Exercising with back pain - Fitness truths

Fitness Truths: stretching, good or bad for you?
Improve your posture 

Posture is the way that we hold ourselves both statically, when standing still, and dynamically, when we perform tasks that involve bending, lifting and so on. When posture is good, the vertebrae in the spine are correctly aligned and loaded and we move efficiently. In some circles the issue of posture is perhaps overplayed, especially for those with otherwise healthy structures, but if we can improve our posture, both statically and dynamically, we are likely to be taking a significant amount of load and stress off our bodies.

Some postural improvement can be brought about through corrective exercise, although my suggestion is that posture is as much, if not more, about neural adaption, than muscular. In other words, much of our postural behaviours are habits and are a product of patterns that we have learned, rather than muscles that are either tight and short or long and weak. I'm not suggesting musculoskeletal factors are not important, far from it, but I think we should look at it as a systemic issue.

Focus on corrective exercise will also help, but improving efficiency of movement, especially in the gym, will probably yield greater changes. If we take the time to do some movement re-education training and learn how to move and exercise in the right way, whilst perhaps also targeting some specific muscles, we will probably find that this this will go a long way towards alleviating any symptoms, as the right muscles start to become more active and our body becomes systemically stronger.



Fitness Truths: five reasons your workout isn't working
Develop structural balance
Most of us have muscle and strength imbalances throughout our bodies. Some of this is developed through childhood, whilst some of it is adaptation to our daily activities where we perform some activities repeatedly, using certain movement patterns and muscles over and over, and therefore creating relative imbalances. Some degree of imbalance is normal, perhaps even beneficial in some instances, but where it becomes too pronounced, it can cause issues.

If we use our previous example of spending too much time in a seated position, where the muscles at the front to the hips tighten and the muscles of the backside become relatively weak, a good programme of hip flexor stretches or Yoga style warrior poses, coupled with some glute activation and strengthening for example, can go a long way to rebalancing the hips. The same is true with an imbalance at the shoulder, where we can focus on strengthening the muscles at the back of the shoulder to bring them in line with those at the front.

We need the correct balance of mobility and stability throughout the body in order to function correctly. Although perhaps not the perfect system, it is also helpful to view the body from a joint-by-joint perspective, where the joints are loaded alternately with either a predominance of mobility or stability. We need a degree of both at each of course, but at the ankle we need more mobility, stability at knee, mobility at the hip, stability in the lower back, mobility in the thoracic spine, and stability at the shoulder.

A deviation from the predominant requirement in any of these joints will lead to potential complications in the joint above and or below, so it is important that we get this balance right, according to our personal structure and requirements.