Tips for Making Your Exercises Reduce Lower Back Pain Instead of Exacerbate It

While many people suffer from lower back pain and injuries, a much smaller number are ever able to get over their discomfort and either come back to work without pain or regain the ability to enjoy an athletically active lifestyle. Even people who are prescribed various back injuries by their doctors often find little actual recovery after months or years of doing the exercises. This is often due to a number of reasons, including poor exercise selection, performing the movements at the wrong time of day, and exercises for performance instead of health.

For people suffering from lower back pain, it is important to choose the right exercises. While some movements are appropriate in certain circumstances, others are almost never appropriate. For instance, back extensions and sit-ups place enormous stress on the joints and connective tissues of the lower back compared to other exercises. It is debatable whether or not a sit-up or back extension movement should ever be recommended for a person who has suffered a low back injury. The compressive forces placed on the spine during these exercises is too much risk for too little reward.

Moreover, even if the correct movement patterns and exercises are prescribed, they should not be done right after waking up and within the first hour or two after rising from bed. Due to a build-up of pressure in the discs during the night, performing low back flexion and other exercises can place undue stress on the discs and other tissues, which can exacerbate an injury. Thus, even if the exercises are appropriate and have the potential to reduce pain, they usually must not be done soon after getting out of bed because of the higher risk of injury due to biological changes in the body during sleep.

Finally, low back patients and doctors should keep in mind the difference between training for performance and training for health. Training for health involves reinforcing the movement patterns and postures that will lead to less pain and the ability to perform normal daily tasks again. This type of training does not include the "no pain, no gain" axiom, whereas training for athletic performance does involve training to fatigue and break down the muscles to build strength. For people who are recovering from a lower back injury, it is more important to train for better health with no pain, rather than improving athletic performance right away.

Keeping these three simple tips in mind can help people suffering from low back disorders begin to move again with no pain and benefit from the rehabilitation exercises that their doctors and clinicians have recommended they do. Too many people begin back fitness programs after sustaining an injury, but are unable to get back to a life of pain-free movement because of a few simple mistakes they make in implementing their program. But by choosing the right exercises, avoiding stretching or strengthening movements right after rising from bed, and training for health and pain-free movement instead of muscle strength, many people currently suffering from back injuries can learn to move and live again.