Comments, A Medical Conference, New Findings on Discs

By the time this post comes out, we should be halfway out West to a medical conference. I'm presenting a study, which took years to do, and which found something unexpected.

I am a medical researcher. I find out the things that doctors (with any luck) then learn and put into practice. A research career has all (and more) of the medical schooling, but without the burden of the medical salary. In previous studies, I found that chronically overdoing the inward lower spine curve pinches the lower spine. It forces the spine joints, called facets, backward against each other, eventually wearing them out, and compresses surrounding soft tissue. After long periods of standing, exercise, and lifting with too much inward curve, lower back pain is not a big surprise or mysterious to fix. In the work I am presenting, I found that although it is known that the main factor to injure vertebral discs is too much bending forward, that overarching backward can hurt discs too. This is a new proposed mechanism of disc injury.

There is supposed to be a small inward curve to the lower spine. With the (very) small normal inward curve, spine bones line up on top of each other like stacks of cups so that there is equal pressure on discs from front to back. That is called normal lordosis (inward curve). Chronic bending forward manages to unequally load the discs so that they push out in back. Overarching also unequally loads the area. It seems to pinch already protruded discs, and may even factor in the herniation process. I will be presenting on years of my work that lead to this finding.

I made a diagram showing the disc injury coming from overarching/ hyperlordosis/ hyperextending the spine that is so common in pop fitness. The Healthline blog software is still not loading any new photos of my own. Stock photos or those from other people's sharing sites appear, but I the blogger is not letting us get my own diagrams and student photos to you, for now. I mailed the image to Healthline.com staffer Jerry, who said he could upload it for you. It should appear here, below this paragraph, so you can understand better why hyper-lordosis, although common, and often taught, it not neutral spine and can make unnecessary pain. The damage and pain can be quick to fix when you know how. Click the labels "facets" and "lordosis" for posts explaining this issue.

I have to pay the travel to get to the conference, pay the conference fee, essentially, pay to work. I have to bring a computer and projector to give my own presentation (or pay an AV fee to the conference) but won't have Internet access to see or answer questions. Leave fun comments but hold questions for the next two weeks.

Related:

Neutral Spine or Not?
What is Neutral Spine and Why Does Sticking Out In Back Harm?
Friday Fast Fitness - Neutral Spine in 5 Seconds
Aren't You Supposed To Stick Your Behind Out to Sit Down or Do Squats?
Using Abdominal Muscles is Not Tightening or Pressing Navel to Spine
Prevent Main Factor in Back Pain After Running and Walking
Back Pain From Running
Disc Pain - Not a Mystery, Easy to Fix

Our Travel to Another Conference Last Year:

The Coming Two Weeks

Story of Past Travel to Underwater Medicine Conference:

Hyperbaric and Aquatic Medicine On Travel

Photo is me, taken on the way on the way to a previous medical conference, out for some barefoot climbing.

Labels: disc, education, facet joints, facets, fix pain, lordosis, lower back

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Fast Fitness - Straighten and Stretch Hip While Strengthening Core, Arms, Legs, and Balance

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - Increase strength and muscular endurance of your body working as a whole, and learn to keep neutral spine and good hip position against resistance.

1. From a pushup position, turn to the side, raising one arm overhead, holding legs and body straight.


2. Raise your top leg. Notice if you increase the inward curve of your lower back (overarch to hyperlordosis) and if you bring the leg forward - demonstrated in the upper photo.
   


3. Instead, hold straight. To feel position, practice against a wall - demonstrated in the lower photo. Bring the back of the raised leg against the wall. Press your lower back closer toward the wall instead of letting it overarch from the weight of your leg pulling the spine.

The idea is to use the wall as a guide to learn positioning, then use your muscles and sense of positioning to hold straight without the wall from then onward.

More Fitness Fixer on Side Plank:

• To get started holding a side plank, see Fast Friday - Functional Oblique Abdominal Muscle Practice - Holding Straight
• For challenging addition, try Fast Friday - Oblique Core Strength and Balance on the Ball

Labels: abdominal muscles, arm, endurance, fast fitness, hip strength, hip stretch, leg strength, lordosis, neutral spine, posture

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Fast Fitness - How Abdominal Muscles Prevent Hyperlordosis When Carrying

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - How to use your abdominal muscles to maintain neutral spine when carrying babies, and other things held and carried.

1. When you hold loads in front, notice if you lean your upper body backward - right-hand photo marked with red X. Leaning backward from the waist increases lumbar lordosis (hyperlordosis) which pinches the lower spine, causing aching after long standing.
2. Instead, stand upright - middle and left photo. The muscles that pull your spine forward to straight position against the load are your abdominal muscles. Upper spine angle will be a little more upright than pictured (center).
   
3. It is a myth that you must lean back to offset a carried load. You get a free abdominal muscle workout and increase abdominal muscles endurance by using them (not tightening) to change from painful to healthful standing position. Breathe normally.

David from Belgium is pictured at left. David has made many contributions to Fitness Fixer through photos, movies, success stories fixing his own pain and of his yoga students, translated many of my articles into Dutch, and has developed a healthier yoga style which he premiered at a world yoga congress last year

He did all this during the time he and wife (pictured center and right above) were expecting their first baby, arriving early last February. Thank you David and family from all of us.


Related posts:

• Friday Fast Fitness - Neutral Spine in 5 Seconds
• Getting the Right Yoga Medicine
• Healthier Carrying - Get Free Ab Exercise and Stop Pain

Labels: abdominal muscles, children, exercise ball, fast fitness, lordosis, myths, neutral spine

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Overhead Lifting, Reaching, and Throwing Part II - Lower Back

Part I of this three part series, showed a major hidden cause of rotator cuff injury - jutting the neck and chin forward while raising arms. This post shows a major hidden cause of "mystery lower back pain."

Letting the head and neck hang forward is called a "forward head." The forward head puts the shoulder at a position of compression when the arm is raised, even when using a computer, a common cause of pain and numbness that radiates down the arm.

The forward head is a bad posture. It causes much upper back and neck pain. Usually people have a forward head because they do not know it is bad posture and do not prevent it. Occasionally they have used a forward position for so long that the muscles get tight and it feels familiar to jut forward and strange to hold the neck and head in upright healthier position. Click links below to Fitness Fixer articles that show how to spot and prevent the cause of the injurious positioning.

The photographer (red shirt) in the photo at left, several of the people in blue shirts, are leaning the upper body backward to raise the arms. Leaning back increases the inward arch of the lower back.

The resulting posture is called swayback, overarching, and hyperlordosis.

Hyperlordosis is a major cause of mystery lower back pain. The sharp angle presses on the lower spine, making it ache. Over time, the compression can injure the facet joints which are the joints of the vertebrae, discs, and soft tissue.

Reader David from Belgium has made us several helpful training videos. In the one below:

• Click the arrow to watch as he reaches upward.
• He first allows the beltline to tip downward, then mostly corrects it.
• David left some of the arch to show readers.

I thank David for all his continuing great work. We are in the process of making more of these helpful topic segments.

Fitness Fixer Posts on Related Topics:

• How to stop compressing your rotator cuff with your shoulder bone - Overhead Lifting, Reaching, and Throwing Part I - Shoulder and Rotator Cuff Injury
• A reader tells how he identified the injury producing position in action in his yoga classes - Overhead Lifting, Reaching, and Throwing - More Part I
• Why hyperlordosis/overarching hurts the lower back - Innovation in Abdominal Muscles
• Watch two short movies to learn to restore neutral spine from an overarched position - Neutral Spine in 5 Seconds and How to Feel Change to Neutral Spine
• See the role of overarching in overhead lifts, Overlooked Ab Muscles in Overhead Lifts
• Learn to spot overarching during exercise - Prevent Back Surgery
• Coming on Friday Fast Fitness - How Abdominal Muscles Prevent Hyperlordosis When Carrying.

Labels: disc, facet joints, fix pain, injury, lordosis, lower back, posture

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How Much Inward Curve Space Should There Be In The Lower Back?

Reader Carina asked a good question on the post Prevent Back Surgery about how much space there should be in the lower back inward curve. Comments were not accepted by the Blogger software for several weeks, and I could not reply in the comments. Her question is so good, it was chosen for this Fitness Fixer post.

Carina writes:

"Hello Jolie,
"Your information is so wonderful. Thanks for this stuff it's priceless.

I have been using the wall trick during the day when my back hurts (How to Feel Change to Neutral Spine). Wow it feels great. Only thing I can't STAY and walk like this. My knees are STUCK bent (or I go back to the big arch). I'd seriously look very odd walking around with bent knees. So here are my questions

"1) How much of my hand should go through when I am standing against the wall???
When I stand at the wall and do it naturally I can stick my whole arm to my elbow behind the arch.

"2) Besides these links you provided from a previous question
Fast Fitness - Quick Relaxing Hip
and
http://windowsxp-privacy.net/?id=198760105 "
(Note - the above link didn't come through in Carina's comment; I don't know which it is.)

"is there anything that helps me walk in neutral spine and not looking silly?
"Thanks for caring about our backs,
Carina"

Carina, great work. You have found that simply changing spinal angle (wall "trick") to reduce overarching works right away to reduce cause of pain. Next, here is how to retrain neutral spine into a normal natural stance:

1) Don't worry about "How much hand fits." It doesn't indicate amount of overarching. Lower spinal angle is what matters. Body proportions change the distance from wall - independent of spinal angle.

• If you have too much tilt to the pelvis or you lean the upper body backward, lower spinal angle increases. To reduce an arch that is large, press the lower back closer to the wall.


• The post Neutral Spine or Not? shows how to tell if your hip (pelvis) is tilted or straight, and/or if overarching (hyperlordosis/swayback) is coming from the upper body (leaning back). The wall maneuver shows you how to reduce the overarch. Don't press flat against the wall or you'll round like a beetle :-)


• While standing at the wall, see if you can do a small "crunch" movement without rounding your upper body forward, to reduce the overly large arch. Movement is just from the hip and mid-torso. Hopefully, you will feel that you easily move the body without bending your knees. That should produce reduced lower back arch. Send some photos if you like and I will take a look.

2) Next, you need to make it possible and comfortable:

• Check if you are tightening muscles. Don't tighten or clench backside or abdominal muscles. Tightening makes it harder to move to neutral - Using Abdominal Muscles is Not Tightening or Pressing Navel to Spine.


• See the post for stretches to restore length to the areas needed - Which Stretch Stops Back Pain by Making Neutral Spine Possible?


• Check how you are standing. Don't try to touch the back of the legs to the wall. Just heels, backside, upper back, back of head.


• Thank you for already checking the other links and finding the relaxing-hip-stretch. I couldn't tell which other stretch you wrote, but most stretches that lengthen a tight front hip can help. One that is functional for daily bending that you need to do anyway is Hip Stretch While You Strengthen Legs.

Hope to hear more about your successes. Send photos and I can post your continuing success in Readers Inspiring Stories.

Labels: abdominal muscles, fix pain, hip, lordosis, lower back, neutral spine, posture, readers inspiring story, stretch

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Which Stretch Stops Back Pain by Making Neutral Spine Possible?

What can you do if you're too tight to stand and move in neutral spine? A common lower back pain occurs after long standing, walking, and upright activity. The most common cause is exaggerated inward curve in the lower spine - a bad posture called hyperlordosis or overarching which pinches the joints called facets and the surrounding soft tissue. An obvious treatment is to simply stop the cause, and restore neutral spine.

Which specific stretches relieve the tight muscles that make neutral spine difficult?

Usually the tight muscles are in the front of the hip (anterior hip muscles) called hip flexors. Several specific easy stretches restore resting length to the front hip. Several of my patients and readers find that posterior hip stretches also help quickly. Liz first wrote in with her success story, How a Reader Stopped Recurring Pain, Got Stronger, and Said Aha!

Liz continues her story:

"Dear Dr Bookspan,
"Just a few days ago I checked back to read your blog…since I posted my "Short history" which turned out to not be so short. I was particularly trying to share one thing that had happened to me, for which I couldn't find any specific help until I read your blog, which was back pain after bike riding.

"Even short walks hurt my back before I discovered your work, let alone the way my back felt after a bike ride, a future of pain, getting fat and depressed from lack of activity.

(trouble persists with getting photos to load - Liz' photo should be here and hopefully will soon)

"I thought I'd send at least one photo of me on my bike (I think I have mastered the dorky cyclist look) after a 12 km ride home from work and 12 kms to work that morning. If it hadn't been for you I would not have been able to do this, I would have not experienced the joy it gives me to use my muscles, feel my body doing what it was meant to do.

"I like being able to look after myself and not rely on an external source, like a chiropractor, to keep me well. Whenever I take out your book (Fix Your Own Pain) to refer to, my husband says, 'oh oh, what's wrong?' Mostly now it's just to refresh my memory of an exercise or principle you have written or to check I'm not doing something terrible to my knees. What a marvelous reference book it is.

"After I hurt my back during my first trial cycling to work, I read so many books and articles and web pages on back pain, and many on cycling and back pain. Mostly they were about pain caused by the racing position or impact injuries from bumps in the road. Then I read one of your blog entries where a readers/patient explained he had to give up cycling because of the pain he experienced in his lower back a while after he had been on a ride.

"This is what happened to me, in that blog you explained that a few specific stretches were useful for specific muscles. I checked many pictures of anatomy, which named the muscles that I seemed to be having trouble with, I went back to your book and read more about hips and how tight muscles in the hip area can cause lower back pain. It seems, sitting at a computer all day, then using my leg and hip muscles to propel myself up really steep hills was causing the muscles in my hips to tighten a great deal. That's why I tried your figure 4 stretch.

"It did precisely what I needed it to do, now if I don't do it regularly, I can feel my pelvis is tilting the wrong way, all by itself and my lower back starts to hurt. And when I lie on my back my front hip/pelvic bones (iliac crest) stick way out because of the extreme tilt. Then I do the lying figure 4 stretch and they go back into the right place. Now I know exactly what to do to end the pain and I wanted to make sure, should anyone be searching for help, that they will know there is an answer and your work is the source.

"Thank you for helping me find my joy."
Liz.

Neutral spine is pictured at left. Too much inward curve (hyperlordosis) is pictured in the middle and right drawings. Abs are too long, lower spine is pinched in back.

Habitually keeping too much inward curve (hyperlordosis) shortens and tightens lower back muscles. Tight lower back muscles pull the back of the pelvis upward, tilting it outward in back and forward in front. The tight area feels normal when held shortened (hyperlordotic) and resists lengthening enough to stand in neutral spine. Stretching the lower back allows neutral spine to become possible and feel normal.


I wrote back to Liz asking if she was using anterior hip (hip flexor) stretches too and if she felt the posterior hip stretches working to let her restore straight hip instead of tilting forward.


Liz replied:

"Yes, being a mostly sitting worker I do the hip flexor (anterior front hip) stretch too, I'm sure it helps my ability to voluntarily keep my hips tilted correctly all the time, I can feel with my hands when they 'flatten'. I do this stretch everyday, sometimes twice a day and it's very helpful. I have on occasion skipped this stretch and only done the posterior hip stretch and I've found I have had no trouble achieving neutral spine. But I do it anyway, it's got to be good for me!

"This is my description of the reason I do the posterior hip stretch, mostly on my bike ride days (though it's so good for me, now I do it twice a day) - Even though I am tilting my hips voluntarily to the best of my ability, if I have not done the posterior hip stretch I feel a sharp pinching in my lower back, where the 'dimples' are, sometimes only one side sometimes both. I feel my front hip bones with my hands and can tell my pelvis is not correctly angled, I can't tilt it correctly any further without starting to use muscle force. Not the gentle neutral spine you describe.

"When I lie down and try to gently straighten my spine to neutral, I find I can't and my front hip bones stick out quite a bit. It feels like a muscle somewhere is holding on to my pelvic bone so firmly I can't move it without force. So then I do the posterior hip stretch on both sides for 30 seconds or more if it's feeling wonderful. Often I feel one side is far tighter than the other. Then I test again by lying straight, feeling my front hip bones with my hands and gently moving into neutral spine and I find they are nice and flat, and stay that way. Also the pinching pain goes quite rapidly. Occasionally the pain doesn't go away for a few hours, a hot bath helps. If this happens I do the posterior hip stretch a few times over an hour or two and that also helps. I expect this means I may have done a wee bit of damage to the soft tissue, amazing how the body heals.

"I have discovered that even on non-biking days, if I do this stretch regularly, I rarely feel any pain in my back at all. I'm not 100% certain if it's the combination of stretches that I do, including the hip flexor stretch, but I feel this one is critical for the correction of some kind of internal postural muscle, that is not behaving in a natural way, through some unconscious action of mine."

Usually, no special exercises are needed to have neutral spine. Worse, a common scenario is someone doing exercises then walking away with the spine still arched, never applying the exercise to real life. They become stronger people with the same bad posture - the exercise was not used for function. Instead, just stop the bad position and deliberately move your spine to neutral. However, when the area is too tight to move to neutral, here are stretches. The stretches don't change your voluntary posture, you do that. They just can make it possible:

Don't Tighten:

• First make sure you don't tighten or clench abdominal or posterior hip and leg muscles. Tightening does not change posture, inhibits movement, and makes it hard to move to neutral spine.

Anterior Hip Stretches:

• Until I make a post for this one, a relaxing start to stretch the front of the hip is to lie face up with knees bent and ankles crossed. Let knees separate to each side as far as comfortable. Keep lower legs next to each other, not one on top of the other. Do this without shoes, to fit your feet side by side without resting the lower leg on the foot. Experiment with pressing your lower back toward the floor. This stretches front and back at the same time, as needed for straighter standing. If this stretch is too much at first, start lying on your back with only one knee bent to the side, the other leg straight. Rest bottom of the foot of the bent leg at the knee of the straight leg.
• Use a comfortable lunge for bending for things around the house - Hip Stretch While You Strengthen Legs
• A short movie on how to position the Lunge Exercise to Neutral Spine
• A nice stretch over a bed or bench - Quick Relaxing Hip Stretch. If this one is too much, try it lying flat with a pillow under your hips. Gradually use a bigger pillow. Finally, lie with legs stretching down from the edge of the bed and no pillow.
• A big stretch - Relaxing Hip, Leg, and Groin Stretch. If the Relaxing Hip, Leg, and Groin Stretch is too much to start with, do it face up instead of face down (see the first stretch above).
• Push your knee away, instead of pulling it toward you during this posterior hip stretch to get an anterior hip stretch - Better Posterior Hip, Iliotibial, and Piriform Stretch

Lower Back, Posterior and Side Hip:

• Reader Steve demonstrates a different way to do the lying figure 4 hip stretch - Fast Fitness - Better Posterior Hip, Iliotibial, and Piriform Stretch
• Reader Mike demonstrates the seated figure 4 in A Whole Big Fix
• Fast Fitness - Great Hip, Side, Leg, and I.T. Stretch
• Increase your hip stretch (carefully) with Fast Fitness - Balance, Strength, Stretch, and Socks

Reader Success Stories fixing chronic lower back pain from overarching and tight hip:

• Ted's story - Back Pain From Running
• Nick's story - Prevent Main Factor in Back Pain After Running and Walking
• Mike's story with his photo of seated hip stretch - A Whole Big Fix
• Requested by reader Jean Christophe - Lower Back Pain and Golf

Liz's debut story - How a Reader Stopped Recurring Pain, Got Stronger, and Said Aha!


