Are You Giving the BEST Low Back Pain Relief Exercises?
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Hey coaches and athletes, Michael Hughes here Gymnazo Edu. Coming at you again in our tweakology series on the LB the low back, loving the Tweakology series and all that information that has in it, because it’s so powerful for a coach to be able to tweak and modify in real time in a session. And we want to cover that today. But besides that, we just understand the anatomy of what’s going on with a low back, let’s understand that some common exercises in the dysfunctions and of course, the tweaks that come with it, and how you can modify it in real time. Now, there’s a big revolution going on in the movement industry. And it’s been fueled by the knowledge that in the past has been held by those who really had the licenses and degrees and all those doctored data. But that knowledge has been unfortunately vastly incomplete in its application. And it’s Gymnazo Edu’s goal to share knowledge and therefore enable greater capabilities to those individuals who have the most power and capacity to impact the most amount of people. And those are the movement trainers of the world. But force trainers can do that we need to know much more about how and why the human body functions the way it does, not just from a textbook or traditional education. But from the multitude of methodologies that are rooted in the principles of physics, biology and behavioral science, we call it the applied functional sciences, and is when we move it trainers have that knowledge, we can begin to fill the gap that is in our greater health system. So let this series be just a little bit of a dabbling, a little bit of kind of insight into how you can start to think about the human body differently. But how to think is the Crieff is the key phrase, because we want to be a principles first practice, and vastly improve our capability to train a condition every athlete and client that comes into our facility so that we have the ability to be in front of so if you support this revolution, hit that like button so this content can be shared with more and more people. If you want to join this revolution. Well, you could start by hitting the subscribe button, but also apply to our MCMC application and our mentorship. And for more information, check out the link in the description. So without further ado, let’s jump into the lower back. What are the major players the the anatomy? Well, we got to understand that the femur, the pelvis and the sacrum, are really kind of encompass that greater core and from the lower half up to the mid half. But then we cannot forget, of course belts the L five through L one, the lumbar series. And of course the T 12. To T one which gives up to our mid back really kind of just hit the major players from the top down and from the bottom up that encompass and control that lower back. The muscles or the connective tissue that come with that are certainly got understand the hamstrings and how they intertwine into the pelvis. How those five abductors really come into the pelvis and control that, how those massive glute muscles really kind of intertwine to the back side and how they control rotation along with other motions as well in the sagittal and the frontal planes. And then the greater deeper core muscles, the posterior hip complex, you know, there’s a lot of those operators in there. A lot of those small little muscles, the piriformis that we cannot forget about there, they have a dominance in their sheer number of how they control the lower back. And then moving up, you know, the lats, the latissimus dorsi, they have two massive wing muscles that directly integrate into the lower back through other connective tissues QL directly influencing by direct connection to so as those hip flexor muscles, right, they actually connect into the lower back. One of them does the other one directly connects into the pelvis going to have greater control. And then of course core right, I say the core last because it has too much focus. There’s too much focus on the core and none of focus on what I said beforehand. I’ll let that be spoken in when I go into my tweaks. So what’s going on with the low back right? What are the what are the biomechanics of what the low back is we’re talking about. Now the Lubbock is designed to be a stable series of joints, right, those five lumbar, we’ll call them bones, right, just keep it simple. They really want to move in sync, not just because the band right but they love to be in sync with the pelvis and with the thoracic spine. You know, they love to be part of the play, they don’t like to move independently of the system. And when those upper thoracic spine and hip joints when they don’t play when they don’t do their job appropriately. It forces the lumbar spine to take up excess of movement. Now it can move decently well with flexion and extension right from the pelvis from the thoracic spine. It can take some of that, but it does not like to take excessive motion in the frontal plane or lateral flexion and then the rotational plane out of sync right out of sync and I want you to think about the times that you felt your lower back spasm or you had a client or an athlete experience their lower back spasm and what’s really happening is like we said, like, Ah, man, my lower back and we kind of get pissed at the lower back. You know, it’s like if the bad thing when that muscle spasms, but the truth is the lumbar kind of tissue area, it really just saved the nerves, it saved the discs from further destruction, which is much worse of an injury than just having muscle spasms hanging around for a few days, I want you to think about this one. When your lower back spasm of the muscular spasms, it stops motion from happening, it prevents further motion because too much motion was in the area. This is a big deal, because it’s a savior, it’s a Savior. And it’s a warning to the body saying I was doing too much. But the body has this failsafe system called a muscle spasm. And when it does, it prevents further motion at the joints, which saves nerves and discs from getting crunched on. So the body basically says not I’m not gonna let you destroy myself, I’m not going to let you ruin what I have going on, because of lack of movement somewhere else. So hold on to that thought because the lower back it’s a workhorse but it needs its friends, the thoracic spine and the hip joints to move with it. So as you’ll see as I dive deeper into this tweaks, what’s going on, and how that plays into it. So further about the biomechanics of the low back is really understand the biomechanics of the hip and the and the and the T spine. So we need good amounts of flexion and extension, but not this kind of flexion and extension. It’s this kind of extension and flexion. Right, we train this often is open chain, we need better closed chain, violent biomechanics, we need more AB duction more ad reduction, we need a lot of external rotation and internal rotation. A lot of us learn that this is how we train it on an open chain. Yeah, we can’t do it that way. But that’s not how the body feeds into authentic upright stance biomechanics. So really got to get it from from this standpoint, much more than from an open chain or a table based understanding of how biomechanics work through the pelvis, the upper spine, we need very similar, we need flexion and extension from the thoracic spine, lateral flexion, to the left and to the right, and good rotation to the right and left. But those are pure plane motions, the thoracic spine works more in combinations, we call it type one and type two, and we have rotation with lateral flexion to the opposite side. So I rotated to the right bilaterally flex to the left, that’s that those are throwing mechanics, that’s a golf swing basically. And then you also have type two motion, which is rotation to one way and lateral flexion. To that same way that’s that’s running and walking, that’s swinging something and there’s awful, there’s what we call taking all three planes emotional, it’s really has rotation, lateral flexion, and then an extension or a flexion. to it. So there’s really the combination with a thoracic spine really needs access to and when you lose access to one starts to play down the chain into the lumbar spine. So just think about that a little bit more. When you’re going after thoracic spine mobility. It’s not pure. It has combinations built into it. And of course, the same as with the pelvis. But the first one is a little bit more complicated because it’s 12 different segments, versus the hip is just two or the hips are just one and two. Let’s dive into some common exercises, you know what happens and what do we do as movement specialists in our training and conditioning especially with with groups to tweak and get around movement dysfunction?
