5 Ways to Banish Back Pain

Back pain is such a big problem in today’s society with over half the population suffering from some sort of chronic back pain. We seem to let it get the best of us and end up taking a ton of over the counter anti-inflammatory painkillers.
Below I have outlined some simple strategies to rid you of the back pain for good.

1- Assess your posture
The first step to fixing your back pain is to identify your posture, in particularly your hips, what way do they tilt? Ideally they should sit level, this is known as neutral spine. However an anterior pelvic tilt is most common, this is where your hips tilt down at the front causing an ‘s’ shape in your lower back. It is this ‘s’ shape that causes excessive pressure on your lower back leading to tightness and pain.

2- Stretch your hip flexors
If I had a pound for every time I assessed someone with tight hip flexors I would be a very rich man. Tight hip flexors (the muscles that run down the front of your hip) tend to occur from too much sitting down. Everyone I know sits down far too much. We begin our day by sitting down to eat breakfast, we then drive to work, sit at our desk all day, sit on the exercise bike for our lunchtime training session and then finally sit down to watch television and eat dinner. The problem with tight hip flexors is that it pulls down the front of your hips leading to excess curvature of your lumber spine (hyperlordosis).

3- Activate your glutes
Your glutes are the biggest and supposed to be the strongest muscles in your body. As we sit on our butts all day, our glute muscles tend to disengage and switch off causing faulty firing patterns. When you bend down to pick something heavy up, your glutes and legs should do most of the work, unfortunately if your glutes are not firing then the next big muscle will come in and take over. That next big muscle is your lower back and becomes a recipe for disaster. Exercises to strengthen your glutes are hip extensions and clams. Practice these every day for at least 5 minutes to get your butt working again.

4- Learn to brace your core
If I told you I was going to punch you in the stomach, you would automatically tighten up your stomach muscles. This is known as bracing your core. Bracing your core will help to stabilise your spine, protecting it from trauma. When you exercise, focus on movements like planks, side planks and pallof presses. These exercises naturally work on bracing your core muscles preventing unwanted back movement.

5- Stop doing crunches and sit ups
Endless crunches and sit ups will do nothing for flattening your stomach and will more than likely leave you with back niggles and pains. When you perform hundreds of crunches and sit ups, you are shortening the abdominal musculature ultimately pulling your chest down towards your belly. This will weaken your spine and leave you vulnerable when picking heavy objects off the floor. Instead focus on anti-flexion, anti-extension and anti-rotational movements. Exercises as I mentioned before such as planks, side planks and pallof presses work perfectly here.

Implement these simple strategies on a daily basis and see how quickly your back pain disappears for good.