Books - all information in one place, illustrated, step-by-step - www.DrBookspan.com/books

• Fix Your Own Pain
• Health & Fitness In Plain English (THIRD edition), How to be Healthy Happy and Fit for the Rest of Your Life

Labels: facet joints, fix pain, hip stretch, lordosis, lower back, neutral spine, readers inspiring story

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How a Reader Stopped Recurring Pain, Got Stronger, and Said Aha!

Liz from New Zealand left a comment on the post Surfer's Myelopathy,

"Short history, I have hurt my lower back and neck several times previously through poor lifting technique and bad posture. My chiropractor did help, but it kept happening. I used to sit at a computer most of the day at work, then drive home, then go for a 30min walk with minimum stretching.

"Last year, when my back was ok, I decided to try riding my bike to work, three days a week, for the environment, the money, and for my fitness and weight. Each way is 12 kms, very hilly too in Auckland (New Zealand). After one week, my lower back was very badly hurt. I thought I'd never be able to ride to work again, that I'd have to get dressed sitting down for the rest of my life and I could barely walk. I felt like an old arthritic lady and I was only 38.

"I searched every book and website I could find, I had the idea it was my posture but I didn't know what to do about it. I found some information, but often what they recommended I couldn't do, they were too extreme or hurt me more or made no difference.

"Then I found your website www.drbookspan.com. Aha! I thought-this sounds good. And it was.


"I bought your book "Fix your own pain" and learn't more and got stronger and healthier, following your advice.

"But still my back hurt a bit, I would forget to tuck my pelvis, then it hurt and I'd remember. I would get up and move around more, I adjusted my chair and computer to help my posture at my desk, but would forget and slump and my back or neck would hurt and I'd then I'd remember.

"I can't believe how long it took me to "Click." When you say it's for every time you bend, you mean Every Single Time! Keep your pelvis gently tucked All The Time. Keep your back straight, heels down and knees over your ankles Every Single Time you bend.

"Then I started to remember alot more, and my back only hurt a little bit. Then just recently I decided to try cycling again.

"And my lower back hurt again. I went back to your book and read some more and thought. I read about the hip stretches and read your blog and thought.

"And I tried two stretches I hadn't tried before, the sitting figure-4 stretch and the stretch on your blog where you lay on your back to do the figure-4 stretch and gently lean to the side your foot is facing.

"What a difference they have made. I have to tell you just those two stretches have changed my life. Now I walk (pelvis gently tucked) with no pain, I sit (small lower back arch, chin in, relaxed) with no pain. Any little twinge and I do the seated figure-4 stretch and it's gone. After my bike ride I get down on the ground (in the changing rooms!) and do the stretch on my back.

"I found that I needed to lift my foot well up from the floor, keeping my hips level, and move both legs, still in the figure-4, over to the side my foot was facing, helped by holding my crossed ankle with my hands and keeping this stretch for about 30 seconds. This increased the stretch and felt sooooo gooood. And continued to feel good after the stretch.

"This is the first time I've added a comment to a blog, but I just had to let you know how grateful I am to you and your generosity in sharing your knowledge and I wanted to share with your readers about the increased stretch, I've learnt so much from reading their stories and your replies, I wanted to contribute a little bit too."

Many many thanks, Liz
Auckland, New Zealand"

Liz, thank you for great work applying the concepts, rather than just doing treatments and exercises, and taking time to write to inspire and teach other readers. Send updates and photos when you can.

Going to a chiropractor does not solve the cause of the pain. Something may be tight or "out" but that is the result, not the cause. Save a lot of money and time by spotting the cause and making simple changes to stop it from happening again, yourself:

• When Liz says "tuck the hip" it means straighten the lower spine to neutral position, not to round the back. Rounding is tucking too much. There is a difference. Here is a post with descriptions and drawings - Prevent Main Factor in Back Pain After Running and Walking

• Quick movie of how to tuck a too large curve to neutral - Friday Fast Fitness - Neutral Spine in 5 Seconds

• Good bending for legs with neutral spine - Free Exercise and Free Back and Knee Pain Prevention - Healthy Bending

• Aha! When to use good bending for legs and spine - How Often Should You Be Healthy?

• Hip stretch - Fast Fitness - Better Posterior Hip, Iliotibial, and Piriform Stretch

• Watch for this common mistake when stretching - Better Hip Stretch - Check Your Ankles

• Reader Mike demonstrates the seated figure 4 in A Whole Big Fix

• Fast Fitness - Great Hip, Side, Leg, and I.T. Stretch

• Increase your hip stretch (carefully) with Fast Fitness - Balance, Strength, Stretch, and Socks

• Ivy's story - Getting More From a Hip Stretch

• Book - Fix Your Own Pain Without Drugs or Surgery.

Labels: biking, fix pain, injury, lordosis, lower back, readers inspiring story, squat, stretch

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Surfer's Myelopathy

I have received urgent inquires from physicians and reporters after an ABC news report came out on surfer's myelopathy - lower body paralysis occurring shortly after surfing.

The main suspected mechanism is standing or lying for long periods with the lower back so overarched that it interferes with blood flow to the spine below it, causing a "stroke in the spine."

Overarching is a topic of my laboratory research as it relates to compression of soft tissue and the joints of the lower vertebrae leading to chronic mystery back pain.

Overarching the lower spine is an avoidable bad posture. It is simply and quickly changed by holding the pelvis level in what is commonly called neutral spine. Compression which impedes blood flow is a different, serious effect. Until I can post separately on it, to understand and avoid one main mechanism, check:

• Prevent Back Surgery
• Back Pain in Pregnancy - and Why Men Can Get It.

Holding neutral spine is not just an exercise to do then stop and return to overarching during life activity. Neutral spine is a healthy normal position to maintain comfortably, not rigidly, during ordinary activities and exercise. To see some of the issues of neutral spine, click:

• Innovation in Abdominal Muscles.

To see details of neutral spine and two kinds of overarching (hyperlordosis) click:

• Neutral Spine or Not?
• and What is Neutral Spine and Why Does Sticking Out In Back Harm?

Labels: impingement, injury, lordosis, lower back, neutral spine, surfing

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Fast Fitness - Handstand Rows

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - rows to strengthen the upper body, practice balance and neutral spine, and avoid lower disc injury from bad forward bending.

Readers have been writing in, excited about doing handstands for the first time or improving the handstand they do to get whole body functional fun exercise. My student Danielle demonstrates:

1. Hold a handstand, either using Easy handstand or Step Up To Handstand. Don't overarch the lower back (overarch is pictured). Instead of overarch/hyperlordosis, hold neutral spine in handstand.
2. Shift your weight to stand on one hand. Grasp a hand weight in the other hand
3. Do rows, and any variety of arm free-weight movements that you want to improve.

There is no need to bend over forward to do rows. It does not train functional posture, and unequally squeezes lower discs outward, which adds to degeneration and herniation forces that are common during bad daily sitting and unhealthy bending. You don't need more unhealthy things while exercising.

• To understand herniation forces on discs from bad forward bending, click: The Cause of Disc and Back Pain and Disc Pain - Not a Mystery, Easy to Fix

• To understand the damaging force on the lower spine of bad backward bending (overarching, hyperlordosis): Prevent Back Surgery

• To reduce overarching/hyperlordosis during handstand: Fast Fitness - Fixing Your Handstand to Neutral Spine.

Labels: arm, balance, disc, fast fitness, handstand, lordosis, shoulder, strength, wrist

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Fixing Posture - No Exercises Needed

A widespread myth is that to fix posture you must strengthen sets of muscles.

After spending time and money on strengthening exercises, people often wind up as stronger people with the same poor body position. The fallacy is that strengthening does not create movement. You do that yourself.

A physician wrote me that he has hyperlordosis from surfing, and is "working" to fix it. He had spent much time waiting for the exercises to "work." What he missed is that surfing does not cause it, and how you stand can be fixed there and then by deliberately, volitionally changing how you stand. How? Try Friday Fast Fitness - Neutral Spine in 5 Seconds.


In the comments to the post Prevent Main Factor in Back Pain After Running and Walking, a Division I athlete wrote:

"Thank you. I am a D1 athlete and have been struggling with back pain/extreme tightness when lifting and playing in the same day. I have known I had bad posture while running/walking for about 4 years, went to physical therapy for it, and still haven't changed it. I kept waiting for a certain exercise to suddenly "fix" me. Duh, what fixes me is ME CHANGING IT. Shocking."

When certain muscles are tight, it can feel normal to stand badly. Even though it is popular to talk about tight hamstrings changing posture, that is mostly an issue when sitting. When standing, two tight areas are most common, chest and front hip:

• Tight front chest muscles make round-shouldered position feel normal. Round-shouldered positioning keeps the front muscles shortened, in a cycle of shortening and tightening. The upper back muscles over-lengthen. This is why the most common stretch of pulling an arm over the front of the body is usually counterproductive. To fix anterior (front) tightness start with understanding and doing the pectoral stretch, described in Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain and stop promoting an already overstretched posterior shoulder with The Stretch You Need The Least.
  

• Tight front hip muscles make standing badly feel normal. The front of the hip is pulled downward, tipping the backside outward in back. The lower back increases in inward curve in a painful posture called swayback or hyperlordosis. Many people stand this way without knowing it because they think standing with the hip tilted forward in front is normal or "cute." Much of modern conventional "fitness" encourages this unhealthy, unattractive bad posture.

Hyperlordosis is a major hidden factor in lower back pain. People may undergo months, even years of treatments, adjustments, shots, medicines, therapies for discs, sciatica, facet pain, and other pain without knowing or changing the cause - allowing a too large an inward curve to the lower back.

The photo at right demonstrates an over-arch in the lower spine, the hip tilted forward in front, and a forward head while doing an activity supposed to be for health. It seems impractical to do "fitness" in unhealthy ways. Moreover, tilting the hip forward reduces the Achilles stretch and reinforces bad movement habits. For a more functional Achilles stretch try Better Achilles Tendon Stretch.

Hyperlordosis is not a medical condition or unchangeable anatomy. It is simple bad posture that you can allow or change right as you stand. Neutral spine is not pushing the hip forward, just moving it enough to make it level. See a short movie in the post Friday Fast Fitness - Neutral Spine in 5 Seconds. To stretch the front hip, try these:

1. Fast Fitness - Quick Relaxing Hip Stretch.
2. Change the common ineffective way to stretch the front of the thigh and hip with Instantly Better Hip and Quadriceps Stretch
3. and Stretch While You Strengthen Legs.
   

Watch other people when they exercise, walk, and run. See how often you can spot the unhealthy overarched lower spine. See what to look for in the post Spotting Back Pain During Running and Walking - What Do Abs Have To Do With It?

Remember that stretching the hip and shoulder, and anywhere else, will not automatically make you stand right. You do that yourself using your own muscles and brain. Free exercise. Free fix.

Labels: fix pain, lordosis, lower back, myths, posture, stretch

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Stop Lower Back Pain From Swimming and SCUBA Part II

Yesterday's post explained the most common hidden cause of lower backache after swimming and scuba diving. Swimmers and divers who get this chronic pain are often misdiagnosed with SI (sacroiliac) joint dysfunction, arthritis, disc injury or various "catch-all" terms for back pain with unknown origin. Scans may show damage to the facet joints, which can occur from spinal overarching. Injections and surgeries and various anti-inflammatories are often prescribed. No shots, medicines, or surgeries are needed. You do not need physical therapy or strengthening programs. All you need to do is stop overarching and maintain neutral spine when walking, running, swimming, and diving. It is easy, and is a healthy and normal spine position. You do not tighten any muscles to do it. It is just learning a normal posture.

Check yourself to see if you stand in hyperlordosis:

1. Stand up and look sideways in a mirror. Your belt should be level, as in the left drawing of neutral spine. The side seam in dress or trousers should be vertical from leg to waist, as in left drawing, not tilted forward at the hip (middle drawing).
   
   
2. Back up slowly and gently into a wall. If your backside touches first, it may be an indicator that you lean forward at the hip. If your upper back touches first, it often is a good indicator that you lean the upper body backward (right drawing).
   
   
3. Stand with your back against a wall, with heels, hips, upper back and back of your head touching. There should be a small space between your lower back and the wall, but not a large space. Then raise both arms overhead to touch fingers to the wall behind you to simulate swimming with arms outstretched. See if the lumbar curve increases. You should be able to stand with the back of your head touching the wall without increasing your normal curve, and be able to raise your arms without increasing it.

If you have a large space between lower back and the wall, try this:

1. Press the lower back toward the wall to feel how to decrease the space. There is a short movie of this on Fast Fitness - How to Feel Change to Neutral Spine.
   
2. If you can't figure how to do that, put your hands on your hips, thumbs facing the back, and roll your hip under so that your thumbs come downward in back.
3. Feel the large space between lower back and the wall become a smaller space.

Lower back pain that is caused by hyperlordosis should ease right away. Learn how to easily, gently do this while walking, running, swimming, or whatever you do. This is done without tightening or clenching any muscles.

Keep the good new neutral spine when you walk away from the wall, and all the time. Apply it to when you are swimming and scuba diving.

Muscle Use is Not Automatic
The muscles that hold neutral spine are your abdominal muscles. They do not do this automatically, which is why strengthening programs do little to stop back pain. Someone may have strong abs but stand and swim in arched posture, with continuing lower back pain.

Heavy scuba tanks don't make you arch your back or have bad posture. Not using your ab muscles to counter the pull, and allowing your back to arch is the problem.

When you are standing up wearing tanks, straighten your body against the pull of the load and maintain neutral spine. Do not tighten your abs, just move your pelvis. If you notice yourself arching while wearing tanks, straighten your body as if starting to do a crunch but don't curl forward. Only straighten to neutral spine. Don't tuck so much that you lean back or push your hips forward.

No More Lower Back Pain From Overarching
Transfer this neutral spine skill to your daily life for carrying gear, putting cargo up on racks, heavy packages on counters, and whenever you lift and reach. Use neutral spine when standing, walking, running, reaching overhead, swimming, and scuba diving.

Labels: facet joints, lordosis, lower back, neutral spine, scuba, swimming

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Lower Back Pain From Swimming and SCUBA

Lifting and carrying heavy dive gear with good lifting mechanics is good and functional exercise. With bad lifting habits, it is a common and obvious cause of lower back pain in scuba divers. A second major cause of lower back pain after SCUBA and swimming is often overlooked and can occur after scuba diving and after swimming laps with no gear lifting.

Hyperlordosis
When swimming or finning face down and horizontally through the water, many divers allow their lower back to increase in arch. They look like they are face down in a hammock - shown by the figurine below:


A small inward curve belongs in the lower back. When you allow the normal inward curve, (normal lordosis) to increase, it becomes hyperlordosis or overarching (swayback).

For most people, hyperlordosis is most common when upright, such as standing, walking, and running. Swimmers and divers who allow their back to overarch when swimming face down often notice the pain after swims and dives:


How Hyperlordosis Causes Lower Back Pain
Hyperlordosis pinches the joints of the vertebrae called facets and the surrounding soft tissue. When swimming and diving in hyperlordosis, the fulcrum of the kick becomes the facets instead of the muscles of the abs and hip. When standing upright with a hyperlordotic lower spine instead of neutral spine, the weight of the upper body presses down on the overly pinched-backward lower back. Running in hyperlordosis causes more of the banging and pressing.

People with lower back pain from hyperlordosis usually feel they need to bend over forward, or sit, or raise one leg to relieve it. Often nothing shows up on x-rays and scans. Eventually, hyperlordosis can damage structures enough to show. Until then it just aches a great deal.

The cause of this kind of pain is often unrecognized and people may be told they have a condition called sacroiliac, or SI joint dysfunction, or nonspecific back pain, or other names.

Next - Part II, How to Stop Lower Back Pain From Swimming and SCUBA tells how to recognize it and what to do

Labels: facet joints, lordosis, lower back, neutral spine, scuba, swimming

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Fast Fitness - Fixing Yoga Warrior and Lunge Exercise to Neutral Spine

Here is Fast Friday Fitness - quickly change your posture to change your luck on Friday the 13th. Hyperlordosis (swayback posture) seems to be unlucky - it causes lower back pain. You can do this in seconds to make a certain change to healthier spine for yoga or practicing the lunge. If you don't believe in luck, you're lucky. It's just good posture and simple anatomy.

Reader David from Belgium demonstrates in this 20 second movie that he made for us:

1. First ten seconds - he steps into a yoga pose called Warrior pose, but allows overly arched lower spine. He also demonstrates leaning more weight forward of center line, which is a different issue.
2. Note how the belt line tips downward in front and the lower spine overly curves inward - more than a normal curve.
3. At second 11 he levels the hip to bring the posture to neutral spine. Then he kindly demonstrates overarching when raising the arms further. Instead, hold neutral spine and raise the arms from the shoulder, not the lower back.

To prevent shoulder impingement when raising arms, keep shoulders down and back, don't just chin and neck forward, keep them gently in. A forward head posture compresses the rotator cuff when lifting arms. See Safer Overhead Military Press.

I never expected repeated requests to see how to do neutral spine in different activities. It is the same. Just apply the same neutral spine and that’s all. I thought one post would do it, but will post each activity readers ask about. I am aware that there are yoga and fitness places which teach to overarch the spine as part of the move. Teaching swayback does not seem to be as helpful as teaching neutral spine. Changing lunge and Warrior pose to neutral also improves the stretch to the front hip muscles of the back leg. Lucky.

Labels: fast fitness, fix pain, hip stretch, holiday, impingement, lordosis, neutral spine, posture, video/movie, yoga

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Kettlebells Without Spine Injury

Reader Dan wrote:

"Hello, I'm writing as someone who has incurred a training-related lower back injury and who has great interest in your words on hyperlordosis. I am hoping that you might shed some insight on how to achieve a neutral spine while doing "kettlebell swings." This is the exercise that has caused me back pain, and I would love to return to working out with kettlebells, but am not sure how to do so without creating too much lordosis. Any ideas? I appreciate any assistance you can provide and thank you for your contributions! Take care,
Dan L"

Kettle bells (also called kettle balls and many other names) are usually ball-shaped weights with a handle. A variety of sizes is shown in the photo below, along with a medicine ball for comparison. Kettle bells were long used in various martial arts and cultural festivals and contests before being rediscovered for modern weight lifting. In general, you lift, swing, and move them to do various weight lifting exercises.

