FitnessQuests

Five tips to reduce lower back pain

It is a sad fact that according to the National Academy of Sports Medicine, an estimated 85% of adults suffer from some form of lower back pain. While some occurrences are caused by contact injuries, most can be attributed to weak stabilizing muscles and a lack of core stability endurance.

Your stabilizing muscles are the beginning of every natural movement you make. If you move your arm, your stabilizers will fire first. They are your center of gravity and they are there to ensure not only balance but proper absorption and transference of all forces coming from inside and outside the body. It doesn’t matter if you’re walking down the street or riding a 2500lb bull, flipping a burger or swinging for the fences; you’re stabilizers act first in order to protect the spine.

The spine should really never have pressure on it because it should always be protected by the stabilizers but due to our sedentary lives, nutrient deficient diets, and dysfunctional breathing patterns (chest breathing), our stabilizers are weak and our spine suffers more stress than it is intended to take.

As I discussed in my last post, The truth about core workouts, many people don’t realize that your core is actually two different systems (one for movement and one for stability) so if it is realized that weak core muscles are the problem, the answer most people come up with is to start doing core work like sit ups, leg lifts, and back extensions. These movements however, are designed to strengthen the movers but not the stabilization muscles such as your transverse abdominals, multifidus, and inner obliques. Utilizing these core mover muscles without proper support from your stabilizers, just puts further pressure on an already weak spine.

If you don’t have a base of support in your muscles, your spine becomes your support. This can cause damage to the ligaments that support the vertebrae which leads to a narrowing of the opening in which the spinal nerve passes through.It also leads to further compressing of the discs between the vertebrae. If you ever slipped a disc, you know first hand why this is bad.

Furthermore, without proper support your body will make many compensations which will lead to further imbalances and more possibility for injury. For instance, if you ever see someone leading with their head in a core exercise or rotating their pelvis forward to complete a sit up, you are witnessing compensations due to weak core muscles and stabilizers and these can lead to all sorts of other problems.

Um... Nevermind...

With that said, I want to give you 5 things you should do right now to get your stabilizers up to par and to get rid of back pain for good.

1. Stop doing exercises that put pressure on the spine. There are many of these but the main ones that come to mind are weighted squats, dead lifts, and core exercises that require movement of the spine. (This isn’t permanent, just until you build some support.)
2. Stretch. Stretch several times a day if you can, pay particularly close attention to the hip flexors and hamstrings if you sit a lot.
3. Do stabilization exercises like the ones I mentioned in my last post. Do vacuums as much as possible. Remember, your stabilizers are mainly made up of type 1 slow twitch fibers so time under tension is very important. Flexing them for at least 6-20 seconds at a time will provide you with much better results than faster movements.
4. During all exercises, practice the drawing in technique. Just before you do the exercise, you can create more stability and deeper core activation by pulling in the area just under your naval toward your spine (without bending at the spine). It acts as a sort of natural weight belt.
5. Pay attention to all compensations you make during exercise. This can be knees moving inward during squats, head going forward when pulling or pushing with your arms, back arching during overhead press, lower back lifting during bench press, etc. If any of these are present, you must correct them through stretching shortened muscles and strengthening weak muscles. Your body is a chain and each compensated movement affects your core and therefore your spine. Fix them.

Here’s one more as an added bonus.

During all exercise, keep your head aligned with your body and your cervical spine neutral. Looking sideways to check out your biceps in the mirror, off at a TV across the way, or ogling the girl you’re hoping notices your impressive physique, is asking for all sorts of trouble. Your pelvo-ocular reflex (meaning your pelvis turns in the direction of your eyes) will kick in and alter your movement patterns, thus making damage to your spine very possible.

If you have serious pain in your back, you should of course get it checked out by a doctor before exercising outside of that following the steps above can go a long way in helping that nagging pain to go away. If you haven’t already, check out yesterday's post for more information about the core and why the stabilizers are so important.

Until next time,

Kris

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The truth about core workouts

What’s the best core exercise to get a six pack? Does this ab gadget work the way is say’s it does? Should I do any twisting motions in my core workout? Will sit ups make me lose this gut? So and so says not to work my core at all, do I need to?

These are all questions that I hear all the time. Honestly, for most people these questions are misplaced at best and flat out dangerous at worst. This article should shed some light on core training for both performance and aesthetics.

