The Blog

When people come to me with back pain they often talk about strengthening their back. The thing is a ‘weak’ back is rarely the cause of lower back pain. After all, there are plenty of strong people who have bad backs and plenty of weaker people who don’t.

But if that is not the answer to back pain,...

A lot of people come to see me because they are struggling with lower back pains and have been told they have a weak core. They know they need to strengthen it.

But how can you tell if you are in the same boat?

Do you think you may have a weak core?

If you believe you have a weak core the first ...

Do you struggle to get down far enough when you squat? Do you feel restricted when you’re deadlifting, doing particular movements in the gym or simply as you’re moving around in everyday life?

It could be that you have tight hips.

How can you tell if you have tight hips?

If you are suffering wit...

If you’re new to core training it can be difficult to know where to start. That’s why in this tutorial I chose to concentrate on one simple exercise and break down exactly how to perform it. You’ll then be able to take this and apply it to many other exercises in order to work towards a stronger cor...

I may have said in the past that the biggest mistake people make when treating lower back pain is using exercise. However I’m about to contradict myself. There is a time and a place for exercise in lower back rehabilitation and it’s all about creating a stronger biological scaffold to help support t...

Have you ever considered the importance of your hip movement when it comes to supporting you with squats and deadlifts? In the tutorial above I shine a light on exactly why it’s important to undertake some hip mobility exercises and some of the things you should be doing to get those hips in the bes...

Ever wonder how you go from a beginner level up to an advanced level in core training?

Put simply it’s about understanding how the core is designed and built and using that knowledge to select exercises that work with rather than against it. That’s why in this tutorial I go through:

• How the core
...

I often talk about the importance of building strong and healthy muscles to protect the lower back and avoid pain and injury. But just which muscles am I talking about here and how exactly do they do their job?

Which are the key lower back muscles?

In the tutorial above I focus on two muscles – o...

To bend the spine or not to bend the spine…that is the question.

We hear people say it’s fine, because after all, we can. And we hear others say that bending the back during exercise is likely to damage the spine rather than develop performance.

So what’s the answer? Let’s dissect the arguments. 

So often in core training programs we find lots of spine bending exercises like sit-ups, crunches or twists. But these are not the most effective exercises for training the core. In order to better understand why this is, let’s talk about the anatomy of the hips and spine. Then we’ll look at some mo...

As a PT, I spend a lot of time talking about core muscles, it’s a subject that is far more important than a lot of people realise. Firstly, we’re talking about more than just your abs – a common misconception. Secondly, the core muscles are involved in some way in almost every movement you’ll do wit...

When it comes to rehabilitating the lower back, there’s a huge amount of information out there. Some of it is valuable, some should be used with caution, and some is just plain wrong. The problem is, that if you try something that’s not recommended for you, it might be that it just doesn’t work, or ...