How To Fix Your Lower Back Pain

Discs Can Heal
Disc injury is not a life sentence. Disc degeneration or slippage (herniation) can heal - if you let it, no differently than a sprained ankle. Stop damaging your discs with bad bending, standing, and sitting habits and the discs can heal. It takes years to herniate a disc, and only days or weeks to heal it by stopping bad habits. Several things contribute to disc pain. Read the rest of this article, try everything that makes sense to you and doesn't hurt, then go to the free article on Fixing Your Own Discs and Sciatica.

Muscles Can Heal
When you over-tighten muscles with hunching and bad habits, they can remain too shortened to let you stand properly. Or they stay tightened in “knots” or spasm. This changes their muscle chemistry. When you slouch, you keep muscles overly stretched, which weakens and strains them. Stop straining your muscles and they can heal.

Functional Exercises to Strengthen and Retrain Your Muscles
Back pain exercises are misunderstood. Are you injuring your their back all day then hope to fix it with a few exercises? This does not work. When you stop bending wrong many times each day, which injures your back many times each day, it will stop hurting and can heal.

If you lie on the floor to do exercises, then stand up and walk away with no use of the positioning or strength you just practiced, it is like eating butter and sugar all day, then doing 10 minutes of exercises and wondering why it doesn't "work." The key is what you do all day.

Try the following slowly. See how you feel the next day, then increase. Use these moves, not as exercises to do 10 times, but to retrain how to bend and move all day. Stop hurting your back with bad bending and your back will stop hurting. Start strengthening your body and legs with good bending and you will get free exercise all day:

- Squat. You know not to bend wrong to pick things up, but you do it. Every day. Hundreds of times a day. Instead, bend your knees. You already know that. But do you do it? Are you avoiding it because your legs are too weak, and it hurts your knees? Done right, it will prevent both back pain and knee pain. The squat is for all the times during the day you need to lower yourself to bend and reach things:

- Lunge. The lunge retrains bending habits and gives you free leg and back exercise at the same time. Done right, it will prevent both back pain and knee pain. Use the lunge for daily bending:

Another way to bend properly is the lunge (left) for all the many dozens of times you bend every day.
Keep front knee over ankle (left) not forward (right).

The key to how the lunge fixes your back - is it not an exercise that you do 10 times a day. You use it for all the hundreds of times you bend and reach down in a day. Stop hurting your back with bad bending and your back will stop hurting. Start strengthening your body and legs with good bending and you will get free exercise all day.

- Upper Back Extension. Most people chronically over-stretch their back through forward rounding, but don't strengthen the muscles that hold the back upright. Upper back extension strengthens at the same time that you practice moving your back in the other direction. Discs spend so much of the day being loaded by forward bending. Extension unloads the discs, not compresses them the way previously thought.

- Lower back extension. Extension is an important exercise to strengthen without loading the discs. Discs are pressured by forward bending. This backward lifting unloads them. This backward lifting exercise does more to strengthen your back muscles than bending over forward to lift weights. It is also better than the common exercise of kneeling on hands and knees and lifting one leg and arm. Kneeling exercise is barely any exercise, and tough on the knees.

2. Lower Back Pain After Long Standing/ Running/ Walking -
If you feel you need to lean or bend over forward or lift one leg to stop the pain, this kind of pain is usually from standing with too much inward curve in the lower back. Summary follows below. Read the full article here.

Standing with too much inward curve of your lower back is called hyperlordosis or lordosis. Hyperlordosis (overarching) is a major cause of "mystery" back pain and injury. It does not often show up on x-rays and scans. Some people overarch by sticking their behind out in back. Another common hyperlordosis position is to lean the upper body backward when standing, reaching overhead, and lifting things.

How To Stop Back Pain From Lordotic Arching
The free abdominal muscle article summarizes, and the book The Ab Revolution teaches exactly how to reposition the spine and use the repositioning for all you do. In short,

1. Stand with your heels, backside, upper back, and back of your head against a wall.
2. Press lower back toward wall. The large space between your back and the wall becomes a smaller space. Do not flatten against the wall. Belt line is horizontal from front to back. Back pain from overarching should stop right then, if you do this right.
3. When you walk away from the wall, use this new neutral spine position all the time.

