Break Free From Back Pain

Active Stretches. 

Before exercise do what is known as an active stretch. That is swing the limb in an arc that replicates the movements you will be doing, don’t do what is known as a passive stretch ie stretch and hold. 

An active stretch wakes the muscle up, stimulates blood flow and heightens your body awareness for that area. A passive stretch reduces your body’s awareness as already mentioned. (See previous blog).

Make sure that you don’t overdo the stretch, let the limb limber up at it’s own pace, do some gentle exercise in the sport or activity that you plan to do and combine it with the active stretch. For example if you are going to swim, swing the arms forwards and back in an ever increasing arc, then also pull the arms back tightening between the shoulders and reverse across the chest.

 When doing an active or passive stretch try not to stretch the spine or neck too much.

Passive Stretching. 

Passive stretching is used after exercise when you are cooling down, then you can gently stretch and hold. The aim of this is to maintain muscle length, but again don’t get carried away with trying to achieve the flexibility of a gymnast, if you overdo it you can tear weakened muscles and as mentioned before the longer the muscle the less feedback you’ll have from it unless you train your proprioception (balance sense).

Suggested Order Of Exercise.

 This should be the program for your exercise;

• Firstly picture yourself doing the exercise, this primes your nervous system.
• Secondly do the active stretches in combination with a warm up, then go for it, within your limits, making sure that you have good form and are in control of your exercise.
• If you feel that you are losing control, e.g. dropping a hip or getting tired, then stop for a while try again until your form goes and repeat, if you can’t maintain the good form then stop.
• It really isn’t good to be jogging when you can barely raise your feet off the ground, you’d be better off walking, and your shoes will last longer!!!
• Do your warm down then gentle passive stretches.
•  Try to focus on the limb so that most of the movement comes from there. I’ll explain why on a later update.

For example, to stretch the Hamstrings keep the low back locked out hollow, never bend from the waist to touch toes, it will weaken your lower back and could even cause a disc prolapse.

 You can either put your leg up on a low stool or step and bend forwards from the hips keeping the low back straight or you can do the Cossack as I call it.  Leg stretched out straight, low back locked out straight and lower your body by bending the other knee that supports your weight, keep the knee out don’t let it buckle in. It’s a good idea to hold on to something for additional support if you are a little unsteady.

 As this blog develops it will gradually build into a volume that has many more specific exercises and stretches in it. Stay tuned for the next one it won’t be long. I’ll be adding photo’s and video soon.

So you now know that it is not going to be easy to achieve fitness while staying free from back pain, if you follow the tips that I give to you, you will be in a much better informed position to get the best from your sports training or back pain rehabilition and achieve the results you want and you will also be less likely to need back pain treatment. 

Its Not As Simple As Just Stretching..

So the first big mistake you are likely to make or be told to do is stretch before exercise. Stretching has it’s place but it needs to be the correct type at the correct time, done correctly. In order to understand why it can be done wrong you need a quick lesson on how the nervous system controls muscles. 

The Incredible You.. 

Your body is covered in sensors that detect the position of a joint, the tension on a muscle, the pressure on a surface. These mechano-receptors constantly send information to the spinal cord through fast acting nerve fibres. After all these are the balance or Proprioceptive nerves if they were slow we’d all be on the floor.

If you don’t have these fibres you’d literally be totally unaware that you had a body unless you looked at it!!! The result, your limbs would wander around all over the place seemingly with a mind of their own. 

Within muscles you have stretch receptors called muscle spindles, within tendons you have others called golgi tendon organs (sounds like something from a B movie). These detect the power and length of a muscle contraction or stretch.

Why Some Stretches Are Bad..

If you stretch the muscle and hold that stretch before exercise you will lengthen the muscle and tendon. The result is that during exercise, the muscle spindles and tendon organs will have to be stretched even further before they detect the increased length of your muscle. The result, you have less feedback, less control, you won’t react as well to overstrains and are more likely to hurt yourself.

Also, tendons and muscles are elastic, if they are stretched they will rebound, if they are overstretched this rebound will reduce. So consider what happens when you run. As your foot hits the floor and your leg extends, the ankle is flexed and the calf stretched, if the muscle is still tight then it will give you some passive spring, if it is overstretched there will be less spring and the muscle will have to contract harder to give you the push off. The result is at best reduced performance, at worst a torn calf due to overstretch and strain.