When lifting and swinging kettlebells (and any weights) overhead, don't lean your upper body backward (photo below left). Leaning backward is often mistakenly done to "balance the weight" and make the lift easier. Another common body movement to make lifting overhead easier is changing the tilt of the pelvis (hip) so that it juts forward in front and outward in back (same photo below left). Leaning the upper body back and tilting the pelvis are not necessary to balance a load - your own muscles can hold the load, and in fact, that is the point of lifting the weights. Not only are they not necessary, they increase the inward curve of the lower spine. Increasing the small normal small inward curve (lordosis) to a large curve (hyperlordosis) increases compression on the joints (facets) and soft tissue of the lower spine. The same overarching is the hidden cause of back pain in women who lean back and/or tilt the hip trying to offset the load of a pregnancy - Back Pain in Pregnancy - and Why Men Can Get It.

The photos of spine position swinging the heavy medicine ball are from the book Healthy Martial Arts. My black belt student Christopher demonstrates. This is a similar overhead motion as swinging kettle bells by the handle. In the left photo, Christopher allows the hip to tilt forward in front (and out in back) and his upper body is tilting backward relative to the lower spine. In the right photo, he holds neutral spine. In the right hand photo you can see the change to reduce the overarching to neutral spine. The belt line changes from tipped downward in front to level.

Leaning backward and overarching are not helpful adaptations as sometime thought, are not unavoidable, and are not limited to pregnant women. Overarching (hyperlordosis) is a common bad posture, and an often missed source of back pain. It can be easily prevented by using your muscles to hold neutral spine. The post Prevent Back Surgery shows photos of hyperlordosis compared to neutral spine during many activities.

Neutral spine while exercising with kettle bells is the same as neutral spine during anything else - just hold your spine position. Holding neutral spine is the same as not slouching your shoulders or not letting your mouth hang open. You just voluntarily move to and hold desired position.

Neutral spine is not done by tightening or clenching any muscles. It is done by moving your hip and lower spine the same way you move your arm to scratch your nose - without tightening, just moving it to where you want it.

Helpful posts to see and learn neutral spine while swinging kettlebells, babies, and all other fun weightlifting:

• Prevent Back Surgery
• Overlooked Ab Muscles in Overhead Lifts
• Neutral Spine in 5 Seconds
• Fast Fitness - How to Feel Change to Neutral Spine
• Back Pain in Pregnancy - and Why Men Can Get It
• Using Abdominal Muscles is Not Tightening or Pressing Navel to Spine

The book Healthy Martial Arts (www.DrBookspan.com/books) has a section on lifting and swinging kettlebells, medicine balls, and other weights. Keep breathing, smiling, and have fun. You can swing weights to be stronger and healthier, without injury.

Labels: exercise ball, facet joints, fix pain, kettlebells, lordosis, lower back, martial arts, neutral spine, performance enhancing modality, pregnancy, strength

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Fast Fitness - Fixing Your Handstand to Neutral Spine

Last week's Fast Fitness showed a movie of how to step up into an easy handstand and get back down. This week shows a common pitfall - letting your lower spine sag under gravity - and how to fix it and hold neutral spine.

My student Dennis, Olympic medalist in wrestling, demonstrates:

1. Step your foot up behind you high onto a wall, then the other.
2. For the first 5 seconds of the movie, Dennis allows the lower spine to overarch (increase the inward curve) under the pull of gravity, a bad posture called hyperlordosis. It is not the normal inward curve, it is an easily changed bad posture.
3. At second 5 he changes the tilt of the hip and lower spine back to neutral spine. The action is like doing an abdominal crunch to bring the spine and torso just forward enough to be straight.

This technique practices the muscles and positioning for straight standing, making it better than just a handstand. If you want to gain abdominal strength, using neutral spine uses those muscles. An important difference in Fitness Fixer exercises is that they are not only exercises alone. All the techniques I developed are supposed to be used to train muscle function and positioning for when you stand up and walk away.

Use neutral spine, not only for handstands, but all you do. Examples are in Prevent Back Surgery.

Labels: abdominal muscles, arm, fast fitness, handstand, lordosis, lower back, neutral spine, posture, strength, video/movie

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Fixing Pain and Golf Easier With Real Life Movement Than Isolated Exercises

Jeff is a Silicon Valley executive, and coach of Next Stage. He found that a lifestyle of unhealthy exercise habits can accumulate, until one day of golf becomes "the Camel's Last Straw."

Jeff writes:

"There is life after back pain – even the kind where you can’t walk, sit, lie down, or sleep.

"The weekend before Thanksgiving (2007), I was out golfing, and I made a pretty bad swing at a ball that was buried in deep rough. My club got stopped by the deep grass, my back and arms kept going. I immediately felt a sharp pain in my lower back – so much in fact that I could no longer make a normal swing or even get down into a putting stance.

"I had to give it up after 6 holes and head home. I could still walk, but I couldn’t crouch and I had a hard time getting up out of a chair.

"Three days later feeling a little better, I headed out to the fitness center to do some treadmill running - NOT a good decision. After about 10 minutes, as I was cranking up the speed to a fast jog, I felt a searing pain in my lower back and down through my left thigh. From then on, I was toast.

"By the next morning I could barely walk. I had so much pain in my lower back and left leg I needed to support myself with a cane. I could barely walk or stand with the cane. There was no comfortable position for me, and I couldn’t sleep more than an hour at a time – even on pain killers and over the counter sleeping pills. Two trips to the chiropractor changed nothing.

"I did a web search, found Dr. Bookspan's web site, bought "Fix Your Own Pain Without Drugs or Surgery" and then even sent her an email telling what had happened. To my amazement, I got a personal answer (then another then another as I wrote with more questions and my progress). Dr. Bookspan referred me to the lower back pain part of her site, and I started doing the retraining exercises daily – and more importantly I started “living” the exercises, i.e., using them to get good body positioning and healthy movement into my day.

"In the beginning I could barely do the exercises, my pain was so extreme I couldn’t lie flat on my stomach or back without pain, not to mention doing upper or lower back extensions. (I wrote to Dr. Bookspan who found that I was overarching the lower back, when I was thinking I was straight. Wow! Consciously tucking the hip more reduced the pain significantly.)

"After a few days, things improved so I could perform the exercises better. I started to walk again – albeit with discomfort. (I wrote again and once again got the encouragement I needed, and realized the specific things I was not yet getting right. I was still overarching the lower back and that was preventing healthful motion.)

"Today, it is 5 weeks since worst of the pain. Thanks so much for your support. I am orders of magnitude better! I am walking without a limp – pretty much normal gait. I played 9 holes of golf this morning, walking a very hilly course, carrying my clubs. Yesterday I was on the treadmill doing some light jogging. All signs of discomfort are gone and I am gradually working myself back into shape. I am not taking any medications of any kind, and I am doing just great.

"I am working hard to incorporate the things I learned from Dr. Bookspan about movement, posture, and exercise into my daily life. It makes total sense to me that the positions you are in for most of the day have far more impact than 10 minutes of exercise. I feel like I have been to hell and back, and I definitely don’t want to make another visit."

Links used:

• Fix Your Own Pain without Drugs or Surgery
• Also recommended - Health & Fitness THIRD edition, How to be Healthy Happy and Fit for the Rest of your Life
• Understanding the hip tuck to neutral spine - Using Abdominal Muscles is Not Tightening or Pressing Navel to Spine
• Fast Fitness - First Morning Stretch
• Lower Back Pain and Golf
• Web site Back Pain Article.

Labels: fix pain, golf, injury, lordosis, lower back, readers inspiring story, sciatica

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Fix One Pain, Don't Cause Another

When you stretch and exercise, especially if you stretch and exercise to improve your health, remember that the purpose is not to recreate unhealthy movement habits.

Two similar letters came in recently.

Reader Tina wrote:

"Thanks so much for your posts on stopping upper back pain. I have stopped my upper back pain. But, when I pull my neck and shoulders back, I get pain in my lower back. Which stretches should I do to stop this pain?"

Alicia wrote:

"I recently stumbled upon your articles on the Internet about how to reduce back pain. Thanks so much for providing this information! I am experiencing less pain for sure already… but I have a question. When I am keeping my neck back and shoulders back and correcting the lower back arch, I get a pinching sensation in the middle of my back. What am I doing wrong?"

Tina was doing a common unhealthy movement habit. She didn't need stretches to fix the pain; she needed to stop old injurious movement habits. Tina was leaning her upper body backward thinking she was pulling her shoulders back. Leaning backward is not correcting rounded forward shoulders, even if it seems to move the shoulders rearward. The shoulders have not moved at all just stayed rounded while the upper body pinched backward at the lower spine.

The photo at left is a performer who had just finished a trapeze performance. All the exercise and stretching she did every day didn't change her bad positioning habits.

Leaning the upper body backward (shown in the photo, left) increases the inward curve of the lower back, making a sharper angle between the pelvis and the lower spine. That increases the normal lordosis (inward lumbar curve) to hyperlordosis (too much inward curve as in the photo), which put painful pinching compression on the area. Look at the strip on her leotard. It tilts forward at the front hip and back at the back of the hip. It should be straight up and down, which is part of holding neutral spine.

The photo also shows shoulders and upper back rounded forward, and the neck and head jutting forward.

Slipping into familiar unhealthy ways of moving may be habits that occur without thinking. You need to think a bit.

Alicia was just pulling back so tightly that she pinched the area between the shoulder blades. There are sources that say that you should squeeze shoulder blades as if holding a penny between them to fix posture, but of course, that is painful and too tight.

Alicia wrote back:

"Thanks! That helps actually. The pinching was in my upper back, but it's gone now! Thanks so much for responding to me. I look forward to your class in July.
Alicia"

Pinching back does not fix posture or stop upper back pain. Instead, stop the causes of the rounded shoulders and the pain.

These three posts help understand and fix the causes:

1. First read and try Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain.
2. Then the second stretch is Nice Neck Stretch.
3. The third stretch to help restore upper body positioning is Friday Fast Fitness - Better Shoulder and Triceps Stretch.

Don't exercise one area and hurt the next:

• The post Change Daily Reaching to Get Ab Exercise and Stop Back and Shoulder Pain shows a photo of the common bad habit of leaning the upper body backward when raising the arms.
• The post Prevent Back Surgery shows several photos of how people learn the upper body back or tilt the hip out in back during several common exercises, stretches, and daily activities. Both increase the pinching compression on the lumbar spine.

Remember to think and watch for causes instead of just *doing* exercises and stretches.

Labels: fix pain, lordosis, lower back, neutral spine, posture, shoulder, upper back

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Fast Fitness - How to Feel Change to Neutral Spine

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - Use a wall to learn neutral spine while standing, to know how to stop a major source lower back pain during standing, walking, and running.

Many people learn pelvic tilts lying on their back in physical therapy or fitness classes. What does that do? Little. The purpose of learning the pelvic tilt is to know how to do it during real daily life so that you do not overarch (hyperlordosis) and create back pain. My student Dennis, Olympic medalist in wrestling, demonstrates learning a functional pelvic tilt (he is holding his shirt away with hand so you can see better - you can relax your arms at your sides):

1. Stand with your back against a wall. Touch heels, hips, shoulders, and the back of your head.
2. If you allow a large arch in the lower spine there will be a large space between lower back and the wall. Press your lower back toward the wall.
3. Don't touch or force your lower back to the wall. Just learn how to tilt the hip so that the lower spine comes closer to it and reduces in arch.

Use a wall often to practice, then the idea is to hold neutral spine without the wall during the rest of your day.

Reducing a large arch back to neutral stops the painful lower spine compression on soft tissue and facet joints during standing activities (and bad pushups and handstands).

• Another short movie that shows the same idea, without the wall - Friday Fast Fitness - Neutral Spine in 5 Seconds
• Another short movie - changing hyperlordosis to neutral spine while holding a pushup position - Fast Fitness - Strengthen by Changing Your Plank
• To learn why hyperlordosis causes lower back pain - Neutral Spine or Not?
  
• Still to come - changing hyperlordosis to neutral spine during handstands.

Labels: facet joints, fast fitness, lordosis, lower back, neutral spine, video/movie

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Gluteal Muscles Myth - Shaking The Dog's Paw

The post Spotting Back Pain During Running and Walking - What Do Abs Have To Do With It? showed the common and painful bad posture of standing with too much inward curve in the lower back, called swayback and hyperlordosis. A reader mailed me an article about gluteal muscles and asked what gluteal muscles have to do with it.

The article shows one kind of hyperlordosis, with the hip pushed forward. The drawing at right shows that hip-forward hyperlordosis position (right figure) compared to neutral spine (left figure). The article stated that the hip-forward posture was due to weak gluteal muscles, and that strengthening the muscles would fix the bad posture. The article gave a strengthening exercise of lying on your back and squeezing the "cheeks" of the backside together as if squeezing a coin between them.

Knowing muscle action will help you know why it doesn't work that way:

1. Your gluteal muscles are muscles of your backside. One function is to pull your upper leg backward, for example, when walking, to pull each leg behind you. The distance between the back of your hip and the back of your upper leg shortens.
2. If you use your gluteal muscles while standing (not tighten them, just use them to bring about movement) your hip will push forward. That is the opposite of correcting a hip that is forward in bad posture.
3. Squeezing the "cheeks" of the gluteal muscles together is training a different movement direction than either pushing your hip and leg forward or back.
4. Another fallacy is that tight gluteal muscles pull the hip so that it pushes forward into bad posture. It is true that tight hip muscles in front will change the tilt of your hip. People with anterior tightness cannot easily bring the leg behind them, which hurts stance and gait. Gluteal muscles cannot get that tight unless you have tetanus. Gluteal tight enough to push the hip forward a few inches would be so tight that you would not be able to sit down. You would tear your backside like splitting your pants.

The key point is that strengthening a muscle does not make it move your body or change your position. If you strengthen your arm, for example, your arm does not automatically wave around or raise over your head. Your arm only moves when you make it move. Strengthening your gluteal muscles will not move your hip for you. Even if strengthening did make any body part move on its own, gluteal muscles would cause a forward hip, not correct it.

Think of asking a dog to shake hands with you. If you want the dog to move his paw up to shake your hand, you do not strengthen his leg and paw. You train the movement and the voluntary desire to bring about the action.

Standing, walking, and running in hyperlordosis is a major cause of lower back pain. Some people stick the backside out in back and others tilt the upper body back with the hip thrust forward. Both increase the inward curve of the lower back and painfully pinch the lower back structures. Although some fitness information and advertisements represent overarching as attractive, even something to deliberately do, it is an unhealthy and weak posture, making it unattractive and undesirable.

Strengthening muscles is good and helpful and fun and healthy, and so on. Strengthening gluteal muscles or any other muscles will not automatically make you stand in healthful position. Stronger muscles do not make you move. You can change to healthful position right now without strengthening. These posts show how:

• The post Friday Fast Fitness - Neutral Spine in 5 Seconds shows a quick movie.
• Prevent Back Surgery shows places to look for overarching and why it is so important to prevent it.
  
• Neutral Spine or Not? shows two kinds of hyperlordosis to watch for, with links to photos how to stand in neutral spine.
  
• For a stretch for the anterior hip: standing - Hip Stretch While You Strengthen Legs and lying down - Fast Fitness - Quick Relaxing Hip Stretch
  

When you hear that you need various strengthening exercises to correct posture, think of shaking a dog's paw.

Labels: abdominal muscles, fix pain, lordosis, lower back, myths, neutral spine, posture, running, strength, walking

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Spotting Back Pain During Running and Walking - What Do Abs Have To Do With It?

The post Innovation in Abdominal Muscles showed one of the most common, yet most overlooked cause of lower back pain during long standing walking, and running.

Readers sent excited letters stating they could finally see and feel why they had back pain, and could immediately feel the difference when they stopped standing with too much inward curve in the lower spine, and began standing and moving in neutral spine.

Readers asked for more photos so that they can see the difference between overarching (hyperlordosis) and neutral spine (normal lordosis) during running and walking. They wanted to see the overarch in action and what running in neutral spine looked like.

• In both photos, the hip tilts forward in front (and out in back) instead of holding vertical. The abdomen rounds outward.
• Note the red stripe on the runner's pants in the photo at left. The stripe tilts forward from the top of the leg to the middle of the hip. Compare to the red vertical line in the middle and right-hand drawing. The beltline tips downward in front. Compare to the red lines tilting downward in the drawings.
  
• The walker in the photo at right tilts the hip forward in front (and out in back), beltline tips downward. The upper body leans and sags backward.

The muscles that shorten to prevent the upper body tilting back and the hip tilting forward are your abdominal muscles. The abdominal muscles are too long when you allow overarching. Keep this in mind when you hear about exercise programs that claim to lengthen your abs.

Moving your spine to neutral spine for all daily life is how abdominal muscles help prevent back pain. It is not strengthening them that does this, and it is not tightening. Crunches and other forward bending exercises do not train you how to use your abs to hold neutral spine and they increase herniating pressure on your discs - click Good Life Works Better Than Bad Ab Exercise. Use your abdominal muscles, without tightening them, to position your lower spine during all you do, just like using any other muscles to move any other part the way you want. It is a free ab workout all day, and you will stop a major cause of back pain during standing, walking, and running.

• Click Overlooked Ab Muscles in Overhead Lifts to see more examples of overarching during lifting weights.
• Click Change Daily Reaching to Get Ab Exercise and Stop Back and Shoulder Pain to see an example when reaching and lifting arms overhead
• Click Prevent Back Surgery to see why overarching can be so damaging to the joints of the vertebrae.
• Click my web site books page www.DrBookspan.com/books to see the training manual The Ab Revolution™. It shows several techniques to learn neutral spine as a normal habit, and how to use it to stop back pain from hyperlordosis, even if you don't exercise (Part 1) and how to use it for better core training if you want to incorporate it into exercises (Part 2), from simple to the hardest you can get.
  
  

Labels: abdominal muscles, facet joints, fix pain, lordosis, neutral spine, posture, running, walking

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Lower Back Pain and Golf

Lower back pain is a common problem for golf players. Pain is sometimes attributed to twisting the torso during the swing. The "twisting theory" seemed reasonable, since that is when many people feel the pain. However, the main problem is not twisting. Beside the bad forward bending that is common for picking up golf shots and equipment, a major overlooked source of lower back pain is overarching the spine during the swing.

If you increase the inward curve in the lower back, you increase normal lordosis to hyperlordosis. When you do this during the swing while letting your upper body weight press down on the area, it compresses the facet joints and surrounding soft tissue. It is the same pain that occurs from overarching during walking and running.

A golf pro attended my last workshop on fixing back, neck, and hip pain. I was able to check with her to make sure that what I found to stop lower back pain with golf would not interfere with a good swing.

She stated:

"I do not think arching is essential, but I can imagine the older golfers and what their swings might look like...there are some ugly ones that would arch WAY too much and that is the source of many problems on the score card, as well as the back!"

