Exercises for lower back pain are a useful part of your recovery whether your back has been locked up for a while due to injury, perpetual sitting, subluxation from an unknown source, or too much toxicity in your diet…
There will be muscles that have shortened and reshaped themselves according to the message you have been sending them by how you use or do not use them…
Consequently, the nerve net, depending on what that message is, will have altered in its firing capability…
The upshot of it is that muscles do what we tell them to do and shape themselves accordingly…
If you give them the message that you want some of them to shorten and be quiet while others get elongated on a continual basis by, for example, sitting all day; they will no doubt cooperate…
The problem occurs when you get up to move…
Or, when you exercise later with diminished pelvic and core stability…
What you get is back pain, and that is when most people decide they should do some exercises for lower back pain; because pain shows up in the lower back nine times out of ten – the higher you go in the spine the more natural stability there is due to a lesser natural range of motion…
Why Stretching Exercises Will
Keep You In A Pain Cycle…
If you look up exercises for lower back pain on the net, you will find images of stretching exercises for lower back pain that will ultimately put you in more pain and could injure your tissues further…
Stretching does not really make sense for someone experiencing back pains, because pain indicates there is damage – so stretching is only going to make this condition worse…
The anti-dote to this is to stabilise your core and pelvis, and increase mobility in your hips first before you do any stretching exercises…
Back pain exercises should gently engage muscles that have shortened and have atrophied due to a lack of use and are now causing pain should not be stretched…
In short, stretching will just become part of your pain cycle…
In the morning when you hurt the most, you will get up to do your exercises for lower back pain which will involve stretching muscle tissue that has already been in a state of elongation…
The stretch receptors will give you a faux type of pain relief (due to stretch receptor firing mimicking pain relief) until later in the day when it will get worse, you will rest your spine in the evening and then get back up the next morning, very sore, and want to stretch those already elongated muscles; and the pain cycle starts again…
Stretching an injured or malformed and positioned muscle also takes away your muscle’s capacity for strength…
So, the latest seminars within physiotherapy and chiropractic circles have come to re-think this regime…
- Static exercise, yes…
- Static stretching, no…
Exercises For Lower Back Pain
Should Engage The Muscles
But Not Stretch Them…
There is static stretching which is what you don’t want to do…
And then there is static re-alignment – and this is the proper type of exercise for lower back pain…
Though I am talking chiefly about lower back pain exercises on this page, I would also like to mention that Activator methods Chiropractic Care is good in particular for full body re-alignment…
But when you come home, you want to know exactly what to do to maintain and improve on the adjustment you just received, and probably paid a pretty penny for, by having some exercises for lower back pain and the rest of your back as well since it all works together…
Or, if chiropractic care is not on your list of wanna do’s, this set of exercises alone can do a great deal of good in terms of re-aligning your spine and the corresponding muscle groups…
By improving your alignment and tone by engaging your postural muscles, you can start getting yourself out of the pain cycle with these five exercises for lower back pain, and they are also good for your overall posture…
I do them everyday, and they have really lent to the strength and total stability of my back…
- Static Back…
- Static Wall…
- Sitting Floor…
- Air Bench…
- Standing At Wall…
I learned these five alignments from coach Maryann Berry. They will get you out of the pain/stretching cycle, and allow repair and engage nerve firing in muscles that have become weak or shortened, due to poor posture, or long hours of sitting…
This list is not exhaustive however, and each of us may need something extra or different, but these 5 are a good place to start…
Look at the pictures and position yourself accordingly, holding each exercise for a period of 1-3 minutes with the exception of Air Bench, you may have to build up your strength to do that one properly for 1-3 minutes…
Static Back…
*Shoulders are placed in the same plane as the hips giving you increased awareness of your lower back; gravity and your body weight passively allows the erector spinae muscles to release…
*Thoracic spine (upper back) and muscles open up against the flat surface of the floor…
*Engages hip flexors and encourages extension through the thoracic spine which is one of the best exercises for lower back pain since lower back pain can come from rounding of the thoracic spine…
*Breath in and out and relax – it may take five minutes or more to get the full benefit of this exercise…
Static Wall –
The best antidote to sitting all day..
The anti-dote to sitting at a desk all day…!
