Combat Lower Back Pain

Do you sit a lot?

I mean why wouldn’t you, there’s just so much you can accomplish these days by sitting at a computer with all of the marvelous opportunities brought to us through the internet.

However your back doesn’t share your enthusiasm, so much so that lower back pain has become somewhat of an epidemic in Western Civilization and following investigations into why this is, we’ve come back with the phrase “sitting is the new smoking”.

Don’t panic, you’re not sitting your way into cancer of the buttocks. However your hip flexors are tightening and your gluteus are being underused, which causes what is called a muscular imbalance. You see, when you have well balanced muscles in your hips and shoulders, you will in turn stand with good posture naturally. Conversely, when you have a muscular imbalance you can develop poor posture.

There are a few names describing the different states of improper spinal posture, including kyphosis, lordosis and scoliosis, most have heard of the latter. In this article I’ll be tackling lordosis, the exaggerated curve in the lower back.

Lordosis is often the cause of debilitating back pain that so many suffer from and can snowball into ailments such as knocking knees, joint pain in the hips, knees and ankles, and at its worst it can be the cause of slipped discs and the dreaded pot belly appearance!

Chances are that you don’t suffer from lordosis and I’m hopeful that you don’t even have back pain plaguing your every movement beyond a slow walk. However if you sit for long periods of time, you need to know how to set things right in your hips. If you’re going to achieve the most in your work and personal life as well as realise your dreams and your potential, then you must ensure your body is in the best shape it can be. So let’s be professional about this — let’s talk about how to tackle the effects of sitting.

Step 1 : Stretching the Muscles that Tighten up.

The physical manifestation of lordosis causes you to look slightly like Donald Duck, just not as cartoonish, extreme and less bountiful with feathers. It’s here that the pot belly appearance comes in with your hips rotated forwards at the top your normal posture, a protruding belly, and an extra curved lower back.

The muscles we need to stretch out here are the hip flexors and the quadriceps to help lessen their tug on the hips.

Exercise One- Hip Flexor Stretch

• Place your hands on your hips and step forward into the lunge position, drop your knee to the ground and relax your foot.
• Keeping your body erect, squeeze your buttock muscles and lean your hips forward, emulating what it would be like to attempt to separate your body from your rear leg at the thigh.

You should feel slight discomfort starting around the top of your leg and reaching through your hips and into your torso. You’ve got the spot. Everyday spend 45 seconds on each side twice, alternating sides at each 45 second interval.

Image credit: Peter Miller, Creative Commons

Exercise Two — Quad Stetch

Stretching your quads is easy! So easy that you’ve been doing it since your early days at school.

• Whilst standing, bring your heel to your buttocks and hold for 40 seconds each side. The trick to making sure you’re actually stretching the correct muscle is to keep upright posture and keep your knees together. Things should be feeling a little looser than before you started, now lets move on.

Step 2 : Utilising the Muscles that would otherwise become lazy.

The next step in the little routine that you need to combat the ailments of sitting is to strengthen your Hamstrings and Gluteus. Let’s start with the Hamstrings.

Exercise Three — Glute Bridge

• Lay on your back and bring your feet close to your buttocks
• Resting your hands at your side lift your hips by pushing off of your feet and transferring the weight toward your shoulders
• Lower your hips without allowing them to touch the ground and then repeat. Perform 30 hip ups, rest for 15 seconds and then perform another 30 repetitions.

If you can handle more and want to speed up the strengthening process a little, do the 30 repetitions one legged then change straight away to the other side and repeat both sides once more.

Time to rap things up, let’s work on your gluteus.

I’ve used this exercise many times with clients and have had a lot of different names for it pitched to me.. let’s go with the Fire Hydrant.

Exercise Four — Fire Hydrant

• Position yourself onto your hands and knees and now raise one leg out to the side with your knee remaining bent.
• Your knee should be as high as your hips and your leg on a 90 degree angle to your body.
• Hold your leg there for 15 seconds
• While keeping your leg raised kick to the side ten times and then return to the holding position.
• Hold for another 15 seconds
• Bring your knee down into the same position as your other leg but don’t let your leg relax on the ground yet! Keep the burn going, this is good!
• Kick your foot up to the sky and on the down swing bring your knee to your chest, perform this kick ten times before returning your leg to the holding position for one more round of 15 seconds and then relax. Good job, wait 10 seconds and repeat on the other side.

You may experience some discomfort in your hips during this exercise, a little like a cramp. Nothing bad is happening! Your hip muscles are tight and are not used to moving like this, push through and wiggle your body around a little to alter the position but otherwise understand that a week of sticking to this daily will deal with the pain all the while reinforcing your posture and your back’s integrity!

You did it!

Try following this exercise progression daily for a week and let me know what you found, did it help? Let me know on Twitter, @writeofpassage_

If you like, add this to your morning routine to prepare you for your day. You’ll notice that you feel somewhat empowered knowing that you began your day consciously aiming to improve upon yourself.

Now go and get ‘em Tiger!