Hopefully someone sticky’s this.
I’ve noticed a lot of low back pain threads, so I thought I’d put this together for people.
The first thing you have to understand, is that your back pain isn’t caused by your bac. Yes it’s hurting, and taking a lacrosse ball to the sensitive area, or stretching it, will give some momentary relief, but ultimately the pain will come back.
Don’t feel bad, i destroyed my lower back and I wasn’t sure if I would be able to get out of bed in the morning for 6 months. I one time got stuck in a chain for 4 hours and had to wait for someone to come and help me up. My cell phone was just out of reach, and I couldn’t get it to save my life. That was a frustrating 4 hours. I spen literally $1000 trying to fix this, and all the physios did was relieve the pain in my low back, and I’d be crippled again by the next day. Chiros are good, but once again, unless you take steps, they can only do so much.
What I’m getting at here, is you have to work to understand “WHY?” this is happening.
The mangled low back is the effect, what is the cause?
In just about every lower back injury, the cause is your posture. Sitting down all day, driving, etc etc. What this does is tighten up your hips, and weaken and deactivate the glutes, as well as roll our shoulders forward into kyphotic posture.
What you can take away from this is that almost all low back injruies are caused by tight hips and weak glutes. This is the CAUSE. The effect from this is sooner or later you’ll do something that will strain yoour hips, ie lifting or simply bending over trying to pick something up… what will happen is your lower back will begin to guard to stop you from doing any more damage to your hips.
The role of the glutes in the this sitation, is that someone with strong glutes always will almost always have good posture without much anterior pelvic tilt. However, simply having strong glutes isn’t enough, the hips have to be loose for them to be able to work their magic.
So what’s the plan after you mangle your back? Loosen the hips, strengthen the glutes.
Immediately begin this warm up, at least daily, preferably 2-3x per day depending on your level of injury.
This will get you nice and loose in the right areas, and should give almost immediate relief.
For strengthening, there are a ton of glute exercises you can do, the one I prefer the most is the hyperextension. This is a glute exercise if performed correctly. When I first started these, I used my lower back, what I’ve learned is to only flex my glutes as I do them, and not go up all the way.
If you don’t have access to one, the glute bridge done in the warm up is very good, as is the single leg version. What I do a lot at home is banded good mornings, making sure to fully contract the glutes on each rep.
Further reading
Neanderthal no more - this is an excellent article, and improving posture is essential for strength and injury prevention.
Advanced glute training
Stuart Mcgill - he’s the main authority on the back, and his book really opened my eyes to how important the hips are.
That’s about it, do all of the above first, and if you’re still having problems, then post and we’ll see what we can do.