3 Ways to Reduce and Rid Lower Back Pain!
Lower back pain affects over 73% of all Americans. The trend steadily rises as we become more sedentary and tight from the stresses of life. Lower back debilitates many people from living a quality life but it doesn’t have to last forever.
Lower back pain is caused by many different reasons but they can all be easily reversed if you can commit to some changes in your lifestyle. In this blog, I’ll tell you how lower back appears and what habits and actions you have to consistently partake in to alleviate the pain and reverse the problem overall.
My goal is to eliminate the pain completely through my knowledge as an Exercise Scientist and my experience as a fitness trainer for 13 years.
How Did I Get Lower Back Pain?
POSTURE: The main and constant reason for lower back pain comes from your daily posture.
Your lower back is the located at the center of your body. It acts as the fulcrum or balance point of your entire body balancing out the forces placed on your upper and lower body. Proper posture is the correct alignment of your entire skeleton from head to toe but when the alignment becomes misaligned, your lower back has to work the hardest in order to keep your body as close to a balanced state as possible.
Over time, sitting, standing and laying down in all different, awkward ways will eventually lead to chronic lower back pain because of this constant balancing act your lower back has to participate in on a daily basis. Gravity is constantly pulling our body down so depending on what posture we find ourselves in every day will determine which angle these forces are coming down on your lower back.
CORE WEAKNESS: Weakness in the core area of your body that cannot support the constant load and forces to the spine will eventually cause lower back pain.
You’re core muscles are not your abs. They are a group of muscles that are located deep around your midsection and are responsible for maintaining that balancing act I was talking about above. When you don’t exercise these important muscles, they will not be able to support your spine and lower back well when you move. Over time, this will lead to chronic lower back pain.
Remember, your core muscles are located in the midsection of your body for a reason. It’s where your center of gravity is and they’re the main muscle group that gives your whole body strength and stability.
Your core muscles are like a bridge that connects your upper body to your lower body. A weak core is like a bridge made of missing planks and tethered rope. It’s weak, unstable and scary. It feels like it will snap or break at any moment. A strong core is like walking across the Great Wall of China. Its stable, strong and you have full confidence that it will not destabilize.
MUSCLE TIGHTNESS: When muscles get tight, they shorten and constantly pull your bones in different directions, misaligning your spine and eventually leading to chronic lower back pain. You have many muscles attaching directly to the lower part of your spine so when these muscles tighten, the constant tension is the pain that people experience.
Muscles are attached to bones and when we move, muscles pull on the bones to create movement. When muscles contract very hard or for long periods of time, it creates muscle damage. When muscles become damaged, they grow back through rest, recovery and proper nutrition. Even though they grow back, the scar tissue and new muscle tissue that are forming are still stiff and tight.
The scar tissue are like scabs when your skin gets scraped up and your body heals your injury by making new skin cells but notice scabs are very hard and stiff as they form. They usually crack or break when the skin is stretched past a certain point. The same happens with muscle tissue. So if you engage in a physical demanding job, exercise hard regularly or find your yourself in an improper posture daily; the tightness that builds up begins to pull on your spine in different directions.
This is huge contributor to lower back pain because many people are damaging muscle, they are letting them heal tightly and not engaging in any flexibility routine that builds the optimum range of motion back for these muscles to reduce the constant pulling of the spine and supporting bones.
Muscles becoming tight or diminishing flexibility is already a natural part of the aging process. These three factors mentioned here are reasons why people are feeling lower back pain as early as their teenage years.
What Do I Do to Reverse Lower Back Pain?
Be Mindful of Your Posture Daily: Start building the habit of stopping and noticing the frequent postures you find yourself in everyday.
