Tag: exercises for low back pain

How to Fix “Low Back” Pain (INSTANTLY!)

Pick your program here – http://athleanx.com/x/my-workouts
Subscribe to this channel here – http://bit.ly/2b0coMW

Low back pain is by far the most common source of discomfort we deal with. The irony is, a lot of times what we feel is rooted in the lower back is actually caused by muscles not in the back at all. In this video, I’m going to show you how the glute medius could be the real cause of your back pain and a quick exercise you can do to relieve your discomfort instantly. Once gone, I’m also going to show you a few additional exercises you can do to make sure your low back pain never returns.

The gluteus medius is sandwiched between the glute maximus and minimus and lies in and around the hip area. The role of the muscle is to abduct your hip or lift your leg out to the side in either standing or side lying and to keep your pelvis level whenever you take a step. Prolonged sitting during the day as well as an unequal weight distribution when standing are two of the most common reasons for this muscle to get weak and imbalanced.

You can quickly test to see if you have the makings of a weak glute medius by standing with your feet shoulder width apart and lifting one foot off the ground. First take note whether or not your opposite hip drops significantly. If it does, this would indicate a glute weakness on that side. You would repeat with the opposite foot as well. When you do this you would also want to see if you had to dramatically shift your weight to one side just to lift that foot off the ground. If you do, this would indicate that you have an unequal weight distribution when standing and it would be especially troublesome when squatting.

To fix this quickly, you will want to lay down on the ground with your affected side on top. If your right lower back was bothering you then you would want to lie on your left hip. From here, take your thumb and place it on the area most sore. You should feel that this is going to happen just to the outside of the bony prominence of your pelvis. From here, push to hold back the trigger point and start flossing your leg down and in front of you and then back and up. Your hip should be extended and then lifted into abduction towards the ceiling (being sure to point the toes down to keep the glute medius in focus). Do this about 10 times until you feel the tension in the muscle release.

Now, you can burn out the spasm in the trigger point by getting into the fully contracted position of the glute medius muscle and holding as long as you can. Generally, because this muscle is often very weak, this may not be any longer than 30 seconds to a minute. Once you cannot hold it any more you will stand up and you should notice an immediate relief of the pain on that side.

This is the quick but not permanent fix for this problem. Since the underlying cause is weakness in the gluteus medius muscle you will want to back this up with some exercises for your low back that you can do a few times a week. I show you three options for this. The first is the hip bump against the wall. The second is called the sack swinger, and can be done with a dog leash if you don’t have a formal dip belt. The last is actually doing the same movement that you did for the treatment, but this time as a strengthening exercise for your low back.

Whatever you do, just be sure you are consistent. You will also see that as you relieve the tension in this muscle that your squat performance improves as well. Your depth should be increased and any low back pain that you felt by doing the exercise should be gone since you will now be able to do them with equal force through each leg.

If you are looking for a program that puts the science back in strength in every workout, head to http://athleanx.com and get the ATHLEAN-X Training System. Start not only looking like an athlete but feeling like one as you take your training serious and take your results to the next level.

If you are looking for more exercises and stretches for low back pain as well as workouts you can do with lower back pain, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube at http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24

Low Back Pain Relief (ONE MOVE!)

Build a your strongest back and body in just 90 days
http://athleanx.com/x/get-your-strongest-body-here

Low back pain is one of the most common and debilitating injuries that can crush your workouts and progress. Anyone that has ever had a bad back can tell you just how quickly it can prevent you from working out at all, let alone with enough intensity to see gains. In this video, I show you a single exercise that you can use to start getting low back pain relief in the weeks ahead.

The key to this movement sequence is that it attacks the back pain at its source rather than at its location. Too often, people feel the pain in their back and look for treatments that treat that pain. This is not a good long term approach for beating the lumbar pain once and for all. All you are doing is temporarily treating symptoms when you do this. If you want to get rid of the pain in your back once and for all you have to figure out what is causing it in the first place.

Most of the time, all pain can be sourced to a joint either immediately above or below the site of the pain. In the case of the lower back, you would want to look at either the hips below or the thoracic spine above. In my experience as a sports physical therapist, I can tell you it’s almost always the hips (and glutes specifically) that aren’t doing their job and aren’t trained to work in concert with the muscles of the lower back that tends to lead to the breakdowns and resulting low back pain.

The muscles of the lower back just aren’t strong enough to handle the responsibility of the glutes as well. If you can get your glutes to start contributing in the way they are supposed to, you’ll see just how fast you can actually start treating your low back pain and get rid of it by strengthening the source of the problem.

Here I show you three individual exercises that you can use to progress through your lower back pain treatment. First, if you are not acutely injured but are dealing with a chronic low back issue and have pretty significant weakness in your lumbar paraspinals you would use just a band. As I demonstrate in the video, walk yourself into a squat rack with the band anchored across your path. Allow the band to push you back into a normal hip hinge. Overcome the resistance of the band by contracting your glutes and standing as straight up as you can to tie in thoracic extension as well.

Moving on, you can load the lumbar extensors a bit more (provided you have more strength) by adding in the RDL component of the exercises. Perform the same hip / glute extension as well as the RDL and you will feel a great co-contraction between the two muscle groups that would prefer to work together all along.

Finally, you can get thoracic spine strengthening as well by performing a bent row in the middle of each rep to really take your low back pain relief plan to the next level.

If you are looking to build a much stronger body while fortifying your low back and get rid of back pain once and for all, be sure to head to http://athleanx.com and get the ATHLEAN-X Training System. Start training like an athlete and see just how fast you can reach your body’s potential.

For more videos on how to build a strong lower back and exercises you can do for back pain relief, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube at http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24