Break Free From Back Pain

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..