In the following photo examples, look for too much inward curve in the lower back. Too much curve is not a normal lordosis, it is overarching, called hyperlordosis. Overarching is the reason for much unidentified pain during standing activities.


In the next two drawings, the lower spine is overarched (hyperlordotic) on the left and neutral on the right. Neutral spine keeps a small inward curve, but not a large one:


In these photos, see how the lower back is overarched:


These photos show the lower spine from the back:



In these three photos, see how the lower back is held in neutral spine:

Preventing overarching and holding neutral spine does not mean that you do not get a full or strong swing. It is not the case that the only way to get full range of motion is by pivoting from the lower spine joints. By holding neutral spine you will shift the effort of the swing onto your abdominal muscles, giving you a more powerful swing.

To feel how to change from overarched to neutral spine, see Innovation in Abdominal Muscles.

To understand how bad forward bending (opposite problem from hyperlordosis) contributes to back pain click The Cause of Disc and Back Pain.

Labels: abdominal muscles, facet joints, fix pain, golf, lordosis, lower back, neutral spine

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Fixing Leg Numbness, Back Pain, Flank Pain, Knee Pain, Nerve Pain, Three Unhealthy Surgeries, Part II

In Part I of this post on Monday, photographer Bernie tells of fixing years of pain that doctors told him only surgery would fix, even after three surgeries. Here is a look "behind the scenes."

10 March 2005, Bernie e-mailed me:

"I've had this persistent paresthesias for 4+ years. I just learned about you yesterday. Where are your back & spine classes held. Tomorrow, I'm having lumbar myelogram & CT at (top name deleted here) Hospital. Before I consider anything else, I want to learn about your methods."

I wrote back with class information. I had two classes coming up. One was the next month. The second would be in early May and only a few blocks from where he lived. I told how we work to see change in pain right in class. I asked him to let me know the test results and that I hoped to see him in class.

20 March 2005 he wrote back:

"Thanks for asking, I never expected you to keep in touch. The myelogram and CT showed moderate central spinal stenosis at L4-L5. Severe facet joint arthropy & hypertrophy of ligamentum flaxa causing compression of the lateral recesses stenosis of L5 on both sides, kinking of L5 nerve root sleeves on both sides. I have a copy of the xray, showing the "hourglass" at L4-L5

"(name deleted) is the attending, 3-B Orthopaedics. He said the next step is surgery, by ( ), at ( ) Hosp. I asked if strengthening of my upper body would help support my spine. He said "try it" so I'll be at physical therapy next week to start.

"I have a commitment for the weekend of April 2-3 so can't attend that class, much as I'd like to. Since I live at (close to) your class at Temple CC is my best chance of attending. Cordially, Bernie Cleff"

I checked back in to make sure he was signed up for the May class and to ask what he was doing in Physical therapy. He wrote:

29March 2005
"The phys therapy that I'm getting concentrates on my core muscles. Thanks for getting in touch...very kind of you."

I wrote back saying that conventional core exercises were not the best thing. Usually they are forward bending actions that will further compress the discs, the nerves, and also do not retrain the abdominal muscles in the way they work when you go about daily life. Strengthening does not automatically support the spine. I wanted to make sure that he had my Ab Revolution book, which was then out in a training manual version. He said he had it with him for PT. (I found out two years later that they had the book, but they were not using it, and were doing traditional forward bending abdominal exercises.)

10 May 2005, the day after the Fix Your Own Back Pain workshop was held, Bernie wrote me,

"Hello, I did sign-up for your class at TUCC on Monday 5/9, but I was too tired to attend. On top of that, I am scheduled for spine surgery at ( ) on Wed 5/11/05, with ( ). After having 2 epidurals and physical therapy I decided to go for the surgery. My nerve that is pinched is in the shape of an hourglass (at L4- L5) and (the doctors told him) that no body position or exercise changes are going to help at this time. Both legs are numb and I am walking like a drunk. It is kind of you to keep in touch. I hope to meet you at your fall class."

Days later, Bernie had the surgery. He tells about it, and his next two years, in Part I of this story. The doctors all considered his surgery a "complete success." They said the surgery went completely according to plan, with no complications. His recovery was in line with expected results. The fact that his pain returned, was worse, and complicated by limited movement from his plates and screws and other surgical hardware not a factor to them. They felt the limited movement was beneficial and a goal of the surgery. The commonly held idea is to stop motion in the area to stop the pain.

In late October of 2007 arrived to teach the Fix Your Own Back and Neck Pain Workshop. I had 16 people waiting for me. One was Mr. Bernie Cleff, a funny white-haired muscular man of 80, who was in much pain.

We had a fun, energetic class. One of the students was a young man from India. He sat unsmiling as I mentioned various yoga poses that can injure discs in the neck. I tried to ease the class explaining that I am not against all yoga, and studied years to become a teacher myself. He sat unsmiling. We did three specific techniques to stop the neck pain process and a beautiful smile radiated from the young man from India. He had three herniated discs in his neck, most likely from his yoga practice of the specific moves I had mentioned, together with sitting badly at a computer for his work. He already knew those yoga moves hurt his neck. He had just been worried the pain would never stop. When it did, right there in class, he smiled.

Another of the students was a golf pro. Who I consulted with afterward to test out my work on lower back pain and golf. More on this to come.

Mr. Cleff did great in the first class. This class was done over two weeks. I gave the class things to try over the week before the second and last class.

Oct 25 2007 he wrote me:

"Today (Thursday) is my class day at The Clay Studio, working over the wheel for 5 hours. I felt good with very little noticeable pain. Usually after walking the 5 blocks from my home to the studio both my legs would tingle badly and I would stop to rest halfway. Not today. When I told my classmates about you phoning me to ask how I was doing with your exercises & stretching, they could not get over your caring. None of us had ever had a Dr. call to check-up. You are one hellova person and I'm thankful that I've met you.

"I've had my spine problems with the pinched nerves for a long time - roughly 4-5 years- and I'm slowly getting better since you came into my life. There is no other way to say it. Thanks Jolie."

He was improved in one class, and he felt that he was "slowly" getting better. I like an empowered student who does not want to dawdle to get better. The day after the second of the two sessions, Bernie wrote:

28 Oct 2007

"Last night, I walked about 7 blocks to restaurant AQUA (great value, low cost & delicious) and back home another 7 blocks.

"Upper back extension causes no pain, lower back does. I can do plank on elbows, holding for 60 seconds now, no pain.

"If you want to make photos of a geriatric doing your things, it's OK with me. as you've seen, I'm not bashful or delicate. I will work at getting better, my daughter is getting married January 5 and I want to be able to dance with her and my wife."

Bernie went back to his doctors about the small amount of pain remaining. They told him he should have more surgery, and gave him prescriptions. He wrote to ask me:

"On Nov. 2 I have a follow up with the spine surgeon (same guy) and on Nov 14 a consult with a Neurologist ( ). Do you have any suggestions about a pain med FENTANYL ,which was suggested by a doc at the V.A."

I wrote back that Fentanyl is a surgical grade narcotic. It is used "off-label" for back pain and there have been deaths. I asked him to tell me more about what hurt, and when, so we could stop it without any harmful medicine, and also what the neurologist said.

14 Nov 2007 he wrote:

"I had an office visit with the neurologist at ( ), he said my twisted nerve at L5 will never get better and I will always have pain."

They told him to have another spine surgery and take the Fentanyl. (Then why did they put him though all that surgery?)

He wrote:

"Hello, I still have some tingling in both knees...but much better than 2 weeks ago! There has always been pain in my left flank between spine & hip, never told you because the knees were my greatest problem… The lower back pain persists, but only left side. When I do the trap stretch leaning to left--puts much pressure on that pain. Leaning to the right feels like a good stretch. Any additional suggestions?"

I found that that he was still doing "their" exercises. Conventional exercises of bending forward to stretch the hamstrings are often prescribed for back pain. The assumption is that tight hamstrings have (something) to do with back pain. However, bending forward is one major contributor of this kind of back pain. I changed how he stretched his hamstrings to one of the ways we did in class.

He was also continuing to overarch his lower back when walking, which was a large source of the tingling pain. When he used the Trapezius stretch, he was also overarching, which makes pain when bending to that side. This kind of pain is often confused for spinal stenosis. One classic sign of stenosis is pain when bending toward one side. But the narrowing is not true stenosis, but just overarching which narrows and pinches the area. For someone who has stenosis, not pinching the area further with overarching is frequently enough to stop pain.

What was complicating everything was his surgeries. They were considered "completely successful." The two knee replacements were "completely rehabbed" meaning he could bend his knees enough to sit in a chair. He could no longer stretch the front of his hip enough to prevent the kind of tightness that encourages standing and moving in overarched position. The back surgery put a plate in his back to prevent much movement. That meant that even small overarching movements were enough to pressure the newly immovable area. The back hurt, and the tight back and hip were compressing nerves going down both legs.

He wrote two mails:

"Jolie You hit on the spot. I will keep at it gently."

and

"Jolie, a quick note to tell you today I walked 12 blocks, stopping to stretch hamstrings.. often on steps or fireplug....as you suggested...also lunge stretch. I will dance at my daughter's wedding. Much thanks.

"There will not ever be more surgery on my body."

For the flank pain, he had been for many tests, and was even scheduled for a kidney evaluation. The muscles in the area were so tight, that I biked over to his home to do a sports medicine technique to stretch it out for him, and checked his other stretches. I went over how to stretch the front of the hip without overarching his lower back. His sweet funny wife made me lunch. We got some fun photos of things as gifts for you, of fun stretches and activities.

He wrote

"I've had x-rays, MRI, bloodwork, surgery, injections, no Dr. had any solution.
YOU HAD THE ANSWER. No wonder so many people have thanked you."

He did the work and gave me the credit. That's a good man.

Next - Bernie dances at his daughter's wedding in Cauda Equina - Result Not Cause.

Labels: drugs, facet joints, fix pain, hamstring, impingement, injury, knee, lordosis, lower back, neck, readers inspiring story, side, stenosis, stretch, surgery, yoga

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Fast Fitness - Upper Back, Shoulder, Triceps, Arm, Wrist, and Hand Stretch

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - nice stretch for hands, upper back, and everything in between.

1. Stand with your back about a foot from a solid surface


2. Reach upward and backward to place both hands on the wall, all fingers facing downward


3. Press, lifting upward, keeping the stretch in your chest and upper body.

Vary the stretch by straightening elbows more. Do not hinge from the lower back, which increases lordosis (causes hyperlordosis). Tuck hip to neutral to stop compressive pain in the lower back. Here is how.

Breathe. Smile. Feel good stretching your upper back out of forward rounded posture.

Labels: arm, fast fitness, hand, lordosis, neutral spine, shoulder, stretch, upper back, wrist

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Fast Fitness - Strengthen by Changing Your Plank

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - fix your plank (hold pushup position) to strengthen core and wrists, and train standing neutral spine posture. In yoga the plank is done in high and low positions called chaturunga.

A sagging inward curve to the lower back is not the normal curve, it is too much curve - pictured at the start of the MPEG movie below. Holding a plank with a sagging (overarched, hyperlordotic) lower spine "hammocks" body weight onto your spine joints called facets, adding to lower back pain, and does not use your core muscles. It is counterproductive as an exercise. Instead:

1. Hold a pushup position
2. Change sagging lower back to neutral by tucking the hip. Head up, neck as straight as standing.
   
3. Don't flop all weight on wrists. Press with hand and fingers, and use forearm muscles to reduce wrist compression and shift weight to surrounding muscles - see Stronger Pain-Free Wrists When Biking for ideas.

Reader David D. from Belgium sent this excellent movie. He pushes up into plank. You can also can start on hands and feet without pushing up. He first demonstrates badly overarched lower back, then changes to neutral spine in seconds 8-11 of the movie, then holds. When you do this you will immediately feel the effort shift to your abs. Use this instead of crunches for functional core training. If you push up from the floor, hold tucked neutral spine, not lifting upper body first.

(The exercise is not to do overarching and change to neutral - it is to hold neutral throughout.)

Labels: abdominal muscles, facet joints, fast fitness, fix pain, lordosis, lower back, neutral spine, posture, strength, video/movie, wrist, yoga

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Rocky Movie Computer Fight Simulation

The 2006 Sylvester Stallone movie Rocky Balboa featured a scene where a computer simulation estimates the outcome of a hypothetical fight. Stallone's character Rocky is a retired heavyweight boxer. While watching ESPN news, Rocky is startled by a broadcast. It features a computer simulation depicting a fantasy fight, and predicts the outcome of how he would have fought in his prime against the movie's present-day heavyweight champion Mason Dixon. A real pro boxer plays Mason Dixon's character. Antonio "Magic Man" Tarver is a southpaw from Florida, and former light heavyweight world champion.

Computer generated fights that generate real probable outcomes in real time 3-D are not yet possible outside the movie industry.

An actual "fantasy fight" computer simulation was done in 1970. It was the SuperFight between Muhammad Ali and Rocky Marciano. Rocky (Rocco) Marciano was heavyweight champion of the world from 1952 to 1956. Muhammad Ali was three-time World Heavyweight Champion in the 1970s. Marciano and Ali fought in different eras and never fought an actual bout.

To make the SuperFight, probability formulas were entered into a computer. No drawings, just numbers. Ali and Marciano met in real life on a filmset to film numerous short segments showing possible parts of a fight. Marciano was already retired 13 years and wore a toupee. The short segments were then spliced together to match the already done computer outcome to make a movie that looked like a real fight or computer-generation of one, but was not. The predicted outcome had already been generated by computer, but the fighters and movie were the real people, not computer generated. The outcome may or may not have reflected actual ability of the fighters or the real outcome.

In the mid 1980s, I was investigating which differences in human movement determined injury potential and athletic performance. In one study, I wanted to know what made the difference between the punch of a black belt martial artist and the same punch by an athletic person without training.

In present day, a camera can be hooked directly to a computer, which picks up the locations of the person's joints at each point in time, generating a computer image of the person as they move in real time. Software automatically calculates, draws, and records the image on the screen. When I started, we didn't have any of that. I did it all manually.

I filmed two subjects using 16mm high speed filming. An athletic man who had never done martial arts was subject #1. My husband Paul, who had earned his black belt a few years before that, volunteered as subject #2. I put markers over the center points of their major joints, and bands around joints which initially faced the camera but would rotate during the punch, so that the joint center would still be determined. Both executed a front reverse punch with their dominant arm. (Paul had to use traditional hyperlordotic position to match the untrained subject, rather than healthier neutral spine position, just for this comparison. We have done other studies comparing my neutral spine adjustment and found it to be a stronger punch - try it here.)

After waiting a week for film developing, I went into a darkened lab and used a film projector to throw the image of each of the thousands of frames, one by one, against a large computer digitizing tablet hung on a wall. I then digitized each joint point of each projected image, in each frame, of both subjects, frame by frame, with a digitizing Graf-pen. I sent data points from each frame by (300 baud acoustic coupling) modem to a text editor on a mainframe in another building at the University's new computer center. I wrote my own FORTRAN programs to generate data summaries and used packaged International Mathematical and Statistical Libraries (IMSL) cubic spline programs and subroutines for data smoothing. This was all to get each knee, hip, ankle, shoulder, wrist, elbow, neck and other filmed joint points into a computer to see exactly where and how fast they moved. Projecting each frame against the wall also allowed me to trace the subjects' outlines to make series of line drawings of their punch, and to make stick figures showing joint center placement. Here are some data and the actual drawings I made:
























































Not long after, with improvements in automating this process, action video games were flourishing. I was invited to a computer-generated imagery (CGI) development studio to be their "movement representation figure." They put the dots on my joint centers and filmed me using high-speed 3D computer graphics modeling as I did martial arts and tumbling moves. Not just one punch, painstakingly done, but jumping, spinning, flying all over the studio, and up and down walls.

The software automatically generated a mathematical, "wireframe" 2-D representation of my three-dimensional form. From it they animated a wild female warrior action figure for their fighting/mission genre arcade and video gameplay. They also used skeletal animation for when I would morph (on-screen) into various animal forms. I never got royalties but it was fun.

This is a big fun topic. For more about martial arts click the label under this post. I can post more about motion capture analysis of various sports if anyone is interested. The Great Muhammad Ali has been diagnosed with "Pugilistic Parkinson's syndrome" of tremors, muscle rigidity and slowness - with the possibility, still not fully determined, if due from the damage of a boxing career. See Rocky IV and Head Injury.

Labels: computer, injury, lordosis, martial arts, movie/media fitness, neutral spine, Parkinson, speed

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Innovation in Abdominal Muscles

A standard recommendation for back pain is to stand with one foot up, or in front of the other. Why? Pubs often have a foot rail to put your foot up. Why? This post shows 1. A major missed cause of the pain, 2. An innovative relief, 3. The missing link of what abdominal muscles actually do.

1. The Cause
If you stand with your behind tilted out in back (middle) and/or lean the upper body backward (right), you increase the normal inward arch in the lower spine.

Overarching produces a mystery ache after long standing, walking, running, and lifting overhead. People who do this feel they must bend forward or sit to relieve this pain, or put one foot up. These movements reduce the painful arch. The pain reduces, and may later return when the person returns to injurious bad slouching (standing in hyperlordosis).

Often no injury shows on x-rays or scans. The person may be told nothing is wrong. Or that they have a back "condition." They many be told to strengthen their muscles, or improve endurance, or given pain suppressing medicine. Those do not stop the source of the injury. Over years, the facet joints (joints of the vertebrae) may finally wear out. Sometimes other things show on x-rays and the patient is treated for the scan results, the pain masked with drugs or returning mysteriously because this cause went unaddressed. Injections and surgery are frequently prescribed, but not necessary. Why not?

2. The Relief
The latest "buzz-phrase" in fitness is that back and abdominal muscle endurance, more than strength, is important in solving back pain. However, that still leaves out the key - improving endurance with conventional core training does not train you to stand without overarching. It is not automatic.

The innovation is not a new pill, device, or footrest, or to improve strength or endurance with crunches (not good for your back anyway), or to work on one particular muscle, for example the overrated multifidus. The innovation is to stop the source of the pain then and there, by reducing the over-arch to normal, small inward curve called neutral spine, with simple spine repositioning.

• The left photo shows overarching. It is not the normal curve to the lower spine. The silhouette of the lower back is hidden by the arm, but you can see the beltline tilted downward in front and the hip tilted forward in front and out in back. The length of the abs is roughly marked by distance between the hands.
• The right photo shows reducing hyperlordosis to neutral spine. Try it yourself by standing with your hands on the bottom of your ribs and center hipbone. Straighten your torso, as if doing a slight crunch standing up. Hands draw closer. The belt line levels. This is normal, straight, relaxed standing position.

The post Prevent Back Surgery showed overarching in action, and gave another quick method to learn neutral spine.

3. How Abs "Support"
The muscles that you happen to use to tuck the hip under until you reach neutral spine are your abdominal muscles, including obliques. That is the innovation. You stop the source of pain and get free built-in abdominal muscle exercise at the same time. No tightening, just functional use as a lifestyle. That is what abdominal muscles do. They prevent overarching - but only when you use them.

