6 Training Considerations to Reduce Low Back Pain

My wife and I are moving into our first home next week. New homeowners yaay! We have decided not to hire movers, so we will be doing the majority of the work by ourselves. Call me crazy, but I look forward to it. I see it as an opportunity to sweat, lift some heavy things and work toward a common goal while beginning the next step in out lives. Plus you are always supposed to have pizza and beer when you are finished right? This got me thinking about how many lower back injuries occur when people are moving big awkward objects.

Most of us at one point or another have experienced some type of lower back pain. In fact, research shows that at one point or another 80% of all Americans will experience low back pain during their lifetime. When I heard this statistic, it made sense to me to learn as much as possible about the spine and how it functions. Below are five things that you can implement in your training to reduce the likelihood of injury and keep you lifting heavy things for years to come.

1. Move More

Shocker right? As a society, we spend way too much time sitting or standing in one place. When you stay in one particular posture for more than 20 minutes at a time, muscle creep begins to set in. Creep is when muscle(s) adapt to a prolonged change in length, causing them to become shorter or longer. Think about what happens after a long car ride. When you get out of that car, you feel pretty stiff right? Now picture what happens when you sit at a desk, in a car, or on a plane all day every day for years on end. Needless to say, the long term implications on your posture aren't good.  I call this the Quasimodo effect.

Making the effort to get out and simply move more is probably the easiest way to combat low back pain. If you have a desk job, set an alarm on your phone to get up every so often and move around for a few minutes.

2. Eliminate Flexion Based Exercise

According to research by Gordon et al., King, Callaghan and McGill, the spine has a finite amount of flexion cycles before it becomes susceptible to disc herniation. This means that the more we bend over, sit, or sit up, the more susceptible we are to a herniated disc. Given that we already spend a ton of time sitting, I think its safe to say we don't need to exacerbate the problem with doing more flexion based exercise like sit ups and crunches. A better alternative is to perform exercises that reinforce maintaining a relatively neutral spinal alignment. Examples these include:

• Plank variations
• Ab Wheel Rollouts/TRX Fallouts
• Stir the Pot
• TRX pikes and jackknives
• Pallof Press variations

This is not an exhaustive list, but its a good start. Now I'm not a total purist in this regard because I do believe that we need to be able to perform a sit up in everyday life. So don't go roundhouse kicking your trainer if he or she has you do some sit ups every now and again. With that being said, I think we should eliminate MOST flexion based exercise ESPECIALLY in individuals with a history of low back pain, but some sit ups every now and again aren't going to kill you.

3. Maintain Neutral Spine

I have described neutral spine before in my push up post, so I'll assume everyone knows what that means. Basically, when the spine is in a neutral position it is in its "happy place". A neutral spine position reduces the amount of shear placed on the intervertebral column, allows for a more efficient transmission of force and increases tolerance of compressive loads. When the spine is allowed to travel into excessive flexion or extension under load, you could be spending the weekend on your couch watching re-runs of One Tree Hill. Check out the illustration below for an example of what proper alignment vs. poor alignment looks like during a deadlift.

 

Make sure to maintain this alignment during exercises like squats, deadlifts, and ab work. One should always attempt to move from the hips while maintaining spinal alignment. 

 

4. Check Your Ego at the Door

 

More often than not, a simple reduction in load can help. Lifting a heavy weight results in large amounts of compressive force on the spine. Compound this with improper technique and you have a recipe for disaster. You might not be in pain now, but if you keep going down that road its only a matter of time. If you have been doing squats and deadlifts forever with crappy technique, no wonder your back hurts! Reduce the amount of weight you are using and focus on developing better technique.

 

5. Use Single Leg Work

 

Lunge, step up, split squat, and single leg squat variations are excellent alternatives for those with lower back pain. Single leg training allows one to load up the legs while reducing the load placed on the spine. I have worked with a ton of individuals with back problems over the years and single leg work is always a staple in all of their programs. Check out this article by Ben Bruno for some ideas on how to implement single leg work into your program.

 

6. Spend Some Time on the Ground

 

More often than not, back problems are a result of poor mobility and stabilization patterns. As I have said before, one is always more stable when on the ground. Sometimes we need to back the truck up and re-groove these basic movement patterns we have lost somewhere along the way. Half and tall-kneeling exercises are a great place to start. These exercises can help build hip and core stability, as well as providing a good hip flexor stretch at the same time. As with single leg work, these exercises are regulars in any back pain program I write. Mike Robertson does a great job of describing how half and tall kneeling should be done in the video below.

