inhale and return your arm and leg to the starting position. Repeat with left leg and right arm. To add a challenge, shape your extended hand into a tight fist and slowly draw squares.

    Building Endurance

    • When performing the bird-dog exercise, work on endurance by increasing the number of reps. You don’t need to extend the hold of the peak position beyond 10 seconds or do reps to the point of muscle fatigue. An effective workout consists of four reps in which you hold each pose for 10 seconds followed by a lower number of reps to use up what strength you have left, according to McGill. The key is to maintain form throughout the exercise, activating the muscles in your upper and lower body but not allowing your back to move.

    Safety

    • Gauging the spinal loads, or pressure, of common core-building exercises, McGill has found that that many of them put more than 770 pounds of force, which is the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s maximum load of lifting on the job, on your spine. For example, a straight-leg sit-up places 788 pounds of force on your spine, and a one-arm pushup as much as 1,315 pounds, according to McGill. According to their spinal loads, safer options include the bird-dog exercise, curl-ups, the staggered-hand pushup and the single-leg extension. The bird-dog exercise only exerts 674 pounds of pressure on your spine. You can injure your back by exhausting back muscles in exercises that are too stressful on the spine.