Aren't You Supposed To Overarch and Stick Out The Behind In Back?
Overarching is not the normal curve to the lower back, and it is not the way to protect your back when lifting or exercising. An unfortunate phenomenon in fitness and "health" magazines is for models to stand and exercise with their hip and behind stuck out and their lower back arched. It is not attractive because it is not healthy. It is sloppy posture, unhealthy for the lower spine, and shows a lack of understanding of how to use core muscles to hold neutral spine. The fitness article may state to "keep the back straight," or to keep "neutral spine" but the photos show badly arched posture (which is not neutral spine). Overly-arched posture is promoted by popular fitness personalities, and popular exercises, where it is mistaken for, even advertised for, fitness and trimness. Trainers often tell clients to stick their behind out when squatting or lunging, however this is too much arch. It is not neutral spine and becomes anatomically damaging to the low back. It also does not use core muscles effectively.

What Do Abs Have To Do With This?
Abs work like any other muscles - they bend the joints they cross. For example. biceps bend your elbow forward (or keep it from straightening). Abs cross your vertebrae. They bend your spine forward or keep it from swaying backward, but only if you voluntarily engage them. You need to deliberately use your abs while standing to hold you from backward arching, particularly when reaching overhead and carrying loads.

Using Abs Does Not Mean Tightening Them
Using your abs doesn't mean “sucking them in” or making them "tight.” You can't breathe or move properly with tightened muscles. Tightening does not change your posture or reduce the pain-producing arch.

How Do Abs Help Your Back?
Using your abs means voluntarily moving your spine away from overly-arched position, and into neutral spine when standing. It is not a matter of having strong abs. A slightly-built person can stand with neutral spine, and muscular people can have overly-arched spine posture. It is a matter of using abdominal muscles to prevent the overarching that causes pain. The Ab Revolution™ teaches this concept and shows how to use it during all daily life and exercise movement.

Doesn’t Doing Crunches Help That?
It is not strength that makes you stand correctly. It's how you hold your own posture. Many muscular people stand with terrible posture and have back pain.

What About Pelvic Tilts?
A common ineffective exercise often given for back pain is to lie on the floor and tilt (tuck) the hip. But then the person gets up off the floor and lets their lower spine arch as they walk away, and the pain returns. It is no mystery.

Abdominal Muscle Exercises
- Use the introductory exercises, explained in the full ab article to retrain lower spine positioning during how you walk and go about your day. If only used as "exercise," that is missing the point.
- More exercises to retrain abs for daily life and back pain rehab are in the book, The Ab Revolution™ No More Crunches, No More Back Pain. Also come try our Ab Revolution™ classes.

Pain When Your X-Ray is Normal
You may be in great pain from simple damaging mechanics. Your X-rays and scans are normal. You may be told nothing is wrong, or to give up favorite activities. Your pain persists from bad postural habits. This is no mystery. Change the bad habits to change the pain.

When Pain Is Not From What's On Your X-ray
Other times, the scans show some minor problem like arthritis, herniated disc, or degenerating structures. Just like car tires that are mid-life, but perfectly good, some wear may show on exam – but this is unrelated to performance or pain. Pain is falsely ascribed to the arthritis. Patients feel doomed, and are often told to give up activities. Pain (even the anomaly itself) may mostly result from poor mechanics. This is no mystery. Change the bad habits to change the pain.

Sometimes, the scans show some major problem, and major surgery is performed to correct it. When the original problem was from the bad positioning, often pain persists or returns because you never corrected the mechanics that caused it. The defect itself may return from uncorrected mechanics. Surgery can be avoided. Fix the source of the problem and the results of the problem can heal, usually without surgery.

Food Contributors
There are foods that promote inflammation - dairy, meat, refined sugar, white flour.
Instead, eat anti-inflammatory foods - leafy green vegetables, flaxseed, cherries, grape skins, blueberries, spices like ginger and turmeric.

The Point of Exercises
Strengthening and stretching are important, but do not change posture or lifting habits, and so, do not “cure” back pain or posture problems. Use this new Dr. Jolie Bookspan method of using your brain and voluntary healthy movement habits to stop the source of pain. I have redesigned back exercises to be used to retrain you how you hold your body all the time. Doing back exercise is not like getting a shot of penicillin or going to confession. It does not “fix” bad habits the rest of the time. For example, lying down for pelvic tilts, then standing up and letting your back flop into any old bad posture, not keeping the proper tilt. Back exercise is supposed to retrain your thinking and habits *all the time* not just something to "do 10 times." Strengthening has no effect on posture if you don’t apply the strength the rest of the day to control joint angles for all activities.