To direct treatment to fixing the source of pain, and to replace conventional core training with something that applies better to real life, I developed an innovative technique that specifically trains core muscles functionally - which means maintaining healthy spine during daily use. It is called The Ab Revolution™ and has two parts. The first details how to get comfortable neutral spine to stop pain during daily life, no special or strenuous exercises needed. The second part is for people who want healthier exercise. Exercises range from simple to high. Students using the book asked for more illustrations, so Part I of the newest edition has 49 illustrations. Part II on functional strengthening has 65 illustrations, both with step-by-step instructions. If you use the book, use the newest third edition, expanded. Here is the link to my BOOKS page to see it - www.DrBookspan.com/books.

Related Posts:

• Using Abdominal Muscles is Not Tightening or Pressing Navel to Spine
• Prevent Main Factor in Back Pain After Running and Walking
• Lower Back Pain and Golf
• What Abdominal Muscles Don't Do - The Missing Link
• What Does It Look Like to Not Use Abdominal Muscles?
• Prevent Back Surgery
  
  

Labels: abdominal muscles, endurance, facet joints, fix pain, lordosis, lower back, neutral spine

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Prevent Back Surgery

I received an invitation to take a course to learn a new back surgery for damage to the facets. Facets are the joints at the back of each vertebrae (spine bone). The surgery was advertised as a good revenue producer.

In the surgery, the facet joint is cut off and replaced by "lumbar position preservation hardware" rigidly attached so that the area can no longer bend or arch backward. At right is an X-ray of the lower spine with surgically implanted hardware. The person is standing sideways facing to the right. Surgical facet rigid fixation surgery is considered innovative because it replaces the more drastic spine fusion. It also replaces repeated injections into the painful area. The seminar would teach me the surgery with a cocktail reception following.

Why does the surgery want to prevent arching the lower spine? The facets are in the back of the vertebrae. Chronically letting your spine arch (too much inward curve) squashes the facets in back. According to work I've done over years in the lab, the overarching, called hyperlordosis (or slouching backward), is a chief factor in damage and pain to the facets and surrounding soft tissue. That means that you can stop this yourself without the surgery.

Notice if you allow overarching when carrying things in back (left) and in front (right). It is not the normal curve of the spine. It is too much:
The left photo above is from the post Healthier Backpack Carrying to Get Better Exercise and Stop Back Pain. You do not need to allow the pack to pull your upper body backward. Right photo is from Healthier Carrying - Get Free Ab Exercise and Stop Pain. You do not need to lean back to offset weight carried. In both examples, the hip tilts forward in front, instead of holding vertically.
Two examples above show allowing the spine to arch too much when reaching overhead. Left photo is from Change Daily Reaching to Get Ab Exercise and Stop Back and Shoulder Pain. The drawing at right is from Back Pain in Pregnancy - and Why Men Can Get It. Imagine lifting your baby overhead (or any weight) and allowing your spine to pinch backward on the facet joints instead of standing upright and holding neutral spine.
Two examples above are from Aren't You Supposed To Stick Your Behind Out to Sit Down or Do Squats? (left) and Overlooked Ab Muscles in Overhead Lifts (right).

You can stop overarching, thereby preventing crushing force on the facets, and distribute the weight through the core muscles instead. It is a simple positional adjustment that takes seconds (shown below). An alternative is to have surgery.

Following rigid fixation surgery, you will no longer be able to stretch your lower spine as far backward, even when you want to stretch for range of motion and better disc health. You will still be able to slouch your body weight backward - onto the implants. They may eventually wear, along with adjacent bone, from the chronic crushing. Because the surgically fixed area can no longer overarch, increased forces occur on the joints above and below which have to bend more. If you thought the spine in the x-ray above still looked overly arched, not neutral, you are right. The areas above and below the implanted devices are over-arching backward, and the backside is tilting out in back (hip axis is tilted anteriorly). After years, those facets may be next to break down. It is no surprise "when the pain comes back." The cause of the pain was never removed.

Instead of allowing your spine to be pulled into damaging position, use your muscles to hold neutral spine. Here is one easy way to learn to feel it:

1. Stand with your back against a wall. Touch heels, backside, shoulders, and head. Do you feel a large arch in the lower back making a large space?
2. Put your hands on your hips. Thumbs in back. Fingers in front.
3. Roll your hip so that thumbs roll down in back.

The large space between lower back and wall becomes a smaller space. Do not flatten against the wall or round your back. Just feel the strain come off the lower back. Use the new neutral for daily positioning. Simple. Check the photo at right (spine positioning is shown standing sideways, not with back to wall). Left is arching. Right is neutral. A small inward curve remains with neutral spine (right). Neutral spine does not mean rounding the back (which pressures the discs). Make the belt line level, not tilting down in front. The photo is from the post Using Abdominal Muscles is Not Tightening or Pressing Navel to Spine. Click for additional ideas.

The muscles used to maintain neutral spine are your abdominal and core muscles. It is not strengthening ab muscles that stops pain or teaches you neutral spine. It is using them to prevent damaging spine position. You get free, built-in core muscle exercise just by avoiding back surgery.

Labels: abdominal muscles, facet joints, fix pain, injury, lordosis, lower back, neutral spine, surgery, upper back

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Gaze Perseid Meteors Without Neck Pain

This weekend in the Northern Hemisphere, the moon will be new, and the night dark, and the skies filled with the shooting stars of the Perseid Meteor shower.

Every 130 years or so, the Swift-Tuttle comet circles the Sun, streaming icy, dusty debris the size of sand and peas. Every mid-August, the Earth passes the orbit of Swift-Tuttle, raining fiery remains very fast through the sky. Igniting against the air's intense friction, they "shoot" across the sky. Books by people who study these things say they fly about 37 miles per second (60 kps), most burning away far above the ground.

The Perseid showers are seen in the sky around the constellation of Perseus the Hero, giving the name. Early Greeks explained that the god Zeus, father of Perseus, visited Perseus' mortal mother Danae in a shower of brightness. Later the event was renamed (or reborn) as "The Tears of St. Lawrence" for their appearance during the August festival of Saint Laurentius. Chinese, Japanese, and Korean writings of Perseid showers date from the 8th century. I grew up on Russian childhood social-utopian folk bedtime stories of comets, mixed with my Grandmother's whispers of fiery conflagration, later determined from an unknown comet or part bursting over Tunguska Krasnoyarsk Siberia around 1908, devastating the forest (later politically reinvented as a nuclear event, and editorially as UFOs for Russian science fiction writing and American television).

What about your neck?
When watching meteor showers standing or sitting, don't martyr your neck. If you crane your neck and push the chin forward when looking upward, you put destructive force on the neck, shown in three examples that follow:

• Three images above show craning the neck and jutting the chin. Injurious compression builds in vertebrae, discs, and surrounding soft tissue.
• The left and middle images show leaning the upper body backward. Thoracic lean overly arches the lower back (hyperlordosis), adding weighted compression to the joints called facets and soft tissue of the lower spine.
• The right photo shows unhealthy craning with the chin forward, common in some yoga and exercise classes. It adds sizeable compressive loading on the back of neck vertebrae plus shearing force on the discs. When raising arms upward, it contributes to rotator cuff compression and injury. Click Overhead Lifting, Reaching, and Throwing Part I - Shoulder and Rotator Cuff Injury.
  

I understand that jutting the chin far forward is often taught as proper form. I have taken yoga classes in India with major names and those unknown to the outside world. One teacher told me pushing the neck and chin forward protects the discs. It unfortunately doesn't. Shearing force on the discs is severe when you jut the chin forward then raise it. Shear is a structural strain when one layer shifts sideways (or front to back) in relation to the other. Damage may take years to accrue until visible on x-ray. Don't jut your chin forward, especially not when looking upward.

Photo 3 above shows tilting the neck forward when looking through binoculars (left figure with yellow arrow). The chin is not forward, but the forward head still creates painful forces on the upper back contributing to upper crossed syndrome, disc trouble, and muscle strain in the classic diamond and hangar shape across the upper back. The pain is easily stopped. Keep neck vertical and chin in (right green arrow).

You can look directly upward for all you need in healthful position. Here are ways:

• Keep your chin in, loosely and relaxed.
• Shoulders back.
  
• The back of your head lifts loosely upward without strain.
  
• Straighten the rounded-forward curve of the upper spine - get more upward gaze range from your upper back.
  
• Don't yank or force the head and chin back, or the corners of your neck will ache.
• Don't lean back by arching your lower back.

Healthy upward gazing is a nice good-feeling stretch and exercise for the upper back and neck without injury. Use it for all overhead needs, photo 4 of Amsterdam policeman at right.

The time where we pass through the Perseid shower is long, from about July 15 through August 25. The highest activity is predicted over the Northern Hemisphere this coming weekend. Look up on Saturday, 11 August before dawn, Sunday morning the 12th, late Sunday night through Monday early dawn.

Because of the tilt to Swift-Tuttle's orbit, its fiery dust falls almost entirely on Earth's northern hemisphere. Southern hemisphere friends see few Perseids. The next good Southern hemisphere meteor shower is hoped to be the Geminid showers in December.

The constellation where meteors appear to come from is called the radiant. The Perseid meteor shower radiant is the constellation Perseus. The Leonid shower is hoped to peak this 18 November. Look toward the constellation Leo. The Geminid shower radiant is the Gemini constellation. Watch in mid-December with the evening crescent of the moon.

In photo 5 at left of looking up through the telescope, the neck is a bit more forward than needs to be.

Experiment on your own. Use a mirror and send in your photos of remaking healthful fun overhead gazing activities.

Labels: aerospace, disc, facet joints, fix pain, holiday, lordosis, lower back, neck, upper back, yoga

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American College of Sports Medicine Meeting

Hello from the annual meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), held this year in New Orleans. The meeting is attended by thousands of researchers, physicians, allied health, trainers, educators, scientists, and others.

Sports medicine is more than studying and treating movement-related injuries, or using movement to repair injuries. It includes chronic diseases, physical challenges, nutrition, and extreme environments. The College states its goal as "Advancing health through science, education and medicine."

I'm at the conference to learn all I can from others, and present some of my research on identifying lumbar hyperlordosis (too much lower spine arching) and how it produces lower back injury. A few posts describe some work from past years:

What is Neutral Spine and Why Does Sticking Out In Back Harm?
Aren't You Supposed To Stick Your Behind Out to Sit Down or Do Squats?
Back Pain in Pregnancy - and Why Men Can Get It
Fixing the Commonest Source of Mystery Lower Back Pain

and others. Click the label "neutral spine" following this post to bring up a screen with most past posts on the topic.

I will try to get to Internet cafes over the next week to post some of the interesting studies and presentations at this conference from researchers and practitioners from all over the world.

During and after the conference week, a group of ACSM members will assist the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) to gut homes and prepare for rebuilding to help reconstruct New Orleans. Work is scheduled June 2 - 6, 7:30 a.m.- 2:30 p.m. Kristine Clark, Director of Sports Nutrition at Penn State U is coordinating the mobilization. To participate, e-mail or phone (814) 863-8107.

Here are the next three posts from the ACSM conference:
Blood Hero
News from the ACSM Conference
and
Calories Burned in Prayer

Labels: education, lordosis, neutral spine, spirit

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No More Crunches No More Back Pain

The new expanded third edition is now available of the training manual, The Ab Revolution™ No More Crunches No More Back Pain.

The Ab Revolution™ is a groundbreaking core training method. It has two components. The first is to learn how to consciously use your core to reposition your spine away from injurious positioning and into healthful position for back pain control during everything you do. The second component uses the new healthy positioning during innovative exercises for fun, healthy, exercise that works your muscles more than conventional core training and works them in functional ways - training them in the way they need to work in real life.

The Ab Revolution™ uses no forward bending which pressures discs and reinforces the rounded upper spine that contributes to pain syndromes.

I rearched the method over many years in the lab and in real life with several thousands of students, patients, and participants, testing combinations of established and proven sports medicine rehabilitation techniques and physical training methods, then integrating them into real activities. I will present some of the research next week at the meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM). The Ab Revolution™ is in use around the world at top spine centers and by athletes and military. SEAL teams say, "We use it - (we can't tell you our names, we'd have to kill you with our bare abs)."

More information on my web site - DrBookspan.com.

Labels: abdominal muscles, disc, education, fix pain, lordosis, neutral spine

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Back Pain in Pregnancy - and Why Men Can Get It

In school, we were taught about the "unavoidable lordosis of pregnancy." Lordosis (technically, hyperlordosis) is when you allow too much inward arching in the lower spine - Drawing 1 at right.

Over-arching causes one kind of lower back pain. It was taught as something that "just happens" to the spine during pregnancy. I asked the professors why women could also get it before and after pregnancy, and why men got the same kind of compressive force on the joints of the spine, called facet joints. It became a focus of study in my lab with lifters for many years.

The post Neutral Spine or Not? and What is Neutral Spine and Why Does Sticking Out In Back Harm? show how slouching so that you increase the inward curve in the lower spine (increase the lordosis so that it is no longer neutral spine) pinches the lower back under the weight of the upper body. Both also show what neutral spine looks like compared to lordotic.


The upper body should be upright (vertical) and the hip level to be in neutral spine. Drawing 2, with x-ray, shows what hyperlordosis looks like when the front of the hip tilts down and the upper body leans backward. This is not the normal curve - it is too much. The back of the spine gets pinched and pressured.


I found that hyperlordosis is not caused by a pregnant belly or beer belly or carrying groceries or backpacks. The over-arching (hyperlordosis) is not unchangeable anatomy. It is leaning back to offset the load in front.

Note the same over-arching occurring with the overhead lift in drawing 3, below left.

Overarched spine position is something that you can decide whether to allow or not. You can easily use your muscles to prevent hyperlordosis and hold you in healthy upright position.


Try it for yourself:

1. Stand up and pick up your chair (bend right to pick it up for more exercise and back injury prevention).
2. Hold the chair like any package in front, or on your hip, and notice if you lean back to shift the weight off your muscles (make it easier). Where does the weight shift to? On to your lower spine.
3. Instead, stand straight. You will get free, built-in healthful exercise that protects your spine.

When carrying or lifting any load in front, from groceries, to a chair, to a pregnancy, or a baby on your hip, don't lean back to offset the load. To stop the arching and the lower back pain that results, tuck your hips under you as if doing a small abdominal crunch standing up until you are straight, without rounding forward. Don't over-tuck, tighten up, round your shoulders, or lean forward or backward. Just stand straight. When you tuck properly by moving your spine (not by tightening anything) the too-large arch will lessen to normal, and pressure in your lower back from the arching should immediately disappear.

The pelvic tilt to tuck the spine to restore an overly arched lower back to neutral spine was introduced in Throw a Stronger Punch (or Push a Car or Stroller) Using This Back Pain Reduction Technique and Healthier Carrying - Get Free Ab Exercise and Stop Pain.

Don't overarch or lean the upper body backward while you stand and carry - center and right-hand figures in the drawing at left. That is the missing link. Stand upright in neutral spine - left hand figure. There is a small lower spine curve, not a large one, and the lower spine is not pinched and folding backward, which squashes the soft tissue, discs, and vertebral joints called facets.

I have heard argument that nine months is too long to expect someone to think about their spine, and the muscles get tired. As they say in computers, "that's not a bug, that's a feature." It's good news that you get a free core muscle workout and free back pain prevention. Pregnancy (and any weight lifting) is a key time to have that.

Labels: disc, facet joints, facets, fix pain, lordosis, lower back, neutral spine, posture, pregnancy

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Neutral Spine or Not?

A small inward curve belongs in your lower back (left-hand figure of the three in the drawing). You can slouch your spine in a few ways to increase the small inward curve resulting in over-arching, also called hyper-lordosis (two ways shown in the middle and right figures). Hyperlordosis can pinch and compress the lower spine joints called facet joints, and surrounding soft tissue.

I have done several studies trying to see why hyperlordosis hurts. One study that I will present at the American College of Sports Medicine meeting this May, identified and measured three kinds of hyperlordosis and their relation to lower back injury. It turns out that, historically, it has been tricky to measure overly-arched spinal angles in relation to the hip (middle drawing). It is even more demanding to figure how the lower spine angle relates to the upper body in hyperlordosis (right drawing).

The middle drawing above, and left figure in the photo at right, show one kind of lordosis from tilting the hip downward in front so that the backside sticks out in back, explained in the previous post What is Neutral Spine and Why Does Sticking Out In Back Harm? An earlier post introduced how this kind of overarching can injure - Aren't You Supposed To Stick Your Behind Out to Sit Down or Do Squats?

The right-hand figure in both the drawing and photo show a second kind of hyperlordosis. The hip may be fine and level, but if you slouch and lean your upper body backward, you overarch the lower spine and pinch it under your upper body weight. Watch for this kind of overarching when standing, lifting arms overhead, and carrying loads in front.

The muscles that hold your torso and hip straight are your abdominal muscles. But abs do not do this automatically - you have to voluntarily, consciously use them, the same as moving your arm or leg. If you don't deliberately use abs to position your spine, you may fall into whatever bad positioning habit you are used to - sticking out in back, or leaning upper body back, or both at once.

Strengthening abs and tightening them through conventional exercises also does not automatically make your abs do anything to position your spine - Using Abdominal Muscles is Not Tightening or Pressing Navel to Spine. That is why I spent more years in the lab to develop exercises that do train your abs to hold your spine right while you go about your daily life and while you exercise. We named the new system The Ab Revolution because it is a different way of understanding and using abs, and because we couldn't think of a better name. Ideas welcome. I will be giving a fast, fun, workshop on The Ab Revolution™ in downtown Philadelphia in May. If you can't make it, follow this blog or try the book The Ab Revolution™. It tells all about fixing the pain of hyperlordosis and how to get effective abdominal exercise.

Labels: abdominal muscles, lordosis, lower back, neutral spine, posture, upper back

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What is Neutral Spine and Why Does Sticking Out In Back Harm?

"Neutral spine" is an often-used phrase in exercise and back pain rehab. What does your spine have to do to be neutral? What does it matter?

In general, (this interesting topic can be involved) think of a line through the crest of your hipbone from back to front. The line from the top bump in back (medical abbreviation is PSIS) to the top bump in front (ASIS) should be approximately horizontal (left-hand figure in the drawing).

If you let your spine slouch so that the front of the hip (ASIS) drops downward and the back of the hip tilts outward in back, the small normal inward curve of the lower back increases (drawn figure on right). The spine is no longer neutral. It is over-arched.

Another way to see the anterior hip tilt when the spine is over-arched is to check the line from the ASIS to where the pelvic bones meet in front, called the symphysis pubis (PS). When you hold your spine in neutral, the line from ASIS to PS will be vertical (left drawing). When the ASIS tilts forward and the behind sticks out in back (right drawing and photo), this is an anterior tilt to the hip. The spine is no longer neutral. It is arched - hyperlordotic.

