It's not the exercises themselves, it's that several are together. Nor is it the lower back specifically, simply that it's the most worked muscle in his routine - overworked. It could as easily be the pecs or calves, but those affect your day-to-day life less.
Consider the muscles used in each exercise on Day 1: squats involve the lower back and glutes, as do lunges. He then adds in good mornings, glue ham raises (aka leg curls), and back extensions.
okay, lunges do not use lower back. in the squat the lower back is used in a isometric hold. where is the place most people lose the squat? its when they lose the weight forward. therefore including goodmornings in their program will help stop this. also glute ham raise are not leg curls and are excellent for posterior chain development. back extension may be the only exercise that targets the "lower back".
also in your routine you do squats which as you say "uses" lower back, deadlifts which uses lower back, bent over barbell rows which uses lowerback, and military press which uses lower back. amazing. i cant believe you can still walk.
He then has you train the lower back on Day 3, with deadlifts, RDLs, and reverse hypers. Then Day 1 rolls around again, with all this sht again. What? I should have recovered by now? If I've recovered, why do I need to do a split workout? The whole point of splits is to let one set of muscles recover while I'm working out the other set.
This is overtraining, and overtraining postural muscles leads to all sorts of unpleasant results.
yes you should have recovered, it has been 4 days since you did day 1 and should be recovered. in your routine you do the same thing every second day, so that 1 day rest. and after all those postural muscle workouts, you must be a recovery machine.
On Day 2 he throws in "throat-crushers", towards the end of the workout. Hey, last time I did squats and stuff, today I've benched and rowed and pressed, I'm pretty tired, what should I do? I know, while I'm tired I'll hold a heavy weight above my throat. Perhaps he's worried you're tired so he's offering you the chance of Final Rest.
its sooo much worse then the weight being over you head in a normal skull crusher. and who said it had to be heavy? try it with a 10kg db see how you go. also if you dont like an exercise dont do it. its just an idea, do skull crushes if you think that there safer, but try the throat crusher you may like it.
If you survive that, he has you doing biceps exercises to failure, which will leave them tired out still by the next workout. Then in your next workout you do deadlifts and RDLs. Yep, just what we need when trying to lift heavy sht off the ground, tired-out biceps. (Yes, we're not bicep curling the deadlift weight; but the biceps do isometrically contract to help you hold up the weight.)
what you just said then was ridiculous.
your overreacting to the effect of going to failure. your bi's will be fine. you've never worked out sore from the previous workout?
also you dont train to failure? what happened when you miss reps trying to get your 3x5. didn't you just fail?
I think this bloke is one of those guys who's so used to training fit and strong athletes who are young and quite resilient against all sorts of training silliness, he's forgotten what genuine beginners - or "just beyond beginners" are like. Notice that his article makes no reference to results he's got with athletes doing this.
yeh he is used to training athletes and strong people. am i mistaken or is this the strength section of the forum. this is not for the casual person, it is for someone who is striving for high levels of strength. this article is not for genuine beginners. Markos said you are a beginner until you can BP 100. Squat 160 and deadlift 170. im pretty sure that this program would work well for them.
if you dont like the program dont do it. also i posted the program to give poeple ideas of how to set up a program. take from it what you like and leave what you dont. some people get way too caught up in following their program to a tee and not deriving from it. change is good.