Why You Shouldn’t Worry Too Much About That Tight Muscle..

So if you have a tight muscle before exercise, don’t try to stretch it out, it is probably tight for a reason, that could be because the muscle is trying to stabilise a joint, stretch the muscle and you make the joint less stable, warm it up, prime it for action and you’ll loosen the muscle while maintaining the stabilising effect. 

So how do you stretch before exercise and stabilise joints and increase athletic performance? More of that on the next entry..

It’s a new year again, traditionally the time of year when we look at our waist-lines and think of all those mince pies we should’ve left alone. Maybe you will start a detox diet, or perhaps this year it will be the  start of a gym membership.

 Fundamentals Of Any Exercise Program

If you have good intentions along these lines then this is the first instalment of a guide to exercising again after a long lay off. If you’ve already been a gym member then this information is still vital to make sure that you are doing things correctly. 

Three Paths To Chose.

So firstly you have 3 options in staying free of back pain or reducing your chances of sports injuries.

1. Firstly don’t do anything!!!! Great say those of you who really weren’t up for it, so where will this lead you? Well if your joints aren’t getting used and the muscles weaken you will almost certainly get degeneration and arthritis, I’ll touch on this further at a later date. 
2. So you’ll have to chose another option: Go to the gym and train hard, no pain no gain that must be the way to go!! As you have probably guessed that is not the right option either. Over straining and over training joints and muscles causes damage and can lead to poor movement patterns that lay the foundations for further injuries, this leads to…..You guessed it…Arthritis. 
3. So there is only one option left: this is the road less travelled it involves exercise that is done in a controlled way, step by step, that replicates the correct movements and reduces stress on joints and ligaments while also still training the muscles to be strong but to maintain good stable healthy joints. 

 Functional Training Exercises

You have a functional range, it may be big allowing you to do alot of training before you get past the threshold for injury or it may be small meaning even slightly out of the ordinary tasks can trigger pain. The important thing is that you must train up to, but not beyond that threshold. Stay at that threshold until you feel your form fading, then rest or change activity. Gardually as your stamina improves, your functional range will improve.

I’ll discuss how to find your range and how to build up exercises and in what order later in the program.

If you have a problem now, training will result in further injury, it will re-inforce poor movements and help to bed in your area of weakness. So you must address the problem, but don’t just focus on the pain, make sure you are working correctly too. Again more on that soon…

Get The Balance Right

If you are pain free, you may still have poor movements and when you start to train harder you’ll get an injury. So the vital thing is to get good movement patterns before you start to apply loads. In other words get the balance of the muscles right first and the range of movement of the joints balanced.

If you’d like to know more on how to do this, sign up or click the RSS feed logo and you’ll be notified of updates..The next update will be with you soon hopefully before you get in the bad habits at the gym.

The most fundamental mistake most people make when they have back pain is to put heat on the painful joint. If you have pain you will have a combination of torn ligament, joint capsule or muscle fibres, this causes inflammation and local swelling. The secondary swelling causes further damage.

What Happens When You Heat It?

Putting heat on an injured joint makes it feel better….for a while, but did you know that you could actually be prolonging or even increasing your pain. How come?

Heat increases blood flow, this makes the muscles less achey but if you have inflammation you’ll make it worse as the blood vessels will become more permeable allowing more swelling and more inflammatory chemicals to be produced. The result a short while after you remove the heat your muscles will tighten up again, as they try to protect the damaged joint. So you feel stiff again and put more heat on. The result a vicious cycle of inflammation.

How Does Ice Help?

If you put an ice pack wrapped in a thin cloth over the joint you’ll reduce the blood flow and the permeability of the blood vessels, you’ll also reduce the production of inflammatory chemicals. This reduces inflammation and also the nerves become less active helping to numb the pain, speeding up the healing process as well.

Why Do We Have Pain?

Pain is an important message, it tells you something is wrong, it also changes the way you move so that you don’t hurt the injured area more. This can be a good thing initially, but unfortunately sometimes the pain can persist or can actually be far in excess of the actual injury.

In other words you can over-react to your back injury or joint sprain. If you move awkwardly for a long period you’ll develop other problems. Have you ever sprained an ankle? Probably, did you limp? Almost certainly, what did that do for your back, make it ache? Now imagine that the pain has gone, but your back muscles stay tight on one side, you now have the beginnings of a back problem.