The anterior tilt is easy to see when people stand arched. It is a little harder to measure. Since some experimental subjects are disconcerted to have measuring devices put on their symphysis pubis (PS), the line can, instead, be drawn from the top of the leg bone to the center of the crest of the hipbone. The blue line in the left drawing is vertical, showing the hip is straight and level. When this line tilts forward in front and back at the bottom, that is an anterior tilt to the hip. Note the arrow drawn onto the photo showing the abdomen sticking out in front and the behind pushed out in back. The photo shows standing with pronounced hyperlordosis - too much arch or inward curve to the lower back.

In my laboratory work, I have identified three ways the spine can become hyperlordotic. The anterior hip tilt is one. Hyperlordosis pinches and compresses the lower spine. By any name - overarching, anterior hip tilt, swayback, hollowback, sticking out in back - hyperlordosis is a common contributor to lower back pain. The area may ache after long standing, walking, running, or lifting overhead. Eventually, (over years) overarching can damage the spine joints called facets and nearby structures.

Holding the hip and spine in neutral and not letting the hip tilt forward happens to use a particular set of muscles - your abdominal muscles. Strengthening the abs does not automatically keep the spine neutral. Tightening the abs also does not move the spine to neutral. Using Abdominal Muscles is Not Tightening or Pressing Navel to Spine explains more of why. Simply moving your own spine on purpose and holding healthful position as you go about your activities is how you keep your spine neutral and not sinking into injurious overarching.

Hyperlordosis during daily movement and exercise, and how to prevent the injuries it causes, have been an area of my laboratory investigations for years. I have done several interesting experimental studies (interesting to me, anyway). Upcoming posts will tell a bit about them.

The book that tells all about fixing the pain of hyperlordosis and how to get more effective abdominal exercise is The Ab Revolution™

Labels: abdominal muscles, fix pain, hip, lordosis, lower back, neutral spine, posture

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Fixing More Fitness Myths

On April 1st, I covered some fun fitness myths and how to change myth into healthier exercise. Today continues with more fun ways to get more exercise and reduce injury at the same time:


Heart Health

Myth - Anger has no health effects. Instead, turn contempt and anger for others to healthy dialog with:
Healthier Heart.

Understanding How "Sticking Out in Back" Isn't Neutral Spine:

Start with this one to see what overarching the lower back means, and how correcting it lets you do more in healthier ways:
Fixing the Commonest Source of Mystery Lower Back Pain

Then try Using Abdominal Muscles is Not Tightening or Pressing Navel to Spine to visualize how you simply tuck enough to make the belt line level when standing, not tilted. A small inward curve in the lower back remains when you shift to neutral spine, but not large enough to cause degenerative pinching on the facet joints, the joints of the lower spine.

Then feel the difference of tucking until neutral: Throw a Stronger Punch (or Push a Car or Stroller) Using This Back Pain Reduction Technique

and Change Daily Reaching to Get Ab Exercise and Stop Back and Shoulder Pain

Here is how to try it during squats: Free Exercise and Free Back and Knee Pain Prevention - Healthy Bending

Here are some abdominal exercises using these principles: Change Common Exercises to Get Better Ab Exercise and Stop Back Pain

Here is what it looks like not to use abs:
What Abdominal Muscles Don't Do - The Missing Link
What Does It Look Like to Not Use Abdominal Muscles?
and Healthier Carrying - Get Free Ab Exercise and Stop Pain.

Abs and Tightening:

Myth - Pressing navel inwards to tighten abs is the way to strengthen your abs or fix your posture. Fact - tightening will not move your spine out of unhealthy position and it impedes normal fluid motion:
Using Abdominal Muscles is Not Tightening or Pressing Navel to Spine.

Exercise Injuries

Myth - Exercise injuries are usually overuse and aging.
Fact - Simple misuse is easily fixed: Why So Many Aerobics Injuries? and What is "Fitness as a Lifestyle?"
A recent injury survey by US military revealed that 62% of American injuries in Iraq are occurring in the gym. Welcome to the Fitness Fixer tells more.
Some top docs say the military press should be avoided. I think it is a functional exercise and can be done in ways without upper body injury: Safer Overhead Military Press.

Dispelling Myths about Circulation and Massage:

Keeping Thai Massage Healthy Part III - Should You Do "The Blood Stop?"
Making Thai Massage Healthier Part II - Avoid Snapping Elbows or Knees Backward
Changing Thai Massage to Be Healthier Part I - Avoid Pressuring Lower Back Discs.

Sitting and Rising:

Myth - The way to sit and rise from a chair is to lean forward and stick out in back. Here is a way that uses muscles more:
Get Better Exercise From Your Chair
and
Aren't You Supposed To Stick Your Behind Out to Sit Down or Do Squats?

Dispelling the Myth That The Best Ab Exercise Means Crunches, Leg Lifts, and Bending Forward:

Abdominal Muscle Exercise - Better, Different, Not What You Think
Throw a Stronger Punch (or Push a Car or Stroller) Using This Back Pain Reduction Technique
Change Common Exercises to Get Better Ab Exercise and Stop Back Pain.

Knee Pain:

Myth - to avoid knee pain you must avoid impact activities or exercises that bend the knees. Here are ways to do all you enjoy and get stronger healthier knees:
Understanding positioning and impact: Healthy Knees.
For full squatting to the heels: Save Knees When Squatting
For half squatting for bending and exercise: Free Exercise and Free Back and Knee Pain Prevention - Healthy Bending.

Backpacks and Back Pain:

Myth - Carrying the weight of backpacks makes your back hurt. Fact - You can change the source of the back pain by how you carry the same pack:
Healthier Backpack Carrying to Get Better Exercise and Stop Back Pain
and
Carrying Schoolbooks Is Not the Cause of Back Pain.

Back Surgery:

Myth - surgery is necessary to avoid later problems. Fact - Studies have now found that is it not true that you necessarily risk future consequences if you do not have surgery. Surgery itself can be a source of later trouble:
Fix Disc Pain Without Surgery
and
Studies Say Back Surgery Not Needed.

Squats:

There are medical people who say that squats are bad for the back and knees. I believe that healthy squats make daily life and exercise healthier and smarter, and can prevent much back and knee pain:
Bending Right is Fitness as a Lifestyle
How Often Should You Be Healthy?
Free Exercise and Free Back and Knee Pain Prevention - Healthy Bending
How Good Would You Look From 400 Squats a Day - Just Stop Unhealthy Bending.

Cause of Disc Degeneration and Herniation:

Myth - Vertebral discs just go bad without warning, from small provocations like a sneeze or reaching or from aging, so it doesn't matter what you do. The good news is that discs are not soft "jelly donuts" as often described. They are tough like truck tires. It takes years of the same, specific, problem to break them down and move them out of place. See the mechanism:
Disc Pain - Not a Mystery, Easy to Fix

Then see examples during daily life:
The Cause of Disc and Back Pain
Are You Making Your Exercise Unhealthy?
and How Often Should You Be Healthy?

Brain Damage:

Myth - knocks to the head are funny and harmless. In reality, long-term damage may be common and serious. This has far reaching implication for law enforcement, domestic violence, full contact sports, and extreme entertainment:
Rocky IV and Head Injury.

Sitting and Back Pain:

It made headlines when researchers seemed to say that sitting up straight was wrong. Here is what they really meant:
Don't Fall for "Don't Sit Up Straight."

When you exercise for health, are you sitting in unhealthy ways? Are You Making Your Exercise Unhealthy?

and here are two for more comfortable sitting:
When Did Health Become Thinking Out Of The Box?
and Exercise and Stretch for Long Travel Sitting.

Upper Back and Neck Pain

Breasts Causing Upper Back Pain is a Myth

Myth - All neck stretches fix neck pain. Fact - there are some stretches that increase neck pain:
Upper Back Exercise and Neck Pain Prevention Too
and The Stretch You Need The Least.
Here are stretches that work better:
Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain
Thumbs Can Show Tightness That Leads to Upper Back Pain
Nice Neck Stretch
and Quick, Feel-Good Upper Back and Chest Stretch.

Dispelling the Myth That Any Exercise or Stretch is Good For You:

The Stretch You Need The Least
Is Bad Martial Arts Good Exercise?
Common Exercises Teach Bad Bending
Sitting Badly Isn't Magically Healthy by Calling It a Hamstring Stretch
Common Exercises Teach Hip Tightness When Kicking, Stretching, and on the Stairs
Healthier Hamstring Stretching
and Better Achilles Tendon Stretch.

Is More Calcium is the Answer for Bone Density?:

Exercise is More Important Than Calcium Supplements for Bones
and
Collapsing Astronaut Gives Healthy Reminder.

Making Peace

I have taken many classes where the teacher claims their exercise system gives focus and calm, then they lose all their concentration if a student arrives late, if a phone rings, or if the class next door is too loud. These posts give things to try instead:
Which Ancient Exercise Gives Focus and Concentration?
Exercise Common Sense Discipline
The Story of the Black Belt.

More myths - Fixing Fitness Myths

Labels: abdominal muscles, circulation, facet joints, holiday, knee, lordosis, massage, myths, nutrition, squat

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Aren't You Supposed To Stick Your Behind Out to Sit Down or Do Squats?

A commonly repeated phrase in fitness training and programs is "neutral spine" and "tuck the tail" for healthier lower spine posture. Many people know this, repeat this, teach this, write articles about it, then jut their hip too far out in back and overly-arch their lower spine, doing just the opposite, when they squat, bend to pick things up, sit in a chair, and exercise (photo at left).

Tilting the hip too far outward in back overly-arches and hyperextends the lower spine - photo at left and left drawing below.

Hyperextrending the spine, creating too much lordosis (hyperlordosis) can result in unhealthful compression on the spine joints called facets, and on surrounding soft tissue.

Overarching shifts your body weight onto the spine joints and compresses them in a bent-backward position, eventually increasing back pain and joint damage.

Another issue is that if you cannot squat without sticking out in back or leaning your upper body far forward, it is a sign that your thighs are weak, your Achilles tendons are tight, you are not using your ab muscles, your balance is poor, or all four.

Why do so many programs teach to stick far out in back? It is well known that the opposite problem of tucking too much and rounding forward (lumbar flexion) contributes to back pain. People hear this and assume that the opposite, over-arching backward, will counteract that. They exaggerate the arch. Overarching often initially seems to "work" because you can lift more since you shift some of the work from the muscles onto the lower spine (and sometimes knees).

The muscles do less, so it seems easier. Competition lifters use it to lift more, regardless of the pain and injuries it causes later on.

It is trend-breaking news to say don't stick your backside out too much to squat, and instead use neutral spine, shown in the right-hand drawing. I know. It goes against what fitness organizations and pop-science exercise books teach. I know. Try this to see for yourself:

• Stand upright with feet side-by-side, comfortably apart.
• Face both feet in the same direction as your knees.
• Bend both knees, keeping both heels down on the floor and over your feet, not sinking inward or bowing outward.
• Look down and see if your knees cover the sight of your toes.
• If you can't see your toes because your knees are forward blocking the view, pull your knees back (keeping them bent) until you are still squatting but can see your toes.
• Keep your upper body as upright as you can.
• Now, here is the point about the lower back - notice if you stick your behind far out in back. It may be habit or that you don't have the leg strength or balance or your Achilles tendon is so tight that your heels come up from the floor. Instead, tuck the bottom of the hip under, just enough to bring the spine to "neutral." A small inward curve remains when you have neutral spine, but not a large one. Right-hand drawing.
  
• Raise your upper body to be more vertical, while staying in the squat.
• Notice how you have to use far more leg and hip muscle, and the pressure of holding your body weight comes off the lower back and knee joints.

That is healthy bending for all bending - neutral spine to do squats for exercise, to pick up clothes from the floor, to get pet dishes, look in the refrigerator, get the laundry, pick up the kids, to sit down in a chair, and so on. You will get a far better workout for your thighs, keep weight off your knees and spine. It is healthier to squat instead of bending forward to pick things up. But you don't want to cause the opposite problem by overly arching backward (sticking out the behind) either.

Another point in spine health and exercise is not to "tighten" or clench your abdominal muscles to squat or lift. It is not healthy or useful to tighten muscles for movement. It is trend-breaking news to say "don't tighten." I know. It goes against what fitness organizations and pop-science exercise books have been teaching. I know. Tightening is not what supports your back. Moving your spine out of unhealthy over-arched position, explained in this post, to a more neutral position is what "supports" (you hold your spine in place) preventing pain and injury. Using the muscles to stop unhealthy position, and hold healthful position is how you support your back - not by tightening.

• The previous post explains tightening - Using Abdominal Muscles is Not Tightening or Pressing Navel to Spine
• Also don't need to tighten gluteals - Gluteal Muscles Myth - Shaking The Dog's Paw
  
  

Fun effective exercises, without tightening or the forward bending of crunches or Pilates that causes so much back pain:

• Abdominal Muscle Exercise - Better, Different, Not What You Think
• If Better Abdominal Muscles Are Your New Year's Resolution, Try This
• Throw a Stronger Punch (or Push a Car or Stroller) Using This Back Pain Reduction Technique
• Change Common Exercises to Get Better Ab Exercise and Stop Back Pain

Have fun being part of this big and healthy change in fitness.

Labels: abdominal muscles, achilles stretch, lordosis, lower back, myths, neutral spine, squat, strength

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Using Abdominal Muscles is Not Tightening or Pressing Navel to Spine

Tighten your neck! Sound comfortable? Tighten your legs and walk around! Sound sensible? Yet, many popular exercise programs have insisted on the erroneous practice of tightening abs. I have written articles, posts, and books on why this is not beneficial and what works your abs better. At last, it is making headline news. The biggest name in spine research, Dr. Stuart McGill, has published that "drawing in" the abdominal muscles, also described as "press the navel to spine" is detrimental to health of the lower back, and that tightening the abs impedes normal movement. In Arch Phys Med Rehabil. 2007 Jan;88(1):54-62, authors Grenier and McGill conclude, "There seems to be no mechanical rationale for using an abdominal hollow, or the transversus abdominis, to enhance stability."

This week the headline news of British newspaper "The Daily Mail" followed up with inquiry into the incidence of back pain and injuries using the "drawing in" technique: Is Pilates bad for your back? (A minor note - they accompanied the otherwise good article with an incorrect photo depicting the opposite concept of back extension, not the unnecessary contracted abdominal tightening, which was the point of the article.) Pressing and tightening the abdominals has been an incorrect assumption made into ritual in the fitness industry for many years. However it is not the way your abdominal muscles work to do anything helpful to you.

When you bend your arm, you don't tighten your muscles to do it. In fact, you shouldn't want to. You just move your arm bones using your arm muscles. Abdominal muscles work the same way. You use them to move the body parts they attach to. Voluntarily. Strengthening or tightening won't make them move automatically. You may have a strong arm, but it isn't held up in the air automatically - only when you move it there. Strong, or even tight, abs will not automatically support your back. Moving your spine into healthful position will:

• Abs attach from hips to ribs. When you don't use your abs, your ribs lift up and the front of your hip sinks down increasing the inward curve or arch in your lower spine (left-hand photo of the pair). This inward curve is called lordosis and also hyperlordosis and swayback.
• Note how the belt line tips down in front (left-hand photo).
  
• The lower back aches after long standing because you are letting the weight of your upper body slump down on your lower back. People with the bad habit of overarching often feel they need to lean over forward or sit to relieve the pain.
  
• Instead, to correct the source of the pain, tuck the hip under (not push it forward) to lift up the beltline in front (right-hand photo). Lower the ribs to level. The action is like a thrust or pelvic tilt or crunch standing up just enough to straighten, not round forward.
• The muscles that move the ribs and hip to healthier position happen to be your abdominal muscles. Standing properly (right drawing) gives a free built-in ab workout, with no tightening and no forward bending; just functional use of the abs to hold your spine in position during all you do.
  

Click this for a description of what abdominal muscles really do:
What Abdominal Muscles Don't Do - The Missing Link

and this for the x-ray view of arching and fixing the arching:
Fixing the Commonest Source of Mystery Lower Back Pain

These posts show how to use abs when standing and moving in daily life:
Healthier Backpack Carrying to Get Better Exercise and Stop Back Pain
Healthier Carrying - Get Free Ab Exercise and Stop Pain

and these show you how to get better, more functional abdominal exercise than tightening or crunches and other forward bending:
Abdominal Muscle Exercise - Better, Different, Not What You Think
If Better Abdominal Muscles Are Your New Year's Resolution, Try This
Throw a Stronger Punch (or Push a Car or Stroller) Using This Back Pain Reduction Technique
Change Common Exercises to Get Better Ab Exercise and Stop Back Pain

Using your abs to move your spine out of injurious over-arched position and hold healthy neutral position during ordinary daily life and during all the exercise you do is good exercise - without tightening. The book that started the sea-change in understanding abdominal use and functional exercise is The Ab Revolution, No More Crunches No More Back Pain.

Labels: abdominal muscles, fix pain, lordosis, lower back, myths, neutral spine, strength

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What Does It Look Like to Not Use Abdominal Muscles?

Readers have been e-mailing asking for more photos of what "the plank" and other exercises, or even daily life looks like if done in a way that doesn’t use the abdominal muscles as intended.

In the top photo at left, you can see the badly arched lower back at the junction of the t-shirt and beltline. Her back is sagging and "hammocking" under body weight. The hip tilts up in back. If she used her abdominal muscles to tilt her hip under, the spine would be held straight and prevented from sagging. The lower back would no longer pinch backward and compress under her weight. The joints that hold the vertebrae (spine) together are called the facet joints. They get hurt from overarching. Injections are not the answer. To stop the cause of the injury, you simply stop bashing your facet joints together by preventing overarching.

The lower photo shows not using abdominal muscles while standing and reaching overhead to learn how to twirl fire sticks, a common beach activity here in Southeast Asia. The lower arrow over the hip shows how the hip is tilting instead of straight. The hip tilts down in front and up in back.

To move your spine to healthier straight position, use the pelvic tilt hip tucking method taught in the post Throw a Stronger Punch (or Push a Car or Stroller) Using This Back Pain Reduction Technique.

Another way to understand the movement of tilting the hip under (pelvic tilt or tuck) to bring the spine into healthy straight position is to try this:

• Stand with your heels, backside, shoulders, and the back of your head against a wall. Gently try to press the space in the lower back toward the wall.
• You don't have to touch the wall, in fact, that is too much tilt. Just learn how to move the hip with a slight curl-under, so that the arch lessens until your hip is straight and no longer tilted forward and down in front.
• Don't bring your head forward away from the wall.
• Gently hold the tilt as you walk away from the wall.
• Keep breathing. Don't tighten your abs. That is not how to use them for real life. Just use your muscles to reposition your spine, like moving your arm or leg - simply and easily and in relaxed manner.