 



Other exercises you can try in half and tall-kneeling include:

• Overhead presses
• Cable presses
• Cable rows
• Pallof presses

Wrap Up

There is so much more to how the spine works and how to train it properly. The information I have presented above is just the tip of the iceberg. That being said, all of the above points should help you train in a safe, effective manner and reduce your chance of injury.

Have a great weekend!

P.S. - If you enjoy the content please like and share!

Atmosphere is Everything

I often think of what constitutes the "ideal" training environment. This would be defined for most as the environment that gives one the greatest chance of success. For me, an environment that fosters hard work, dedication, attention to detail and fun would be the ideal place to train. My early experience in the weight room exemplified all of these characteristics. It set the tone for how I would train for the rest of my life. It was my high school weight room.

Lets hop in the Delorean and set the time circuits for the summer of 2000. Hopefully the flux capacitor is working.

We were 16 years old and about to enter our junior year in high school. Most of us were built like Paul Walker, but wanted to look like Vin Diesel. We had our hair dyed bleach blonde and cut short in response to the popularity of Eminem. I'm not sure what we were thinking. In fact, I don't think we were thinking much at all. What we did know was if we wanted to have any chance of success on the football field or get girls to notice us, we needed to lift.

I come from a pretty small town. My graduating class had a grand total of 78 students. So, needless to say our school didn't have a lot of money to put toward a weight room. Our weight room was the picture of Spartan minimalism. It was in an old garage that used to be the school metal shop.We had barbells, weight plates, benches, squat racks, a leg press, and a couple of mismatched dumbbells lying around somewhere, but that's all we needed. In addition to a rather sparse selection of equipment, our boom box had a broken CD player and a broken antenna. There was only one cassette tape that we could find. Little did we know, by the end of that summer we would remember the words to EVERY SINGLE SONG on that tape for the rest of our lives. Surely it was something cool like Metallica's Black album or AC/DC's Back in Black right? Nope.

Oh yes

We listed to that tape so many times that I can probably recite the words to it better than my parents ever could. It was that tape or silence. So we squatted, benched, cleaned, lunged and did pull ups to the sounds of Steve Miller Band and Coach Hettman screaming at us. We didn't have a ton of cool equipment or a fancy periodization scheme to follow, but we got bigger, faster and stronger. We set personal records and challenged each other to break those records. We built friendships and team chemistry. We developed skills that we would take with us the rest of our lives like hard work, perseverance, and goal setting. By the end of that summer we were better young men. So what's the point of the story?

The point is, it doesn't matter how much cool stuff you have at your disposal. What matters is the atmosphere you create.

When you walk into the gym, you should feel a positive energy and the desire to work hard. Your trainer or training partner should teach, motivate and encourage you. Most of all, you should feel good about yourself when you leave. So ask yourself, is your atmosphere making you better? Are you creating an atmosphere that makes you and others better?

I learned so many lessons in that weight room. It dictated the way I would train for the rest of my life. To this day, I would prefer a dusty, dungeon-like garage to train in over any commercial gym because I learned what I was capable of in that high school weight room. All I need is a rusty old barbell and a bunch of weight.

Stuff You Should Read While Matt is on Vacation

I hope you all had a great Easter! If you ate less Reese's peanut butter eggs than I did, I salute you.

My Kryptonite

I'm on vacation this week, so rather than throw up some half-assed post I thought I would point you all to some good stuff you should read.

Training Clients with Low Body Awareness

Welcome to my world people! Training is not as simple as "do this!" Everyone learns at different speeds and in different ways. One of the most important attributes a trainer can possess is patience. Dean does a great job providing some perspective on the topic.

Sexy Shoulder Function

Another gem from Mike Robertson with some steps you can take to get your shoulders healthy again. If you have jacked up shoulders this can definitely help.

Its Not Just What You Do, But How You Do It

This is the first time I've come across Luka Hocevar's work, and I'm glad I did. This one really speaks to me because I see people butchering exercise technique every. single. day. The only way to truly get better at something is to do practice it the right way from the very beginning.

Long Live Static Stretching!

I've never been a huge fan of static stretching, but there is definitely a gray area there.


Have a great weekend!