SO..if you ice the injured joint as soon as possible, you’ll reduce the damage and the pain, you won’t compensate for the injury and you’ll be less likely to affect other joints.

Think of it as fighting a house fire. You get the flames under control with the first ice packs done very regularly, then you continue to pour on water to get the flames out, but the embers are still very hot so you must continue to pour on water for a good while after to ensure the flames don’t take hold again. This is what you do with ice packs.

Now imagine if you came to the injured ankle joint and got it hotter, it would swell more, become more painful, and yet so many people do this to their injured back joints. Imagine putting petrol on that house fire or getting in a big fan, you’d soon have more than your house on fire. The fire would keep burning until you stopped.

So Here Is A Guide To Pain Relief For Back Pain Or Sprained Joints.

If you have any pain, you will have a degree of inflammation. Ice will reduce the inflammation, it is specific and there are no side-effects unless you forget the cloth, then you’ll end up with frost bite and skin soreness.

So wrap the pack up, try to use a flexible pack, if you haven’t got one try peas, just don’t eat them afterwards!!

Place the pack over the joint, do 10 mins for neck pain treatment, elbow pain treatment, wrist pain treatment, ankle sprains or foot injuries, 15 mins for mid back pain (thoracic pain), shoulder pains, knee injuries and 20 minutes for low back pains.

It needs to be repeated after two hours until the pain has gone, then keep going a couple of times a day for another 3 days (put out those embers!!!).

BIG TIP: just because the pain has gone doesn’t mean everything is OK. It takes up to three months on average for a ligament or joint to recover fully, so it won’t be as strong as it was before.

In fact some studies have shown disturbed movements of the lower back even years after an injury. So It’s very important to correct abnormal function and muscle imbalances. More on that later…

Welcome to this blog and thanks for having a look. I have made this to help you understand why you get back pain, how to treat your back pain, what to do to reduce your back pain and back pain treatments that are available. It will also build into a volume that if you follow it will help you to understand and treat your own back pain and your sports injuries or other joint pain too.

Trying to learn about back pain and how to treat it can be very confusing, you have probably come across lots of sites that will claim to give you the answers, some may be spot on, others may actually mean you could be more likely to get trouble. So how do you know who to trust?

Well, I have always aimed to give my patients the very best back pain treatment that can be given, after all if you aren’t doing things to the best of your ability you really shouldn’t bother to do them at all. I am passionate about helping my patients get the best tools to be able to help themselves.

Why have all the knowledge to help people if you keep it a secret that can only be accessed if you pay. If a friend was in trouble I would tell them how to deal with it themselves, if they needed hands on help I would help them reach the longest lasting result, in the quickest most cost-effective way possible, and that is what I am going to give to you.

So in a world of many experts how do you know you can trust me, well you don’t yet, but if you read on you’ll learn so much useful information about back pain treatment that you will end up being your own specialist.

Fundamentally all our spines are similair, we all bend in similair ways as we go about our routine tasks, however the way our bodies react to those tasks is different and dependant on our previous history, how we are made structurally and how we relate to different events. We therefore develop different back pains, these back pains need to be treated differently. So how can following a generic one size fits all exercise program ever be successful for everyone?

In fact did you know 70% of back pain patients will be helped, 10% are likely to get worse and 20% will be patients for ever if you followed a generalised back pain treatment plan. So surely you need someone to diagnose the problem and treat accordingly.

In an ideal world that would be the best plan of action, however if you are trained to learn and recognise the imbalances that lead to the stress on your joints, you could treat your own back pain.

Imagine how good that could be, how much money you’d save,

how much more confidence you’d have.

To take control of your own back pain treatment, no more confusion. Do you know what’s even better, you could get rid of your back pain but also end up with a back that was stronger, more efficient, better stamina, more accurate control. How would that help your golf, running, swimming, tennis?

If you don’t play sports, can you imagine how it would be to feel freer, have more bounce, you might start to feel so good you’d even end up taking up a sport. There’s no better feeling than being able to perform to the best of your ability and get that lift that comes with exercise and good healthy muscles, ligaments and joints.

If you’d like to find out how to help yourself click the RSS feed button at the top and you’ll get updates as they arrive.