For the past ten years, the importance of core work has become more widely recognized amongst those trying to get fit. In response to this, we’ve had an avalanche of opinions on core workouts that can never seem to agree with each other. Add to the mix our intense want (need) to lose belly fat and exercises like the sit up have become more controversial than US politics.

Today I want to start to help you get to the bottom of it (like you haven’t heard that before, right?)

The core or lumbo-pelvic-hip complex is one of the most intricate systems in the human body. The core is made up of the lumbo-pelvic-hip complex, the 29 muscles that attach to it, the thoracic and cervical spine, and quite a bit of fascia and connective tissue. For everything to have proper alignment the muscles must be strong enough to support you, have correct length-tension relationships, have right recruitment patterns, and they must be properly aligned with your joints.

most of us don’t need to know everything about our anatomy to have a good, productive workout, I find it important to know enough to decipher the garbage information that constantly bombards us.

First thing you have to know is that there are two functions of the core that are each important:

1. To stabilize the body (distributing weight, absorbing force, transferring ground-reaction forces, and providing a base of support for proper movement, acceleration, and deceleration.)
2. Movement (twisting, side to side, and front to back)

To accommodate these two functions, you have two sets of systems.

Note: don’t worry about memorizing the next bit of information.

For stabilization you have the transversus abdominis, internal obliques, lumbar multifidus, pelvic floor muscles, diaphragm, and the transversospinalis.

For movement you have the lats, erector spinae, hip flexors (iliopsoas), hamstrings, hip adductors (adductor longus, brevis, magnus, gracilis, pectineus) the hip abductors (the gluteus minimus, medeus, TLF), the rectus abdominis, and the external obliques.

There are also several muscles such at the gluteus maximus that can be classified as both a mover and a stabilizer.

The reason why there is so much controversy regarding core training is because many people ignore the simple fact that that the core has these two distinct purposes. Yes, everyone should be doing core training, but if you can’t stabilize yourself or you have muscle imbalances, you have no business repetitively twisting and bending your spine or throwing heavy medicine balls around until you make corrections. That means lots of stretching and stability work.

I won’t go into stretching too much here except to say that most of us are under chronic hip flexion from too much sitting and need to stretch our hip flexors and hamstrings.

Stabilization exercises typically require no spine movement. The most common of these exercises would be planks and vacuums. Many of you are familiar with planks so I won’t go into that but if you aren’t, a quick YouTube search will catch you up to speed.

Vacuums I will describe as they may be harder to find. The vacuum is a simple breathing exercise. Take a deep breath into your belly and then push it out by pulling your belly button toward spine (don’t bend your spine). Once you’ve pulled your stomach in as far as you can, hold it for 8-10 seconds. For added difficulty, take rapid fire shallow breaths while holding your abs in but stop if you feel dizzy or faint. Do 10 reps for 2-3 sets.

Vacuums sound simple but please don’t discount them. They are important and very effective at working your transversus abdominis. They are the only exercise I know of that can tighten up your midsection by pulling in the muscles. It still won’t burn the fat on top though so don’t get too excited.

Once you get good at vacuums they can be done while in the plank or in the “cat vomiting” pose that Tim Ferriss describes in The 4-Hour Body, for added benefit.

While it may be tempting to pass this phase up and instead load up on tons of crunches and twists and leg lifts, I implore you not to. Doing so will only lead to greater structural imbalances, subpar strength gains, and back pain/injury. If your core isn’t stable, you’ll never see your max potential and you’ll always have little nags that affect your training even if you are fortunate enough to avoid injury. On top of that, you can kiss any chance of flat abs goodbye. Your stabilizers are your foundation and without those, your house of cards won’t get very high.

The good news is it only takes 1-2 months to build a proper foundation and once it’s built, you will be able to work harder and more efficiently than ever before, resulting in better results than ever before.

Need more reasons? How about appearance? Having a properly aligned body makes just makes your appearance better. You’ll fit into your clothes better and even out of your clothes it will make it look like you’ve added muscle and removed fat. If you have slumped over shoulders, overly arched back or tucked butt, your head’s not resting over shoulders, your feet are flaring out, and you knees are buckling in even great body composition won’t make you look fit and healthy.

Oh, as far as the questions I started this article with, there is no best ab exercise for getting a six pack, no that gadget won’t give you the results it claims, no sit ups won’t help you slim down, yes you should do core exercises as described above, and twisting is an incredibly important piece of the exercise puzzle as long as you do it correctly and your body is ready for it.

Until next time,

Kris

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