How to Stretch Your Hamstrings Without Ruining Your Discs
Tight hamstrings are commonly thought to contribute to back pain. The irony is that many hamstring stretches are done in ways that bend forward, putting degenerative forces on the discs. Leaning over at the waist, both standing and sitting, for toe-touches does stretch your back and hamstrings, and may feel good, but it is terrible for your back. This is true even for yoga stretches where you bend over forward sitting or standing touch toes. You know never to bend over like that to pick things up or sit like that at your desk. It doesn't magically become good for you by calling it a stretch.

Lie on your back and hold one leg in the air, keeping shoulders, head, and hip flat on the floor and back straight.
Keep your other leg straight and flat against the floor too. If you can't do this it may be because the front muscles of your hip are too tight. Use this retraining drill to stretch and straighten, not further round the back.
See the stretching article.

Don’t Exercise in Ways that Damage Your Back
Many people hurt from excessive forward bending. Then add many exercises with more forward bending - toe touches, knee to chest, most PIlates exercises, and crunches. Often these exercises are incorrectly prescribed for back and neck pain. They contribute to the original problem of over rounding and bad posture. Stop crunches. Use functional exercises instead of concentrating on forward bending programs such as Pilates, and certain movements in yoga. Click this article on bad exercises. Click the class page for yoga classes that teach healthful movement.

What To Do Every Day To Prevent Back Pain

First thing in the morning, don't sit on the bed. Instead of sitting and rounding your back first thing, turn over and lie face down. Prop gently on elbows, but not so high that it strains. It should feel good and help you straighten out first thing. Get out of bed without sitting.
Count how many times you bend each day. Imagine the injury to your back by bending wrong that many times each day.
Lift using the squat and lunge, not by bending over.
Stop injurious forward bending exercises, including crunches, toe touching and most PIlates exercises.
Stand and carry things without rounding your upper back forward, or leaning back (exaggerating lumbar curve to the back or side).
Upper back extension (described above)
Lower back extension (described above)
Sit in car and desk in healthy ways. Free sitting article.
When sitting, it is not true that you must "keep feet on floor" or keep “flat thighs” - parallel to the ground. That is often repeated, but it does not change injurious mechanics and is not needed. Focus on the main issue, not the trivia.
Learn the upper back principles and restore upper back muscle restinglength using the free Fix Upper back and Neck Pain article.
Don’t tighten your muscles to move or exercise.
Walk, run, and jump lightly. Don't jolt your joints.
Notice injurious positioning and exercises in fitness magazines. Then notice your own habits.

How Long Does It Take To Fix Back Pain?
You should begin to feel the difference the same day as you try everything as presented above. If you are not feeling better right away, check what you are doing compared to what you have learned in this and the other articles on this web site.

It takes years to hurt a disc and tie muscles into knots, but only days to start healing once you no longer are injuring it. Make sure there is not something else contributing to your pain. It is is almost always quick and easy to start getting your life back and start feeling better right now. Don't wait.

Summary
Back and neck pain is not a mysterious "condition." People spend their day sitting, working, walking, and driving in terrible posture, hunching over the computer, lifting and bending wrong all day, walking heavily, and slouching all day, and then exercise in ways that strain and pressure discs and muscles. They do yoga and Pilates that forcibly pressures discs and emphasizes flexed hip and forward bending. They take anti-inflammatory medications for mechanical pain that is not inflammatory in nature, try remedies that do not address the cause of the problem, do physical therapy in ways that exacerbates the original problem, give up favorite activities, have surgery, then return to previous injurious habits, and everyone is astonished that they "tried everything and nothing seemed to work." It is like eating butter and sugar all day, then waving your hands in the air for 5 minutes and saying "I don't understands why I don't lose weight, I do my exercises."

How is your body positioning right now? The whole point of exercise and therapy is missed if you don’t learn to consciously use healthful positioning the rest of the day for standing, sitting, bending, and shock absorption.