When most people think about back pain, they think about muscles, maybe their core, maybe their posture. But there’s another major player that often gets ignored, and that’s the bones.

That might sound surprising, but if you’re struggling with long-term back discomfort, understanding how your bones work, and how they change as you age, can be a game-changer for managing pain and protecting your spine in the future.

Let’s dive into how your bones develop, what happens to them over time, and how simple lifestyle changes (like the right kind of exercise) can help prevent bone loss and promote lifelong skeletal health

The life cycle of bones: how bones grow

Believe it or not, you weren’t born with "real" bones. At birth, your skeleton was mostly made of cartilage, the soft, flexible stuff you find in your nose and ears. Over time, minerals like calcium and phosphorus get laid into that cartilage, slowly turning it into hard, strong bone.

As a child and teenager, your bones were consta...

There’s a surprising side effect that could be holding you in Lordosis – something you may not have even realised.

What is it?  Internal Rotation.

Now obviously I'm exaggerating a bit. But when we go into the lordotic posture with that extended anterior pelvic tilt, one of the side effects that can come along with it, is an internal rotation of the hips. And that can have further impact down in the knee, the foot and the ankle.

When this happens it’s important to be able to open out the hip so we can get into a better external rotation, or at least ease the tight muscles that are holding us out of alignment. 

So which muscles are involved?

Understanding what’s happening with the muscles when you’re in a lordotic position will help you to understand the mechanism for creating (and therefore correcting) this internal rotation side effect.

Consider the inward curvature that occurs when you’re in Lordosis. You can feel that the muscles of the lower mid-spine have become squashed, whi...

Do you have a hyperlordotic lumbar spine, and would you like to flatten that curve? In this tutorial I talk about three or four steps you can go through to be able to go from a hyperlordotic curve to a normal lordotic curve.

Clue: it’s about more than just stretching.

What do you need to know about the anatomy of the spine?

Probably the most important muscle in relation to the lumbar spine is the psoas muscle. Psoas, sometimes called psoas major, originates from the lumbar spine – lumbar vertebrae L1-L5 and a little bit from T12. It also joins to the diaphragm and goes through the pelvis, joining the inside of the leg.

I explain this in more detail in the video tutorial.

Vitally important for our stability, the psoas literally helps to hold our top and bottom together. But it’s because of where the psoas originates and inserts, that this is the muscle that ends up pulling on the lumbar spine, causing it to go into a hyperextended position.

Changing (and maintaining) the posture o...

Lumbar Lordosis, or an overly pronounced curve in the lower back, can cause pain, soreness and even fatigue. Often impacting day to day life. The good news is with better understanding and some practical exercises, you can live better with Lordosis in the longer term and even overcome many of the symptoms you’re experiencing. But it’s not just about stretching exercises, as you may have been lead to believe.

In the tutorial above I focus on the 3 things you need to do before you begin those exercises:

1.  Foam rolling the anterior parts of the hip

With Lordosis, it’s important to understand that the main culprit is the psoas muscle. This is the one that joins onto the spine, pulling it in to create that inward curve. The anterior pelvic tilt we see actually comes as a secondary effect, caused by your body compensating as it moves.  And this often results in tightness through the front of the hip.

This is the bit we can access with foam rollers.

First, place the foam roller mid-th...

If you have an excessive lumbar curve and you need help to reduce it, there are a number of stretches you can use. Here I want to talk about one of the best ones to use and give you some tips to make sure you’re getting the best out of it. 

Stretching to improve excessive lumbar curve

You may already be familiar with this stretch, and you can tune into the tutorial above, around 0:35, to see an image of the position. But in summary, go down onto two knees, place one foot flat in front of you, so your knee is at a right angle. Then with the leg at the back, hook the foot up on a raised surface, i.e. a bench, so that only your knee is on the floor, creating a V-shape behind you. Place your hands on your front thigh, towards the knee, and lift your shoulders back, keeping your back straight. 

Here, we’re concentrating on the anterior line, adjusting to feel the stretch in the back leg. This stretch is primarily for the rectus femoris muscle, but depending on where you have tightness yo...

If you suffer with Lordosis and want to improve your posture, stretching and exercise are an essential part of any plan. But, how you stretch and exercise is important – that’s why I wanted to talk a bit about how to perform stretches and exercises for lordosis so you get the best possible results.

Here are some common mistakes I see clients making when they’re stretching or exercising to correct Lordosis:

Mistake 1 - Not using everyday activity to correct Lordosis.

Each day you have 24 hours. You sleep for 8 hours so that leaves 16 hours. And how many of those hours do you exercise? Maybe one? Well, that leaves 15 spare hours you can use to either undo the good work that you did in that hour or to really make a positive difference to your posture. Imagine if you did good quality exercise for one hour and then used those 15 hours more effectively, being mindful about the position your body is in, and really thinking about the way you move.  Your brain would learn much quicker and y...