Have you ever thought about how hard your spine has to work? It allows you to stand and bend. It enables you to walk and move around. In fact, it’s integral to almost every movement you do. And if you suffer with any degree of pain in your spine, you’ll know it can be really quite debilitating, impacting on large parts of everyday life.

Unfortunately, as we age, our spine starts to degenerate and weaken, leading to ‘wear and tear’ of its various parts. In today’s tutorial I want to talk about one such issue that can crop up, the bulging or herniated disc, as well as exercises I advise (and don’t advise!) you to do to aid recovery.

What are spinal discs?

Your spine is made up of 33 vertebrae which are split into five different categories, or types, depending on where they sit and how they behave. The lowest nine, around the tailbone or sacrum, are fused together, however the remainder, from the lumbar region upwards are separated by spinal discs. These discs have a hard, fibrous wall...

Back extensions are popular with people looking to target and rehabilitate their lower back. But if you’re in that position or these have been suggested by your trainer, there are a few reasons you should think twice before giving them a place in your exercise regime. 

In this blog we’ll look at some of the anatomical reasons you should think about your approach to low back rehabilitation differently. We refer to the book, Low Back Disorder by internationally recognised low back specialist, Dr Stuart McGill, and we look at an alternative exercise that could work to help improve your low back pain.

First, some anatomy to help us understand the back muscles at play

When we’re talking about the lower back and lumbar region, we often talk about groups of muscles called extensors, flexors and iliopsoas. These attach to the spine via soft tissues or tendons. And if injured or weakened can cause pain in this tendinous lower back area. 

This time though, we’re going to focus on different m...

Low back pain doesn’t have to be triggered by an event or accident. More often than not it is the result of a build-up or aggregation of actions over a period of time.

The problem is these damaging actions can be pretty mundane things. Normal things you don’t realise are doing you damage. That’s why in this tutorial I want to address some of the everyday causes of low back pain. Because awareness of what you might be doing wrong can actually be half the battle.

Repeated bending of the spine

You drop something and quickly bend down to pick it up. You bend down to talk to or play with young children. You wash up each evening in a sink that’s slightly too low for you.

All of these are actions that might happen every day, but that you perform without really thinking, and often in a rush, giving your body little or no time to prepare for the movement.

Add to this sit ups and crunches that are more deliberate actions but when done wrong can really put strain on the spine and cause low b...

Exercise for low back pain should be therapeutic rather than for fitness, this stage comes next. As your back becomes painful your body will tighten muscles to protect the spine but this creates a muscle imbalance.

Why does your body create a muscle imbalance?

The quick answer, to protect the spine short term but this creates a long-term problem. The psoas muscle becomes tight because it’s closest to the spine and offers short-term stability to spine. If this tightness stays long term it can put unnecessary stress on the spine and trigger back pain.

If one muscle tightens its opposite muscle relaxes

If your psoas becomes tight your gluteal muscles (buttocks) become relaxed. The goal of exercise is to readdress this balance, it means relaxing the tight muscles (psoas) with stretches and activating the relaxed muscle (gluteals) with exercise.

What stretches loosen the psoas muscle?

The psoas starts each side of your lumbar spine and up to the mid-back and diaphragm. It ends on the ...

Exercise for low-back pain is as important as massage or other therapies. In this blog I want to show you how to get exercise right because so many get it wrong. You’ve probably heard the saying “practice makes perfect”, well it’s not the case. Correct practice makes correct practice and incorrect practice makes incorrect practice.

Basically what I’m saying is, you can practice something wrong. This is generally the case for exercise for low back pain. Many people think that doing exercise is right but for low back pain it’s about how you do it. There are a couple of areas to get right and they are:

1. Selecting the right exercises
2. Knowing how to do them right
3. Progressing the exercise to overcome low back pain

Selecting the right exercises

The right exercises for low back pain minimise pressure on the low back, not eliminate pressure. The exercises want to activate areas of the core not single muscles.

Exercises that are out include:

1. Sit Ups
2. Crunches
3. Twists
4. Side Bends
5. Le
...