Key Points…
*Your weight against the flat surface of the floor encourages your upper thoracics to open up…
*Entire posterior chain is made to open – re-activating nerve fibres you have been sitting on and suppressing all day long…
*Anterior posture muscles of the thighs and shins are activated as they get closed down when you sit for long periods of time…
*Contract your quads and keep your feet pulled back flat-parallel to your hips…
Sitting Floor…
Sitting in this way will strengthen your upper back and postural muscles that hold you up…
Key Points…
This just looks like sitting, but when you are doing it with the intention of strengthening the muscle of the upper back and shoulders that hold the you upright…
Things change…
* Shins and thighs are also engaged which is useful because they stop functioning normally when your day involves a lot of sitting…
*Keeping your quads (thighs) tight and feet pulled back to engage the shins during this exercise will correct this…
*If you can get your heels to raise up off the floor while doing this, it adds an extra bonus (but should not cause pain)…
*To achieve results with this, make sure your buttocks and upper back are against the wall, shoulder blades squeezed together pushed down and hold for 1-3 minutes…
Air Bench…
This is not only for quad strength, but the other advantage is that it fires your whole posterior chain which can get weakened from sitting all day…
Key Points:
It may take time to build your strength with this exercise. If your lower back is weak your quads will need some time to fully re-engage…
*The goal in Air Bench is to reduce and eventually eliminate rotation in the pelvis…
*Feet, Knees and Hips need to be even; if you are looking down and one of your knees is out farther than the other it indicates rotation of the pelvis – push your pelvis back into the wall until both are even. Stop if this is getting painful and go back to the earlier three exercises and come back to this one in a few days – never push through pain; this can cause more damage…
*The key is to reset your pelvis, and for this to happen, your lumbar spine (low back) needs to be flat against the wall…
*If the rest of your back will not go against the wall at first its ok – sometimes backs and shoulder joints are so internally rotated they will not flatten at first. So, just get your lower back to flatten first and gently work up to mid and then upper thoracic spine and then your head against the wall…
*Start by putting your back against the wall, then walking your feet out from you. Make sure you are on a non-slip surface…
* And please, do not do any of these exercises for lower back pain in a morning shower routine thinking that all of that nice hot water would feel good as you do this; as you are trying to run out the door to work…
Not unless you want your business to be someone else’s business by mid-morning…it is an embarrassing thing to have to tell your chiropractor and your boss… you ‘slipped’ in the shower…?
Really…?
Standing At Wall…
Standing becomes a different thing when there is a wall involved. This will fire the nerve nets from muscles in your feet all the way up to your neck…
*8 major load bearing joints will get a workout in activation and firing of the muscle groups when this is done correctly…
*Fist and a half between your feet with your heel slightly turned in is the correct placement for the feet…
*Heels, hips and shoulders need to touch the wall…
*Head should be against the wall looking at the horizon. If you end up looking at the ceiling its ok – your neck is having stress from a double ended flexion-extension malpositioning. If you relax and do this exercise everyday, this will work itself out. If it stays the same after a couple weeks I recommend seeing a chiropractor who uses either Activator Methods or Active Release Technique aka A.R.T.
*Also putting the back of your hands to the wall with your fingers spread will engage the muscles of the upper back and shoulders…
Natural Pain
Relief…
Over the counter as well as prescribed pain relief medications are fast acting and potent, but what happens if you need to take them to manage your pain over a period of years, or for the rest of your life…?
You may wish to do some research and look into some natural pain relief remedies that will not have the toxic effects on your internal organs that most pain medications do after a lengthy period of time…
I have provided some basic information regarding supplementation that provides natural pain relief to help get you started – just click on the link below…
In Summary…
Exercises for lower back pain usually isolate the lower back and involve stretching…
In my years as a chiropractor people have come to me with a complaint involving the lower back and were forever questioning why then I adjusted the rest of them too…
My answer was and still is that we are not compartmentalized physically, or physiologically, all of it is connected and affects other areas if it is not functioning properly…
Therefore, exercises for lower back pain really need to translate as full body muscle engagement to achieve three things:
- Getting you out of back and joint pain in general…
- Mobilizing your hips and stabilizing your core…
- Correcting posture…
The world has changed having most of us in a sedentary state when we are designed to move around to maintain our health…
So, doing these every day will benefit you maximally…
Disclaimer – This is information on joint pain. I teach, but I do not diagnose, prescibe or treat people who contact me. You are responsible for your condition using your own best judgement combined with what you have learned. Just a heads up – bodies carry unusual differences from time to time, in saying that, you could be one of those rare and unusual beings; if you are in doubt, please contact a physician in your area, so you can rule it out.
Move Freely and Knowledgeably and Be Well!
Dr. Jo
P.S… “Greater certainty of your condition alone can be a powerful form of pain relief.”