The Kelsey Report

Five Ways to Toughen Up Your Back

 

Most musculoskeletal (muscle, tendon, fascia, ligament, bone, etc) symptoms appear when the physical demand exceeds your physical capacity; your inability to produce and / or absorb sufficient force.

A simple way to understand the relationship of force and ability to withstand it, is this:

  • Stand next to your dining or breakfast table.
  • Take your right hand, place the back of your hand on the table.
  • Now, slowly, lean onto your hand increasing the pressure very gradually.
  • Notice that there’s a point in this process where you experience tension…then pressure…then discomfort and if you continue and press hard enough, you’ll hurt.

This principle is true for garden variety lower back pain or a stiff and achy back. The bottom line is that you hurt when you sit too long, for example, because your body is unable to absorb or distribute the force.

So, here are five ways to create a tougher, more resilient spine.

  1. Brace yourself. There’s a lot of argument in the personal training and physical therapy professions about whether you should consciously contract your abdominal muscles when you lift or do some type of physical work. My position is this: if you’ve had back pain or surgery, the muscles you need the most are not under your conscious control (multifidus being one of them) normally and these same muscles are shut off following the injury and do not re-engage without some help. So, yes, you need to learn how to brace your self using your “core” muscles. The simplest way to learn this is to ask a friend to punch you, gently, in the abdomen. You’ll reflexively brace your abdomen. Then, practice creating that same tension or feeling without actually being punched. Adjust the intensity of the effort based on the difficulty of the task. If you have to pick up something heavy off the floor, brace a lot. If you’re sitting at your desk, brace a little.
  2. Sit less; walk more. The more you move, the better. The enemy of the spine is static loading: sitting, standing. When you walk,use your understanding of bracing. This turns walking into an endurance exercise for your spine. Get a pedometer (or better yet, use an app) and aim for 10,000 steps per day.forearm-plank-300x230
  3. Stop doing sit ups. Sit ups create excessive pressure in the spine and unless you can do them exactly right, and I’ve yet to see someone who can, don’t do them. Use the plank and get not only great abdominal training but also challenge your arms and buttocks.
  4. Squat. The best friend of the spine is your butt and one of the best ways to build a stronger butt is to perform squats. You can start, usually, with body weight as resistance and then progress to above body weight. You should feel fatigue in your legs and spine between 15 and 20 repetitions. If you don’t, it’s time to increase the load.
  5. Plant yourself with the plank. The plank is a great drill for improving spinal muscle endurance and it’s spine friendly with low levels of disc pressure. Start with 30 seconds and work your way up to 120 seconds.

I cover how to build a tougher and more resilient spine in Build a Rock Solid Core: Stop the Sit-Ups and Save Your Spine. I include a testing sequence and then a series of drills based on your test results.

I would like to share with you how fantastic your “Rock Solid Core” drills were and are for my old back!

I started October 20th with “red zone” drills – but doing them on alternate days regularly for about last three weeks – and my nagging low grade lower back pain is gone!

Nothing like a nagging pain as an incentive for doing your drills regularly! – Carmen Rusu

If you can practice these things, your spine will get tougher. And a tougher spine is tougher to hurt.

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Omar says

Dear Doug-

A friend of mine, who is a Beachbody Coach (Beachbody being the fitness company selling P90x, etc), was chatting up core training with me and what I can do to strengthen my back. I had mentioned to him that I recently strained my lower back when I broke form putting away a kettle bell. I must admit that I had been neglecting my core a bit and was likely not ready for the Squat-Swing +35lbs in the first place. He mentioned a drill which he called “Superman to Banana”. You can imagine exactly what it is. You roll from Superman position to something the “opposite” of a Superman.

I asked him:”Doesn’t that drill put excessive compressive load on your spine?. Is it a safe drill?” He conceded that it wasn’t one that should be done under injury and that it is an advanced drill but he’s had great success with it.

But then he said something which peaked my interest: “If Superman is a dangerous drill, then so is Yoga: Down Dog specifically because you arch your back in a similar manner, so if Superman is a dangerous drill, it might be for a different reason other than purely compressive spinal stress. Anyway, please let me know what your PT friend thinks about this because I’d hate to be telling my clients to do the wrong stuff.”

So, there is the crux of my comment and question. Can you clarify, perhaps some of the differences between Down Dog and the Superman and why one may be safer than the other (or not)?

Thanks, man.

    DD Kelsey says

    Hi Omar –

    You’re correct about the Superman (lying face down, lift arms, legs, head and trunk and hold) being an unsafe drill. Very high spinal compression loads. There’s no reason to do it. Ever. Same with the “banana”.

    As for Downward Dog, that drill does not require active extension of the trunk as the Superman drill does. When done properly, you maintain a spine neutral position with the movement coming primarily from the ankles, hips, shoulders, upper back. The load is distributed through the arms/shoulders with low loads on the spine (assuming one can achieve spine neutral). I’m not sure what your friend means when he says, “you arch your back in a similar manner”. The pose does not require you to arch your back into extension or really move it at all (although people with insufficient hip and ankle mobility will likely flex in the lumbar spine).

    As for yoga in general, sure there are plenty of movements and positions that are risky. The teacher and participant should understand which movements and poses are the safest and achieve the objective.

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