My gym does not have any kind of Reverse Hyper machine a la Louie Simmons and I was guessing a lot of T-Nation readers fall into the same lot. I would love to try these, especially since I have a lower back and would love (as Louie puts it) to benefit from how it “gently stretching and depressurizing the spine and creating, in essence, an internal pumping mechanism, filling the spinal column with spinal fluid and the low back muscles with blood.” Gets ya tingly just reading it, doesn’t it? Essentially, my lower back problem is that one of my discs is just not cushioning as it’s supposed to - thankfully it is not bulging or slipped, but still, it prevents me from doing squats, deadlifts, etc.
Does anyone have any workarounds they developed to compensate for this or mimic the Reverse Hyper machine?
Get on one of these things backwards (i.e. with your hands where your feet would normally go). Put a dumbbell between your feet and hyper away. If you have access to a machine that has the foot pads positioned closer to the floor so your upper body is at an angle – with your head closer to the floor, even better, since you get more range of motion at the bottom of the movement – ideally, your feet will not touch the floor, thus maximizing the stretch at the bottom.
I’ve never used a Reverse Hyper: what is the motion like? One leg or both at a time? Are you pushing the leg to the rear or raising the leg to the rear?