The roman chair
The roman chair is a great piece of gym equipment for strengthening and toning all of the torso muscles, specifically the lower back and abdominal muscles. The hyperextension allowed by the roman chair allows for a fuller range of motion, and a better muscle targeted exercise. These chairs are very popular throughout professional gyms, and are also recommended by doctors as an essential piece of equipment for anyone with back pain. Strengthening the back muscles using exercises on a roman chair can help alleviate and manage chronic back pain.
The roman chair is adjustable to fit a range of different body sizes, and the rate of declination can also be adjusted, to allow for increasingly challenging exercises as the angle gets steeper.
What are the muscles worked through exercises on a roman chair?
The lower back muscles, the abdominal muscles, the glutes and the hamstrings are all very well targeted by using different exercises on the roman chair. The roman chair is best known for use for the back hyperextension, and this exercise uses all of these muscles, and is a great lower back muscle building exercise. Doctors will recommend this exercise for anyone with back pain. The back hyperextension has you lying stomach down on the declined bench, with your upper legs and the back of your knees holding you securely in place behind the leg restraints. The exercise has you use your trunk muscles to lift your torso up of the bench as high as you can in the air, and smoothly lower it down again. This is a great whole torso workout, but is especially targeted for the lower back.
What are the dimensions and appearance of the roman chair?
The roman chair consists of a declined adjustable bench, and a leg restraint behind the higher end of the bench. The dimensions of the roman chair are 50 cm x 80 cm x 40 cm. This is a relatively small piece of equipment, and although constructed out of heavy gauge steel for strength and durability, is usually one of the more affordable pieces of gym equipment.
Correct technique for roman chair exercises
The most common exercise performed on the roman chair is the back hyper extension. In this exercise, the back of your legs near the hamstrings are under the leg restraints, and your torso is lying face down on the declined bench. Using your legs to hold you in position, you use your trunk muscles to raise your torso up off of the bench, as high in the air as you can go. Pause for a moment at the top, and return to the bench, Repeat the series for as many repetitions as you can. This is a great exercise for strengthening the lower back muscles, and is commonly prescribed as a solution to chronic lower back pain. Always exhale as you go up, and inhale as you go down. This correct breathing also helps to accentuate the development of the abdominals as you perform the exercise.
The declined bench of the roman chair can also be used for sit ups and abdominal crunches. For these exercises, lay with your back onto the bench, and secure the tops of your ankles under the foot restraints. For a sit up, use your abdominal muscles to pull you from the declined supine position to a full “sitting up” position. Exhale as you rise to the sitting position. Exhale as you smoothly return to the declined laying position and repeat for as many repetitions as possible.
The declined crunch is a variation on the sit up. The body and legs are positioned in the same way, but the abs are used to pull the body only into a half way up sit up. This is considered a more effective exercise than the sit up, as the abdominals are worked more intensively. Exhale as you rise to a little bit less than a half sit up, and hold the position at the top for a count of two. Inhale as you return to the bench, and repeat for as many repetitions as you can.
Incorrect form can lead to injury
The roman chair is a great tool for preventing injury with strong torso muscles, and can help alleviate chronic back pain in many people. You should ensure that you perform the exercises on a roman chair correctly, to ensure that you do not cause yourself injury.
The biggest potential for injury while using a roman chair is from the sit up. Many health experts in fact do not recommend that this exercise be performed at all; as it is an inefficient abdominal targeter, and the crunch or leg lift abs exercises are much more targeted and efficient.
If you do sit ups, make certain that you do not put your hands behind your neck as you perform the exercise. Sit ups are only safe to do if your back stays straight throughout the movement. Commonly though, as the muscles become tired, the back arches, and this puts strain on the back. The hands behind the head or neck position exacerbates the likelihood of back arching, and should never be used. The abdominal crunch is a much more targeted and effective exercise for abdominal strength development.
Variable roman chair techniques
The exercises performed on the roman chair can be varied to great effect. One common variant on the back hyperextension exercise incorporates a twisting motion into the end of the movement. By twisting as you reach the top of the range of motion, you increase the muscle strain the obliques and muscles at the side of the back.
More advanced users can also increase the difficulty of the exercise by adding weight to the back hyperextension. Grasp a weight plate with your arms at your chest, and perform the exercise as per normal. This makes the back hyperextensions much more challenging.
Why should you consider a roman chair?
A roman chair is one of the most effective gym equipment tools for targeting effective muscle strain on the lower back, glutes, hamstrings and abdominal muscle’s. The lower back muscles are too often overlooked in a workout regimen, and this can lead to ill proportion and eventually muscle strain or pain. There are a huge number of people who suffer through chronic back pain, and doctor’s report that a lot of this pain could be alleviated through exercises that strengthen the core torso and back muscles. A roman chair is the best possible piece of equipment for this, and back specialist doctors will often advise patients to use a roman chair and back hyper extensions exercises regularly.
This equipment is great value, and does not require a lot of space to set up. The roman chair is a great piece of equipment to develop the very important musculature of the torso and back.