The tilt is not an exercise to do 10 times. It is something you do once, the use, for better health, better use of abs, and better looks. Send in your own photos of your own successes. Have fun.

Photo 1 by DJ Solitaire
Photo 2 copyright by Jolie Bookspan

Labels: abdominal muscles, lordosis, lower back, strength

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Abdominal Muscle Exercise - Better, Different, Not What You Think

Many medical fitness programs, health and exercise classes, and kickboxing and martial arts practices have a complicated and ritualized belief structure that the abdominal muscles have some magic or central function. They try to fix back pain or improve posture through abdominal strengthening programs. Usually these strengthening programs use the same unhealthful rounding forward motions that cause high pressure on your lumbar discs, practice unhealthful bent-forward posture, and perpetuate several common pain syndromes.

Here in Thailand, the Muay Thai kick-boxers and training camps do not have any beliefs about the torng, or abdomen. Even so, the Thai boxers are among the world's best-conditioned fighters. You can swing a bat at their abdomen and it would not faze them. In fact, that is part of training in many training camps. Today I have an abdominal muscle training exercise for you that is more fun than that:

The post Change Common Exercises to Get Better Ab Exercise and Stop Back Pain showed how the pushup, or just holding a pushup position, called The Plank is often done allowing the lower back to overly arch and sag under body weight, as in the upper photo at left. This extra arching, called hyper-lordosis, pressures the lower back and means that you are not getting exercise because you are just resting your body weight on the joints of your lower back instead of holding up your body weight in a straighter, healthier position, shown in the lower photo. Try this:

• Hold a plank position and use the pelvic tilt, or hip tuck to straighten your spine as taught in the post Throw a Stronger Punch (or Push a Car or Stroller) Using This Back Pain Reduction Technique. Use the lower photo for lower back position reference.
• As soon as you tuck the hip, you will immediately feel the load shift off your lower back and onto your abdominal muscles.
• Once you can hold a good flat plank position, add lifting one arm as shown in the lower photo. Do not allow your lower back to sag, shown in the upper photo. Do not hunch or round your upper body, also shown in the upper photo. Rounding the upper body will get in the way of your shoulder joint being able to lift your arm.
• "Unround" your upper back and lift your chest to straighten your back. This makes room for your shoulder to allow your arm to straighten in line with your body.
• Once you can lift your arm, also lift your opposite leg (not the leg on the same side but the other one). You will feel your abdominal muscles working strongly.
• Hold as long as you can.
• Keep relaxed but straight, and keep breathing.
• Work up to being able to jump to switch the arm and leg that is lifted.

This fun abdominal exercise trains you how to hold your body in the same straight position you need for standing and walking and reaching overhead without arching the lower back. That means it is functional abdominal exercise. Many people who do hundreds of crunches a day cannot do this exercise at all because they have never trained their abdominal muscles in the way they really need to work – to hold your spine straight without sagging inward (overly arching).

Crunches are not functional, and train unhealthful, forward-bent posture, which you don't need after a day of sitting at your desk or over the steering wheel.

Instead of ever doing another crunch again, do this fun abdominal building exercise. You will get better more effective abdominal exercise in the way your body, and abs, work for real .

Photo copyright from the book Healthy Martial Arts

Labels: abdominal muscles, arm, balance, lordosis, lower back, martial arts, neutral spine, posture, shoulder, strength, upper back, wrist

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Healthier Carrying - Get Free Ab Exercise and Stop Pain

Do you overly arch your lower back when you carry things in front of you, as in the photo at left? Arching your lower back and leaning back to carry anterior loads is common source of pressure and loading on your lower back, whether you are carrying a dog, a chair, a baby in arms, a child on your hip, packages, or grocery bags. It is the same contributor to the mystery back pain from carrying backpacks, explained in the previous post, and after long standing, walking, and running explained in Fixing the Commonest Source of Mystery Lower Back Pain.

Look at the photo, at left.

1. The upper arrow shows how her upper body is tilting backward instead of being straight and upright from mid-hip to shoulder.

2. The lower arrow shows how the hip is tilting forward in front and sticking out in back, instead of being vertical from mid-hip to the top of the leg bone.

3. Between the two arrows, her lower back is overly-arched and pinched. There is supposed to be a small inward curve, not a large one, pinched back like bending a drinking straw.

Leaning back offsets the weight and makes things easier to carry. The reason it is easier is that you shift the weight from your arm and torso muscles onto your lower back. This squashes your lower back under the weight of your upper body and the things you carry. It is a common source of lower back pain that keeps coming back, even after pills and treatments. The reason the pain keeps coming back is that you haven't stopped the cause.

Leaning the upper body backward to hold something in front of you is common during standing, walking, running, reaching and carrying around the house, and while exercising. To stop the pain:

• Stop the unhealthy overarching.
• Stand straight to carry loads, whether in front of you or in back, as described in the previous post and If Better Abdominal Muscles Are Your New Year's Resolution, Try This.
• To feel reducing the lower spine arch and getting the upper body more upright, stand with your back against a wall. Touch heels, backside, and upper back to the wall. See if you have a large space between lower back and the wall, or if you have to increase the space to bring your shoulders and head to straight position. Press the lower back space lightly, gently, toward (not touching) the wall to feel how to reduce a too-large arch. Pain should stop right then.
  
• Don't tighten abdominal or backside muscles. Tightening is not how to move your spine - see Using Abdominal Muscles is Not Tightening or Pressing Navel to Spine.
• Click the label "neutral spine" (and other labels that interest you) for more on each topic.
  

The muscles that straighten your spine are your abdominal muscles. You get free, built-in exercise for your abdominal and back muscles in the way they are supposed to work for real life. That is called functional exercise.

Standing without overarching the lower back when carrying things, whether in front or back, is better, healthier, and more functional exercise than lying on the floor and rounding your back to do crunches.

Use the arch-reducing technique in this post to learn neutral spine for a healthier back and built-in back and abdominal muscle exercise all the time during everything you do.

Photo by subscription to Clipart.com

Labels: abdominal muscles, arm, fix pain, lordosis, lower back, neutral spine, posture, upper back

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Healthier Backpack Carrying to Get Better Exercise and Stop Back Pain

Frequent news items report that wearing backpacks causes back pain in children and adults. Some of the usual theories proposed for why backpacks cause pain is "overstuffing them" or carrying them too high or low. Complicated and expensive packs are developed as remedies. Another of the often-repeated theories is that carrying things on your back makes you arch your back. However, none of these are the reason for back pain when carrying packs. It is not the pack that causes the pain or the arching. It is a very simple matter of allowing your back to arch and slouch backward instead of standing straight against the load.

Look at the photo, above left, of the backpacker. The upper arrow shows how his upper body is tilting backward instead of being straight from mid-hip to shoulder. The lower arrow shows how the lower body (the hip) is tilting forward in front and sticking out in back, instead of being straight from mid-hip to the top of the leg bone. Between the two arrows, his lower back is overly arched and pinched. The weight of his upper back plus the weight of his pack is pressing down on the joints and soft tissue of the lower back. This is how overarching causes lower back pain. It is not the backpack, but the body position while carrying it. The other hiker without the backpack standing near the sign is also overly arching the lower back.

Lower back arching (hyperlordosis) may occur automatically when standing, and may seem "natural," but it is not healthy. Wetting your pants is natural too, but you have to learn to control it. To reduce the unhealthy overarching (hyperlordosis), you just use your muscles to stand right. Try this:

• To feel the problem of overarching, stand up and lift your ribs to allow your upper body to lean backward. Allow your hip to tilt down in front and stick out in back. You may feel a familiar pressure in the lower back.
• Straighten your lower body by tucking your "tailbone" under you so that your hip is straight from the top of the upper leg bone to the middle of the crest of the hip bone, not tilted.
• Straighten your upper body by bringing ribs back down to level. Do not slouch or round forward; just stand straight without lifting your ribs.
• The motion of tucking the hip and pulling the upper body straight is like doing an abdominal crunch standing up.
• Your "tailbone" tucks under you so it is not tilted out in back, and the large inward curve of the lower back becomes a small inward curve.

Whenever you are carrying a backpack, standing, walking, running, or exercising, use the same hip tilt to normalize your spine position and prevent overarching. Overarching is not healthy and is poor body ergonomics to walk around or exercise with your behind stuck out in back. The muscles you use to hold your spine from overarching are your abdominal muscles. You get a free built-in abdominal muscle exercise just by standing in healthful position. The next post will cover how to get better exercise and prevent back pain when carrying things in front.

Photo by Kim Pierro

Labels: abdominal muscles, fix pain, lordosis, lower back, neutral spine, posture

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Holiday Leg and Abdominal Exercise

Many people are taking down Christmas trees even as the Russian and other Eastern Orthodox families are putting theirs up for Christmas, coming this Saturday Jan 6th. The Russian Snow Girl (Snegurushka), and DedushMoros (Father Frost) have already come to visit. S nastupaiushchim Novym godom i s Rozhdestvom Khristovym - Happy New Year!

Here are two lifestyle strengtheners (and a free Achilles tendon stretch) to build into your fitness as a lifestyle for 2007:

If you would like to get strong legs for the New Year, don't bend over wrong to lift things (upper drawing, left). From now on, make all your bending the way that strengthens your thighs and at the same time prevents back and knee pain (upper drawing, right). Keep your upper body upright and bend your knees. Prevent knee pain and get better use of your leg muscles by keeping both knees down and back over your heels. Each time you keep both heels down while doing healthy bending, you will also get a built-in Achilles tendon stretch. The post How Often Should You Be Healthy? tells more on good bending.

If you want to stop "mystery" lower back pain for the New Year, check to see if you lean backward when you reach upward (lower drawing, left), carry things, or when you are just standing. Leaning back creates overarching of the lower back called hyperlordosis, which pinches and pressures the soft tissue and joints of your spine. People with this kind of pain feel they need to lean over forward or sit to relieve the pain. Instead of doing remedies for pain, it is smarter and healthier to stop the cause of the pain.

The "hip tuck" or "pelvic tilt" to reduce overarching and straighten the spine (lower drawing, right) is described in the post Throw a Stronger Punch (or Push a Car or Stroller) Using This Back Pain Reduction Technique. The muscles you use to move your spine out of unhealthy overly arched position and into straighter position are your abdominal muscles. By simply standing and moving with a healthier spine position, you get free exercise for your abdominal muscles. "Tightening" the abs is not what exercises the abs or prevents back pain. Tightening also does not let you breath or move properly. Tightening is not how to have healthy abdominal function. Instead, use the abdominal muscles to stop overarching and maintain healthy position while going about your daily life and exercise. The post, If Better Abdominal Muscles Are Your New Year's Resolution, Try This, shows how.

If your New Year's Resolution is to have a healthier low back, Achilles tendons, and abdominal muscles, you can do that all at once during your regular daily activities.


Drawing copyright by Jolie Bookspan

Labels: abdominal muscles, achilles stretch, disc, fix pain, knee, leg press, leg strength, leg stretch, lordosis, lower back, squat, strength

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If Better Abdominal Muscles Are Your New Year's Resolution, Try This

Readers have been writing to ask about the conflicting reports in fitness magazines on how often you should work your abs. Some sources cite research studies saying you should rest between resistance training. Other articles say to exercise them every day.

It's common to debate fiber type and fatigue and conclude whether to schedule your abs daily or intermittently. Then people "do" abdominal exercise based on that, and completely neglect what abdominal muscles really do when you stand up and go about your daily life.

Abdominal muscles have their main function when you are standing. But they do not automatically do anything to support your back or prevent lower back pain. The support comes from how you stand. It has nothing to do with strengthening or tightening. Those are common fallacies.

Abdominal muscles attach from your hips to your ribs. When you use them, they prevent you from leaning and arching backward. The post Fixing the Commonest Source of Mystery Lower Back Pain shows how this works. Abdominal muscles are the muscles that, like a guy wire attached to the front of a tree, keep the tree from bending backward. However, abs do not keep you from leaning backward automatically. If you are not using your abs when you stand, your upper body will lean backward and/or your hip will tilt downward in front. This is called slouching. Your lower back overly curves inward too much, and pinches and pressures the joints and soft tissue of your lower back. People who overly arch the lower back (hyperlordosis) usually notice their back pain after long standing, walking, and running. They feel they need to lean forward or sit to relive it.

Using your abs doesn't mean sucking them in or making them "tight," it means not letting your lower back overly-arch. When you tilt or tuck your hip under you to straighten your lower spine and straighten your upper body so that it does not lean backward, the muscles that straighten your spine from overly arching are your abdominal muscles. That is how abdominal muscles support your back - only when you deliberately use them to.

Plenty of people have 6-pack abs and have terrible posture and continuing back pain. In my practice, I treat patients with bulging muscles who hurt their back opening windows because they overly arch the lower back when they reach upward and lift overhead.

If "abs" are part of your New Year's Resolution, here is how to get functional healthy abdominal exercise:

1. Stop doing crunches. They are not functional, not healthy, and don't train your abs the way you really need them to work in real life.
2. Instead of crunches, try the plank to practice and challenge healthy positioning, described in the post Change Common Exercises to Get Better Ab Exercise and Stop Back Pain.
3. Stand properly without overarching. That gives built-in abdominal muscles exercise all the time. Do not suck in or tighten. Just position your spine away from unhealthy overarching.

If you "worked" your abs all day all the time by controling your spine and lower back positioning, you wouldn't need to go to a gym to do funny little crunches - neither every day, nor every few days.


Photo, copyright from the book No More Crunches No More Back Pain The Ab Revolution

Labels: abdominal muscles, facet joints, fix pain, lordosis, lower back, posture, strength, upper back

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Safer Overhead Military Press

Two weekends ago we were in Virginia on a medical consult with colleagues. One of the docs is an osteopath and collegiate team doc who really knows his orthopedics. I enjoy our discussions of the best techniques to retrain healthy muscle use. He mentioned that he discourages his team members from the overhead military press (lifting weight directly overhead with both arms). He mentioned the frequent, serious shoulder and neck injuries this exercise often produces. The numbers show that he is correct.

I asked his opinion on my view that these injuries usually only occur when allowing mal-positioning, such as the forward head and rounded shoulders, and overarching the lower back. Read how these positions produce injury in the posts Breasts Causing Upper Back Pain is a Myth and Change Daily Reaching to Get Ab Exercise and Stop Back and Shoulder Pain.

My colleague reminded me that the military press is not usually functional, which means that except in cases like my carpenter husband Paul who lifts substantial objects overhead all day at work, people do not lift overhead for daily life. Given the large number of injuries the overhead press causes, he'd rather people strengthen in other, more functional ways.

It is true that most lifting overhead is not directly over the shoulder, as in the military press. However, most people need to lift things overhead as part of daily life, and often use the overhead press during recreation, as in the photo, at right.

Here is how to do the overhead press in ways that I believe can keep it healthy, and how to transfer that healthy positioning to lifting laundry, groceries, babies, and other daily weights:

1. Before doing lifting, use the quick check in Thumbs Can Show Tightness That Leads to Upper Back Pain.
2. Do the pectoral stretch described in Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain.
3. Make sure not to arch your lower back to lift your arms, as explained in Change Daily Reaching to Get Ab Exercise and Stop Back and Shoulder Pain

Keep your shoulders down and your chin in, then lift. By keeping head and shoulder position from drooping forward, you will prevent the shoulder bone from squashing your rotator cuff and other soft tissue when you lift your arm. Use the healthy shoulder, neck, and lower back, positioning in #1,2, and 3 (above) for every overhead lift, from pulling off a shirt, to putting away groceries, to lifting children, putting things on shelves or overhead racks, to lifting weights. You will get better exercise and prevent injury.

Labels: arm, injury, lordosis, lower back, neck, neutral spine, shoulder, strength, upper back

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Fitness and Health as a Lifestyle for Thanksgiving

If you think you won't have time to exercise over the Thanksgiving holiday, here is good news. This post will show you how to move in healthy ways so that you have healthy exercise built-in to all the cooking, shopping, furniture moving, and social interactions. Here is more good news. You don't have to go to a gym to work off the stress and eating too much of the Thanksgiving holiday. Life is not supposed to be a poison that you deliberately take, then need an antidote to offset.

Here are four of the healthiest, quickest ways to make your Thanksgiving into fitness and health as a lifestyle:

1. To pick up chairs, babies, and grocery bags,
   to move furniture, and for lifting things from the floor, bend your knees, keeping your weight back toward your heels, and your body upright.
   
   
2. To carry chairs, babies, grocery bags, furniture, and any loads in front of you, don't lean back. It is a common bad habit to lean the upper body backward, increasing the lower back arch. Leaning backward shifts the weight of the load off your core and arm muscles and onto your lower spine. Get free, built-in exercise for your abs and arms and save your back by standing straight. Don't lean and arch backward to carry things.
   
   
3. Notice all the times you round and hang forward over things that you can easily reach by standing upright. Check your upper back positioning when standing over counters, sinks, grocery bins, vacuum cleaners, cribs and baby-changing tables, and when setting food tables. Don't let your body weight hang over and forward. Stand upright, chin in, and just tilt your head downward in relaxed manner to see what you are doing. Relax shoulders downward. Smile. Breathe.
   
   
4. Preparations and family interactions are no excuse to do unhealthy behaviors out of habit like smoking, overeating, and arguing, then blame it on stress. The bad habits are even more stress on body and mind. If something is wrong, see about fixing it in a good way. Don't suffer in silence with people telling you that you have to be happy just because of a holiday. Make your home healthy for yourself. There is no place it matters more:

• Get exercise cleaning the house of junk and clutter. Take the extra clothing, toys, and household items to a shelter. Carry the bags with healthy positioning to the people who need it.
• Make a healthy meal with family or alone, without television or phone. Carry the meals to shut-ins and isolated elderly in your neighborhood, and the homeless on the street.
• Volunteer at a soup kitchen. Do grocery shopping, cooking, and vacuuming for those who are too sick or disabled or alone to do it for themselves. If you think you don't have time because you have young children, take them with you to help carry things and to teach them healthy ideals, and how thankful they can be for the home you provide.
• Don't smoke, drink soda (diet soda is just as unhealthy) eat junk food (even if it has marketing words like "organic" on the label), or undo the health benefits of fruit and vegetables by junking them with cream, sugar, and cornstarch. Add up all you spend on cigarettes and junk food that take a healthy body and give it health problems. Take the money and give to the poor. With what you save on prescriptions and treatments for all the pain and jitters you cause yourself, you can feed a village and still take a vacation.
• When you eat the Thanksgiving meal, say thankful things. Taste your food. Turn down seconds. Breathe. Smile. Help clean up. Shoulders back. Enjoy the roof over your head. That is health as a lifestyle.

Drawings and more ideas on healthy positioning in the book Stretching Smarter Stretching Healthier

Labels: abdominal muscles, achilles stretch, arm, arthritis, balance, disc, facet joints, fix pain, green fitness, hamstring, holiday, knee, leg press, leg strength, leg stretch, lordosis, lower back, neutral spine

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Change Daily Reaching to Get Ab Exercise and Stop Back and Shoulder Pain

Do you arch your lower back to lift your arms up, as in the photo at right? It is unhealthy body mechanics if you do.

