Ten Ways To Help Alleive Low Back Pain

1. Improve Hip Mobility - If your hips are stiffer than your lower back, movement will occur at the lower back. Improve hip mobility and you'll be able to bend over without to much forward flexing at the lower back.

2. Improve Thoracic Mobility - Forward flexing and rotation shouldn't be made at the lower back. The more movement and mobility at the mid or thoracic vertebrae the less movement that will occur at the lower or lumbar vertebrae.

3. Strengthen Your Core - A strong core (glutes, abdominals, low back) will help stabilize the lower back and keep movement at the low back to a minimum. There are much better ways to strengthen your core than a crunch. Crunches can end up putting more stress on the lower back. Use planks, dead bugs, and roll outs to name a few.

4. Use Hips To Bend Over - In most cases bending over at the lower is not advised. Learn to use your hips to bend over. Stay in a neutral position at the lower back and the chance of lower back injury will greatly decrease. Some bending will occur from time to time but learn to use your legs as much as possible.

5. Stop Using Machines - Machines don't have much carryover into the real world and aren't "functional". When you use free weights you force your body to stabilize not only at the core but you also receive more activation from every other joint and area of the body. How often is your range of motion set, like when using a machine?

6. Stop Stretching Your Lower Back - And hamstrings for that matter. They may feel tight but look on the other side of your body. In most cases tight hip flexors pull the pelvis into anterior tilt forcing the low back and hamstrings to be under constant stretch or tension. It may feel good at the time to stretch these areas but when hip flexor flexibility improves you'll have lengthened musculature on the backside.

7. Improve Resting Posture - Or stop resting so much. The move movement the better. Make it a goal to never sit down longer then 20 minutes.

8. Lose Body Fat - Ever wonder why a pregnant ladies back always hurts? That weight they are carrying on the front side is making the low back work overtime to keep your body upright.

9. Change The Way You Sleep - Stop sleeping on your stomach. Sleep on your side or back.

10. Improve Glute Activation - Guess whats right below the low back? The glutes. I see terrible glute activation when people start training. The glutes are a very powerful thing and when they are learned to be used much less stress will be put on the low back and hamstrings. This will also help pull the pelvis out of anterior tilt along with many other problems that can occur down and up the chain.

A Random Tuesday

1. Before you stretch your lower back or hamstrings you may want to read this:

http://robertsontrainingsystems.com/blog/A+Stretching+Fallacy/

I try to explain this a client weekly if not daily but Robertson does a little better job from a anatomy standpoint!

2. I received a text last night from a friend. "What would be the best supplement for me to gain weight and muscle mass?"

Of course I asked him for his email address because I didn't want to just tell him the answer simply. I know I've told him this before but plain and simple if you are going to put on weight you need to EAT. If you think you are eating and not putting weight you need to eat MORE. Yeah I've been through the same situation you think you are eating but you really aren't. Or you tell yourself my metabolism is to fast, I couldn't put on weight if I tried. Well guess what either you eat enough to put on weight or you don't.

Eat Like A Horse!

Sure supplementation is going to be much easier around workouts and at times in the day when you may not have a whole lot of time to eat a solid meal. It's not going to replace "solid" food though!

3. On the other end of the spectrum it amazes me how when people are looking for fat loss they aren't willing to change their eating habits. I give them a couple habit changes that I like to consider simple such as increasing water intake and eating every 2-3 hours. They come back two days later and admit they haven't done either. I know change may be hard but what you've been doing for the past 10 years hasn't worked what makes you think it's going to start working for the next 10 years?

4. Having a day every week or week and half where I cook all my food was the best thing I've started doing. It allows you to first not waste a lot of time cooking during the week but also helps you make good food choices throughout the week. Leftovers taste better anyway.

5. The more I read and learn the more I feel I haven't touched the surface on training. I also look back to a year ago and think if I've learned this much in a year I can't wait for the next couple years.

6. I think people get fat loss and weight loss mixed up or they don't know the difference. Fat loss is just that a decrease in fat mass. Weight loss on the other hand is fat loss that could be accommodated with muscle loss.

Muscle mass is very metabolically active which in the end means you are going to burn off many more calories throughout a day with more muscle mass then with less. Plain and simple. This is why resistance training is very important to long term fat loss. On the other end slow steady cardio can actually end up burning up that muscle mass that is so metabolically active. Guess what that means. You are going to be burn off less calories throughout the day. Think about that the next time you say "resistance training isn't for me" or the next time you hop on that treadmill for a 30 minute run.

Weight Loss or Fat Loss?

Compensation Patterns

I get the question quite a bit about what causes compensation patterns in individuals. First lets look at a what a compensation pattern is. It is a way your body compensates or changes its "normal" or meant to be movement pattern.

Take walking for example. Lets say you have tight hip flexors (the muscles on the front part of your hips). This no big deal right? Wrong. This can cause big problems down the rest of the leg not to mention up the chain. Because of these tight hip flexors, anterior pelvic tilt is next on your list of problems, leading to internal rotation of the femur and tibia over time. No big deal again, WRONG. These internally rotated femurs can lead to tight IT bands/adductor's, which in turn can lead to knee/back pain. I won't get into things down the rest of the leg and the problems that can arise in that opposite shoulder and spine.



Now lets say one hip flexor is tighter than the other. Ever hear someone walking from a mile away with one foot pounding into the ground? That leg on the side of the tight hip flexor can end up getting shortened causing it to constantly pound into that group time after time. That is one of many causes of compensation patterns that can arise just because of those tight hip flexors.

You also see quite a few patterns in athletes if work isn't done to iron out these imbalances before they get to far. Take a baseball player swinging a baseball bat. The tourque of the front side leg is going to take a beating if that lead legs exteral rotation isn't up to par.

The Hips Are A Powerful Thing

So how do I fix this? I can tell you how to make it worse. Keep doing what you've been doing!

Is that treadmill walking/running helping your compensation patterns?

Well for the price of only $9.95 you can....kidding! Things such as myofascial release on a foam roller and lots of single leg work can go along ways.