Lower Back Pain

[One-Off]

Surfing last summer during a hurricane swell with my 59 year old friend who still rips, I asked him how he keeps so amped up, he said he does this foundation training video (or the original one by the same guy) every morning and he swears it helped eliminate his back pain. Since then I've been doing it in the morning before work followed by a couple sets of push ups. almost every day for months now, seems to really help with back issues. It is only 12 minutes and pretty easy to do.

Do you actually do that routine? It seems like a lot of moving parts. The most important (preventative) thing IMHO is that you find something that you can commit to and do regularly. The best exercise is one you do. I see that and I would have to watch the video every time I do it. I just don't think could commit to that. For me it has to be simple k
k.i.s.s.

Sitting destroys my back more than anything, especially driving. Most of the time, my pain is due to tight psoas and iliacus muscles. These muscles insert on your lumbar vertebrae and inside pelvic bowl(respectively) and insert on the upper third of your femur. They are the main hip flexors and when you sit continuously the muscles get short and tense, pulling forward on your lumbar spine and pelvis. My hip flexors vs. hip extensors got unbalanced. Both were weak. And my psoas were short and glutes were slack.

2 things help me on a daily basis. Strengthening my glutes and releasing my psoas. The tool I use to release is called a Pso-rite. It’s like $60 and it’s basically a chunk of plastic but it’s incredibly effective. Probably the most uncomfortable feeling in the world, basically deep massage of your back but you are approaching it from the front of your body. There are tons of videos on YouTube about it.

I do this every morning as part of my morning stretch routine-

 

[slipped_disc]

I’ve gone through some gnarly and debilitating back pain, and rebounded with a ton of awareness and education about the body.

If your back is actively spasming, you need to rest it. Once the spasms have subsided, then you can introduce movement.

From here, youll have to explore a bit to find what works for you — everyone is really different t when it comes to backs — but ultimately everyone has to address a few key things:

Core Strength: look up TVA activation. This is a core stabilizing muscle and one that’s good to have mind/body connection to. It’s the innermost muscle that protects your spine. If that’s weak, you’re going to have problems.

Basic Movement patterns: once you build up some core strength, you gotta integrate it into movements. The basics would be squats, lunges, hinging, twists, etc. slowly build strength in this

Flexibility and Mobility: Fairly self explanatory, but like someone said pay close attention to the hips: the front (psoas), sides and backs (glutes)

There are lots of programs that addresss this stuff that you can find online or with a therapist. But whatever path you go, be consistent and don’t push it too hard. Also know that the path to getting better can have lots of ups And downs. If this is your first time though, you’ll snap back pretty soon I’d bet.

 

[grg]

Im moving forward to getting a lower disk replaced with a fake one. Too many episodes lately.

 

[One-Off]

Flexibility and Mobility: Fairly self explanatory, but like someone said pay close attention to the hips: the front (psoas), sides and backs (glutes)

And hamstrings.

 

[grg]

Im moving forward to getting a lower disk replaced with a fake one. Too many episodes lately.

Not sad at all. Super stoked to get it done??

 

[One-Off]

Not sad at all. Super stoked to get it done??

was for the fact that your back got to that point. Good luck with the surgery. Hope it resolves the issues.

 

[Random Guy]

Read the fucking book, man

 

[manbearpig]

Read the fucking book, man

What book?

 

[CutnSnip]

What book?

theres a book out there that says most back pain is all in your head. this would coincide w/ what my DR's tell me regarding my own situation but when my back locks up im not sure any form of wishful thinking will fix it.

 

[gbg]

If you are sitting alot your hips are tight. And so is your back. Gotta do dynamic hip mobility exercises. Cat & cow for your back. I go right to the floor every morning and stretch and do mobility work. I move better than I did in my early 30s.

 

[casa_mugrienta]

PT = stretches you can find on the internet so IMO a waste of time and $

I would very much disagree.

It's actually really valuable to have someone with a doctorate on the topic that has treated thousands of patients show you the proper way to do exercises, what exercises to do (or not to do), stretches to do (or not to do).

There's usually one way to do an exercise right, getting the most benefit, and a million ways to do it wrong.

If there was no value in going to PT insurance would not be paying for it. They'd email you a link to a webpage with exercises instead.

 

[One-Off]

What book?

Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection

“Dr. Sarno saved me from a life of pain.” — Howard Ster…

www.goodreads.com

It’s not a magic pill. Establishes the fact that disc pathology is not always physiologically responsible for pain, but goes on to ascribe it to unresolved emotional stress which obviously he does not prescribe a cure for. He even goes so far as to discourage physical therapy saying it reinforces the idea that the pain is physical. A little too Freudian for my tastes. YMMV. I didn’t buy it (his ideas) 100%.

Maybe that’s why my back pain is not 100% gone.

 

[CutnSnip]

I would very much disagree.

It's actually really valuable to have someone with a doctorate on the topic that has treated thousands of patients show you the proper way to do exercises, what exercises to do (or not to do), stretches to do (or not to do).

There's usually one way to do an exercise right, getting the most benefit, and a million ways to do it wrong.

If there was no value in going to PT insurance would not be paying for it. They'd email you a link to a webpage with exercises instead.

just relaying my personal experience with it. YMMV

 

[Truth]

Surfing last summer during a hurricane swell with my 59 year old friend who still rips, I asked him how he keeps so amped up, he said he does this foundation training video (or the original one by the same guy) every morning and he swears it helped eliminate his back pain. Since then I've been doing it in the morning before work followed by a couple sets of push ups. almost every day for months now, seems to really help with back issues. It is only 12 minutes and pretty easy to do.

do it daily - has helped so much

 

[One-Off]

just relaying my personal experience with it. YMMV

My experience is that it was somewhat helpful in the acute phase, just to get you started with some movements, and feeling safe because you are doing them under "professional" care. The manipulation and massage treatments they gave were nice, but ultimately useless.

One rule of thumb to remember is - do as much as you can (movement, exercise) but back off if it triggers pain or makes it worse. Both my PT and "Dr. Von Meister" repeat this. But keep moving- you have to keep moving the boundary of the pain trigger, convincing your nervous system that the movement is OK.

Took me almost a year to where I felt comfortable doing pop up exercises. I was doing all kinds of stuff, including bodyweight deadifts but the dynamic quality of the pop up, with the back whipping itself from extension to flexion, was the last hurdle. Still working on that. I'm afraid in the end, given the inexorable march of age, it's a losing battle, but I'll go down fighting...

 

[Random Guy]

Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection

“Dr. Sarno saved me from a life of pain.” — Howard Ster…

www.goodreads.com

It’s not a magic pill. Establishes the fact that disc pathology is not always physiologically responsible for pain, but goes on to ascribe it to unresolved emotional stress which obviously he does not prescribe a cure for. He even goes so far as to discourage physical therapy saying it reinforces the idea that the pain is physical. A little too Freudian for my tastes. YMMV. I didn’t buy it (his ideas) 100%.

Maybe that’s why my back pain is not 100% gone.

Yeah, I can’t totally buy into it either
But my back spasms went away just before finishing the book and that was probably more than 15 years ago
@whos your daddy introduced me to is
It cured my back pain, but not my skepticism of the book

 

[gbg]

Anybody that sits needs to do this sit cross lean stretch.

 

[manbearpig]

Thanks @gbg I’ll be doing a lot of at home PT so specific stretches are helpful. Doc gave me a prescription and I started last week but got hit with COVID, so gonna cancel all my appointments this week. Don’t want to wait and sit on my ass.

 

[Random Guy]

Sorry you’ve got covid
If you’re not feeling too shitty, read the fucking book

 

[Chocki]