Whenever your body is misaligned and your spine is not stacked properly, the force of gravity pulls your bones in the wrong directions. The postures we find ourselves in when we stand, sit and lay down will contribute to how much lower back pain we experience. Here are some stances that can contribute to lower back pain:
Crossing your arms
Resting one arm on a table
Looking down while sitting, standing or walking
Slouching over a phone, computer or table
Laying back with your head up on a couch
Laying sideways on a couch
Driving with one arm on the wheel
Standing with all the weight on one leg
Sitting with a wallet in your back pocket
Laying down on your side and stomach
Sitting with legs crossed
Hunching down to pick up something from the ground
Start building the habit of stopping and noticing the postures you find yourselves in daily and take note of the postures that trigger the lower back pain the most. Find a way to balance your body out and make it as symmetrical as possible. This will produce the least amount of force on your joints.
Focus on Increasing Your Core Strength: Increase the strength of your entire midsection to help the lower back resist random forces placed on it and to stabilize and reinforce your body’s center of gravity or balance point.
If you suffer from lower back pain, it’s a sure sign that your core muscles have been sleeping and weakening. If you want to rid lower back pain, you have to strength train them more. When you involve yourself in weight training, there are plenty of exercises that involve core muscles just to execute the lift. Exercises like deadlifts, squats, pushups, pull ups, lunges and step ups are just a few that are great for getting your core muscles involved while getting stronger overall.
There are other exercises that can strengthen your core and spine directly. Exercises like planks, side planks. sky divers, leg raises, and static cable rotations are great exercises that directly strengthen your core muscles. 73% of Americans have lower back pain and a big part of that reason is because we are lazy and don’t want to exercise. This country would rather pay for a spine replacement if it was possible instead of changing their lifestyle. Stop sitting and laying around - GET THAT CORE STRONG!
Incorporate a Daily Stretching Routine: Incorporate a daily stretching and massaging routine that helps stretch muscles and remove scar tissue and muscle adhesions.
Another downfall of the American lazy lifestyle is that nobody wants to stretch the tightness and tension of their bodies. Even at gyms, its very rare for people to stretch after workouts even though its the MOST OPTIMAL time to stretch and increase your range of motion.
After a long day of work, incorporate 10-15 minutes of mindful stretching. Most of the tightness we get is coming from our awkward postures of the day so ending the day with a routine that resets your body will definitely reduce lower back pain and overall tightness. The biggest muscles to focus on stretching is your glutes, hamstrings, quads, abs, hip flexors and of course your lower back. Some yoga-inspired stretches I recommend are:
Pigeon Pose
Cobra Pose
Lizard Pose
Childs Pose
Downward Facing Dog
Sitting with Legs Wide Open
Kneeling Hip Flexor Stretch
Use a foam roller and create a 10-15 minute routine also that is used specifically to roll out the muscle knots and adhesions from healing muscle tissue. This will increase recirculation, reduce muscle tension and destress you from your day. Studies have shown that one should incorporate one more day of rolling per week every decade. So if your 40 years old, you should be rolling your body 4x/week.
Involve yourself in activities that pushes your body’s range of motion like yoga or concentrated weight lifting where every lift travels a full range of motion. Muscles are like rubber bands. They become pliable and most susceptible to stretch when they are warmed. Exercising in full ranges of motion when you are in the middle of an exercise session and stretching after are the best opportunities to increase your flexibility and range of motion.
Don’t forget to also warmup before exercise! A great dynamic warmup routine before exercises will warm up your muscles and prevent them from extreme damage like muscle strains and tears.
Conclusion: Lower Back Pain is not a disease. Its curable. It’s your lifestyle that created this problem. With some changes in your lifestyle and becoming more mindful of your body, you can be free of this life of pain!
Be mindful of your posture, exercise to become stronger and stretch regularly to remove constant tightness.
Are you ready to become Lower Back Pain free?
Try a workout with me and see the difference I can make with simple exercises, effective stretching routines and creating a lifestyle that makes you more mindful about your body.
Empyrea Group Training is located in Cedar Grove and everyone is welcome inside if you’re looking to make a big change in your life.
We have structure workouts, nutrition coaching and we are a great accountability system for your results. Book a FREE consultation —> HERE and get your life moving towards a different direction!
Thank you for reading!
- Carl Anthony Grande