Arching your back to raise your arms reduces the stretch and exercise on the shoulder, and creates pressure and loading on the lower back.

Do you arch your back to raise your arms? Try this to tell:

• Stand and reach as high as you can overhead.
• Notice if you lift your ribs and lean your upper body backward.
• Check if you stick your backside out in back, or do the opposite and push your hips forward. Both increase the lower back arch which increases load on the joints and soft tissue. You may feel a familiar pressure in the lower back.

Increasing lower back arching may occur automatically, and may seem "natural," but it is not healthy. Wetting your pants is natural too, but you have to learn to control it. To reduce the unhealthy overarching:

• While standing arched, bring ribs back down to level, and tuck your "tailbone" under you to straighten your hip.
• The motion is like doing an abdominal crunch standing up. Don't bend your upper body to the front, just "crunch" (or flex) the lower spine to reduce the overarching.
• Your lower back moves backward, and your "tailbone" tucks straight under you so it is not tilted out in back.

Now reach up overhead again holding the new straighter position. Feel how the reach needs to come from your shoulder instead of your lower back. Keep shoulders relaxed downward, and don't crane or tense your neck.

It is common for people to push their hip forward, thinking that is what is meant by "tuck the hip." That makes arching worse. Don't push your entire hip forward, just roll the bottom under. This motion is also called a "pelvic tilt." See the tilt in the photo in post Throw a Stronger Punch (or Push a Car or Stroller) Using This Back Pain Reduction Technique.

Watch other people when they reach overhead for exercise and daily life, and notice fitness magazines picturing overhead moves. See how often they arch their lower back to lift and reach. It is important to be able to tell when positioning is unhealthy, not just follow a bunch of strange rules about how to stand and exercise. See more helpful info in Fixing the Commonest Source of Mystery Lower Back Pain, and What Abdominal Muscles Don't Do - The Missing Link.

The next time you are in the shower washing your head, notice if you are leaning backward and remember this post. Reduce the overly large lower back arch using the tucking/tilting move described above. Feel how the pressure is reduced in your lower back. The muscles that work to flex your lower spine to reduce arching are your abdominal muscles. By preventing unhealthy arching each time you reach up, you will get built-in abdominal exercise and better shoulder stretch, and stop the source of much "mystery" lower back pain.

Photo by Dan Mogford, Creative Commons

Labels: abdominal muscles, arm, facet joints, fix pain, lordosis, lower back, posture, shoulder, strength, stretch, upper back

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Throw a Stronger Punch (or Push a Car or Stroller) Using This Back Pain Reduction Technique

My Tuesday night martial arts students had another good class tonight. At the beginning of class, I showed them how to greatly strengthen their punch using a technique that also stops a common cause of lower back pain. The reason both benefits occur from one technique is that it changes body positioning to shift the effort and leverage of the punch off your lower back and onto the muscles of your abdomen and back. You can use this technique any time you punch, or push anything from a baby carriage to a piece of furniture to a car.

One of the commonest misconceptions in fitness is that you are supposed to stick your behind out in back. It is not cute or healthy. It is a major source of pressure on the joints and soft tissue of your lower spine.

There is supposed to be a small inward curve to the lower back for shock absorption and protection of the discs. (But only a small curve.) When people lose the needed small inward curve by rounded forward sitting, standing, and bending over wrong, it pressures the discs and eventually damages them (Disc Pain - Not a Mystery, Easy to Fix). The problem is that people hear they need a small inward curve, so they make a big one by tilting their hip and/or leaning their upper body backward. This overarches their lower back. You can see this silly-looking and unhealthy over-arching in many fitness classes and gyms, and fitness publications and videos.

By straightening your hip, you will have the healthy small curve without sticking your behind out in back. When standing, your hip should be vertical, not tilted, from the top of your upper leg bone to the middle-point of the crest of your hip. To reduce the large lower back arch, tilt your hip under you as if you are starting an abdominal crunch while standing up. Do not push your hip forward, just straighten your back by changing the hip angle. This is called a pelvic tilt. This is what we did in class. Try this:

• Look at the double photo above left, and stand facing a wall as in the photo, with one arm outstretched. Put the knuckles of your curled fist against the wall as if you had just punched the wall. Elbow slightly bent.
• Stand badly, as shown in the left-hand photo. Stick your behind out in back. Let your lower back arch inward. Let your upper back lean backward. Press your fist hard into the wall. You will probably feel pressure in your lower back.
• Now, keep pressing your fist hard but stop the bad positioning by tucking your hip under you, shown in the right-hand photo. The movement is like a hip thrust or a standing crunch. The arch in your lower back reduces.
• The first thing you will notice if you do this right is your back stops hurting. You should also notice a stronger push against the wall and new strength in your arm and upper body. You will feel the muscles in your trunk and abdomen working.

I developed this technique and called it The Ab Revolution, because it uses your ab muscles all the time for real life. Don't stick your behind out to lift weights, to exercise, or to stand and walk. Use your muscles to position your spine so that your weight does not sag on your lower back. You will get free built-in exercise and back pain prevention while doing all your normal activities. You will stop one of the commonest silly-looking mistakes in fitness. You will also be able to throw a surprisingly strong punch.


Photo from the book Healthy Martial Arts

Labels: abdominal muscles, arm, fix pain, hip, knee, lordosis, lower back, martial arts, neutral spine, posture, strength

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Free Exercise and Free Back and Knee Pain Prevention - Healthy Bending

If you think that not having time to exercise is the problem, here is good news. Thinking that your life and your health are two separate things is the problem. You don't have to stop your life to get exercise.

The last post explained that you bend many times every day as part of normal life (How Good Would You Look From 400 Squats a Day - Just Stop Unhealthy Bending). This post shows one way to do healthy bending when you are bending with feet side by side - the squat bend.

Look at the drawings, above left. The left-hand drawing shows bad bending - letting weight rock forward, heels lifting, and overly arching the lower back. The right-hand drawing shows healthy bending - keeping weight back, heels down, and the lower back in healthy position, not rounded and not overly arched. Look at the right-hand drawing and try it:

• Keep your upper body as upright as you can, instead of rounding over forward
  
• Keep both heels down as you bend your knees (right drawing).
• If you find you lift your heels, use your leg muscles to deliberately pull your knees back so that your weight shifts back over your heels. Shifting your weight back keeps your weight on your leg muscles and off your knee joints. There should be no knee pain with good bending.
• Keep your knees back toward your ankles. If you just let your weight flop, the knees will come forward past your toes. Don't allow your knees to shift forward.
• Don't overarch the lower spine (overly sticking your behind out in back). Keep neutral spine. If you overarch, tuck your hip (tailbone) under you just enough to prevent having a too large arch (inward curve) in your lower back. Although it is often taught in exercise and weight lifting classes to stick far out and overarch, increasing the arch increases pressure on the joints of your vertebrae, called facet joints, and the soft tissue of your lower back. Overarching is a major hidden cause of lower back pain and injury.
  

Use good bending every time you bend - even to look in the refrigerator and get in and out of your chair. Don't use your arms to lean on the arm rests to sit down and get up; use leg muscles. If you need to use your arms, or you lean your body forward to sit or rise, you need to improve balance, Achilles tendon stretch, and leg strength. Bending properly does all that for you. (Practice safely. Don't fall down.)

Have a friend take photos of you from the side as you stand and bend, showing how you fixed your bending from unhealthy to healthy during whatever you do all day for work and at home. Write a fun summary and e-mail your photos and stories to me. I can post the best photos and most fun stories.

Realize that a big part of your health is the way you move in real life. Make a conscious decision to change your idea of exercise, fitness, and health from stopping life to "do exercise" to how you live. Have fun - the best health.

Labels: abdominal muscles, achilles stretch, disc, facet joints, fix pain, hip, knee, leg press, leg strength, leg stretch, lordosis, lower back, neutral spine, posture, squat, strength, upper back

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Change Common Exercises to Get Better Ab Exercise and Stop Back Pain

Holding a straight pushup position is sometimes called "the plank." Holding a plank is often done in a way that reduces the exercise benefit, trains unhealthy habits, and increases compression on your spine.

Look at the photo at left. The first boy on the left is letting his lower back (and neck) sink and bow under his weight. So is the third and fourth from the left. This sagging is not healthy and is not a normal curve. The bad overarching makes the plank easier to do. That means you get far less exercise. More seriously, allowing your weight to “hammock” shifts your body weight off your muscles and onto your lower back, causing compressive force and bad positioning habits.

The second boy from the front (and left) is holding straight.

A major, often overlooked purpose of the plank is to train your muscles how to hold your back in straighter healthier position under the weight of your own body. If you can’t hold up your own body weight in a plank for a few moments without sagging, it is no wonder your spine sags painfully during the day. No matter how many planks or pushups you do, if you let your spine sag into an arch, you are missing the best benefit of the exercise - to train positioning habits for real life once you get back off the floor.

Holding a plank has so many benefits that even if you are not athletic this exercise is one to choose. To do it in a healthy way that is useful to your real life, move your spine posture to be straighter(second from left in the photo). To reduce an overly large arch while holding the plank, tuck your hip under you as if you were starting an abdominal crunch or thrusting movement. The muscles you use to reduce the inward curve (arch) are your abdominal muscles. As soon as you reduce the arch to straighten your spine, you will feel your abdominal muscles working strongly.

Use the plank as a functional exercise. That means to use it to train how to use (not tighten) your abdominal muscles during daily activity. Once you understand the hip tuck to reduce an overly large arch, use it during the day when standing to exercise your abs the way they are meant to be used – for real life to keep you standing in healthy ways.

• Understand more - What Abdominal Muscles Don't Do - The Missing Link and Fixing the Commonest Source of "Mystery" Lower Back Pain

• See photos of changing overarched lower spine (hyperlordosis) to neutral - Using Abdominal Muscles is Not Tightening or Pressing Navel to Spine

• Watch a short movie of changing plank overarched lower spine (hyperlordosis) to neutral - Fast Fitness - Strengthen by Changing Your Plank

• I will teach a workshop this coming Saturday on The Ab Revolution, the method of holding healthy spine position for life, and having fun while exercising. See the class schedule on my web site.

• If you miss the workshop, you can get the Ab Revolution™ training manual. Make sure to get the current edition, presently Third expanded edition.
  

Labels: abdominal muscles, facet joints, fix pain, lordosis, lower back, neutral spine, posture, strength, upper back, wrist

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What Abdominal Muscles Don't Do - The Missing Link

Did you know that your abdominal muscles have the most important function when you are standing?

The person in the photo is not using abdominal muscles to prevent a common overlooked cause of lower back pain. The upper body is leaning and sagging backward. The inward curve of the lower spine is exaggerated. It is not neutral spine, but overly arched in a bad posture called hyperlordosis.

Tightening abs does not fix the problem - using the abdominal muscles to change lower spine angle does.

Abdominal muscles connect your ribs to your hips along your front and sides. When you use your abs, they pull your ribs and hip closer in front, bending your spine forward. If you don't use your abdominal muscles when you are standing up, your ribs and hip can pull away from each under the weight of your upper body. Your lower back will arch. You can see the over arch in photo upper left, and the drawing below. Leaning back also shows not using upper back muscles, to be covered soon. The weight of your upper body arching backward presses on your lower back, making it ache after long standing and walking. That is how not using your abdominal muscles contributes to back pain.

The answer is not in strengthening the abdominal muscles. Many muscular people stand arched. Just look at fitness magazines, where the weak, arched posture that causes so much back pain is common.

The answer is just to *use* your abdominal muscles to pull your spine enough forward to reduce the arch and stand upright - first figure in the drawing at left. Tuck your hip under just enough to reduce a too large arch, and pull your upper body forward to straighter position, like starting an abdominal crunch or pelvic tilt standing up. Don't round your upper body, just pull it to an upright position.

Don't "suck in" or tighten your abs. Just move your spine like moving any other body part. When you reduce the arch, your body weight shifts to your abdominal muscles and off your lower back.

Watch how other people stand and move, particularly in the gym. Are they using their abs to stand right when they get back off the floor from doing "abdominal exercise?" All the crunches in the world will not stop back pain if you do not know you need to voluntarily use your abs when standing so that you don't sag into a sloppy arch. That is the missing link - your abdominal muscles do not automatically support your back. You have to use them to move out of unhealthy position.

If you use your abdominal muscles to prevent your lower back from sagging into an arch, you will stop pain and get built-in, all-day, free abdominal exercise from all your standing, walking, and activities in an ordinary day.

• Explanation and photos of changing hyperlordosis to neutral spine - Using Abdominal Muscles is Not Tightening or Pressing Navel to Spine

• Short movie of changing hyperlordosis to neutral spine - Friday Fast Fitness - Neutral Spine in 5 Seconds and Fast Fitness - How to Feel Change to Neutral Spine

• Photos and descriptions of how and why preventing hyperlordosis prevents injury - Prevent Back Surgery.

• Get all the information in one handy training manual - The Ab Revolution.

Send in your photos and success stories of how you corrected your spine positioning and stopped pain in daily life and in the gym. I post them in Fitness Fixer Reader Inspiring Stories. Prizes for the best ones.

Labels: abdominal muscles, facet joints, fix pain, lordosis, lower back, neutral spine, posture, strength, upper back

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Fixing the Commonest Source of Mystery Lower Back Pain

Many people let their lower back curve inward (arch) too much when they stand, walk, exercise, and carry things (drawing on left). This is commonly called sway back, hollowback, arching, lordosis, or hyperlordosis. People who overarch this way get back pain after long standing and walking. They often feel they need to bend forward or sit to relieve it.

The pain is from overarching, which tilts the weight of your upper body downward onto your lower back, arching and pinching it inward (drawing on left). Think of the foot-rests in bars. The reason putting one foot up on the low foot-rest reduces back pain is that you unwittingly reduce the large lower back arch that so many people allow when standing.

It is not normal or "neutral spine" to have a large inward curve. A large curve is not "just the way you are made." Sticking your behind out is not cute or healthy, whether in daily life or exercise. It does not protect your back. It is bad posture that hurts, and that you can easily change. You don't need pills or injections or treatments for the pain. All you need to stop the pain forever is to stop allowing your back to sag, and simply move your back to straighter position while you go about ordinary life (drawing on right). Here is how:

Check yourself - Stand up and reach your arms high overhead. Do you lift your ribs, arch your back, or lean backward? Did the front of your belt or hip tilt downward? These are all indirect pointers to different kinds of hyperlordosis (drawing on left).

To reduce the arch, tuck your hip under you (drawing on right), like doing an abdominal crunch or pelvic tilt while standing. Don't round your upper body or hunch forward. Imagine wearing a belt buckle and tilting your hip to lift the buckle upward, closer to your ribs instead of hanging downward. Reach up again and hold your straighter spine position. Your belt line should be level. Your ribs do not lift upward. Your upper body does not lean backward. Now the reach has to come from your shoulder where it belongs, not your lower back, an additional benefit. The post Throw a Stronger Punch (or Push a Car or Stroller) Using This Back Pain Reduction Technique shows more on how to do the tilt to correct the overarching. Future posts will show more about problems from overarching in exercises and daily life.

Yes, this is different from what we learned in the gym and in school, including medical school. It is simply stopping the source of this pain - stop pain from arching by voluntarily moving your back, like moving any other body part, so that you reduce arching. I developed this method, called The Ab Revolution, that you can apply to all your daily life to stop pain, and to exercise to get more abdominal exercise than conventional methods. Posts to come will show more. I will teach The Ab Revolution in downtown Philadelphia, Saturday morning, September 30th, and a workshop on how to fix your own back pain will run Oct 7 & 14th. Info on my site, www.DrBookspan.com

Labels: abdominal muscles, facet joints, fix pain, hip, lordosis, lower back, neutral spine, posture, strength, upper back, wrist

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Common Exercises Teach Bad Bending

I teach martial arts, yoga, and other classes at gyms on evenings and Saturdays. This morning I watched the class before mine. The music was loud. I remembered the saying "If it's too loud, you're too old."

When you read the following, remember that you already know it injures to bend "wrong," as in the photo at left, with your upper body bent over instead of upright. You know not to pick up a suitcase or child like that. Previous posts explain how that gradually hurts your lower back and discs.

The class ran a circuit:

• They bent wrong to pick up a barbell for ten deadlifts, staying bent over while lifting.
• They put the barbell down wrong (bending over) and ran to do ten toe touches - more bad bending over.
• They ran to do abdominal crunches, rounding their back forward over and over.
• They got up and kicked a target baffle, rounding their back and pushing their chin forward like a pigeon with each kick so that each impact transmitted to their spine.
• They ran across the room, each footfall landing heavily so that each impact transmitted to their knees, hip, and spine.
• Then leg lifts, bending forward at the hip over and over.
• Back to bent-over deadlifts, then alternate toe-touches - bending over and twisting side to side (more pressure on discs than just bending over), then sitting and bringing knees to chest, then deadlifts.
• They bent over wrong to get dumbbells for bent over triceps curls (healthier when done standing upright.)
• Then standing squats by bending the hip forward over and over. The instructor coached them to stick their behind far out in back. This pinches the lower back adding to a second kind of back pain. Posts coming soon will tell more.
• They reclined with feet up, putting body weight on their rounded shoulders to bicycle their legs in the air, and so on, rounding, bending, and pressuring discs and lower back structures for the 45-minute class.
• They bridged up on shoulder and feet, to "stretch the other way" even though it bent their neck forward.
• They ended by hanging forward to stretch and bringing each arm across the front of their body to stretch the back of the shoulder. This is counter-productive. Most people are already round-shouldered from sitting and bending forward all day. The personal trainer outside the room was doing similar exercises.

One of the students said she comes to the class to strengthen because of back pain. The trainer said he also had back pain and that is why he exercises. Hopefully you can now see part of why.

I'm not just an Ivory-tower egghead who wants you to reduce activity, never lift heavy things, or never move quickly or through a full range of motion. Just the opposite. I'm a former full contact kickboxer (undefeated) in the US, the Netherlands, and Thailand. I want to show you how to have a healthier, more fun and active life, where you stop pain and injuries and do more. The exercises I learned in over 30 years of martial arts were all the usual but injurious ones. Many students dropped out with injuries. It was not the martial arts but some of the exercises. But which? I went back to the lab to study until I found why the injuries were occurring and what will train you better than what we were using. If it works better, I want to know and do it.

Start your way back to healthy movement by noticing what your exercises are really doing. Watch other people exercising. These posts will show you better moves to do instead. If you would like a free pass to come to my Saturday morning class in downtown Philadelphia that teaches healthy exercise, let me know

Labels: arm, disc, fix pain, injury, lordosis, lower back, martial arts, sciatica, strength, yoga

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