Well, let’s go through throwing right a lot of mess and ball throw stuff, a lot of rotational motions, right whether it be on a pulling machine, Kaiser whether the case is a band, or just an A good old fashioned medicine ball throw. So when Scrabble and administrable make a little bit more real here. When I grab on to a medicine ball that’s I’m throwing against this, this wall, right talk about that in sync out of sync relationship at the pelvis in the thoracic spine play with the lumbar spine. Well, if I’m throwing right now, technically, everything moves together, not at the same rate or the same speed. But generally speaking, it moves, everything rotates to the right, my thoracic spine move to the right, my pelvis spine to the right, and my lumbar spine spun to the right. But because it doesn’t happen at the same rate or the same speed, we get a little bit of disassociation, which is very powerful. We need that to create that whip effect of throwing. So what happens when I throw, right, my upper body can be the massive driver because I’m throwing this ball against the wall. It’s gonna move faster and quicker and with more rotation to the right, and my pelvis is gonna move a little slower. Well, if my thoracic spine and pelvis doesn’t don’t have that, that elasticity, then it’s going to play through my lower back. So how can I manage that? Well, if I’m thrown to the right, let’s say put my left foot in front. Well, what I just did is I already pre positioned my pelvis To be in a left rotation, I’ve given it a head start. So now I can do that medicine ball throw, and I’m already in that left rotation, choose me that right rotation position, my thoracic spine has plenty more play. But it doesn’t end up hitting an end range of end range of motion, excuse me, because my pelvis is already pre pre positioned, oh sweet, I can simply change my foot position and remove lower back pain from a workout, I can continue on training, and then fix it later, fix it post session right when it’s more appropriate. So it’s really cool by just changing your foot position changes your pelvis pre positioning. And that’s really awesome. Now, of course, the opposite is true, too. If I’m thrown to the right, and I put my right foot in front, I’ve closed down I’ve taken away rotation from my pelvis. Now when I throw, I better have more hip capability, I better have more internal rotation leaves on my front hip to make that throw possible. Which is a great way to progress mobility training in a in a throw. So just look at those few things as a great one you’re throwing or rotating on how to make easily easy transitions in your group training and, and conditioning to while your client but also to keep them in the game longer. And you can deal with it later on. Because that’s to us what group training is right? You don’t want to take them out of the game. Don’t bench your athletes in a workout messes with them upstairs. Now what about planking? Right, that’s another thing that happens often in a group workout is we hit a plank, and that clients is on them a little back just can’t manage this. So what’s happening there? Right? Well, obviously muscle spasms and general lower back pain is what they describe. But what’s going on? Well as we’re in a plank position. But what do we really need? Oh, actually, I’m giving away one of the answers. If I’m in a plank, what do we really need? Well, let’s say we’re just holding this position. Well, definitely we can say that our core may not have the endurance, the strength to hold that position. So the lower back muscles chime in which they should, and they can’t handle it because their D train so they start to get a little bit tired to Well, I call that okay, that’s okay, we need to reduce the amount of duration under that plank to generally get the whole system stronger together. But what about biomechanically? What if your pelvis doesn’t have excuse me, your hips rather, don’t have the ability to go into an extension position, because you have too tight of an anterior chain in front hip flexors quad? Well, that’s going to put a tension overload here. And then for a hyper amount of tension back here, what if your thoracic spine doesn’t have the ability to go through extension in that position? Well, the lower back is gonna get chewed up on right, just as a same by mechanics I said before, well, how do you mitigate that without just literally giving someone more hip extension through a spine extension in the moment? Well, you can elevate their body, I just took myself one foot up higher, which not only reduces gravitational pull, right, the force of gravity is now less, because I’m in less of a parallel position, I’m much more than a perpendicular position, I can also do that through my hands, too. Right? That even makes it even easier for me, but allows my range of motion to be more progressive. And I can go into more hip extension without running out of hip extension or terminal hip extension at the very end of my elastic range. And I can make that drill happen a little bit longer, therefore getting more training effect through my core. So again, we’re not fixing anything, we’re just using physics to give us more potential. It’s a very easy one. But why we use so many plyo boxes, not for jumping. But for body positioning in our workouts, there’s something to consider when lower back pain comes up in a plank. Now, what about moving on to a squat? Right now squats are some of those, that’s like a key drill, right? A key a drill, what happens when you have a squat where the barbell or the case is happening, and the lower back says, I don’t really like it? Well, typically, it doesn’t like it on the way down. And why that is because the posterior chain called the hamstrings, the glutes, the back extensors don’t have that elasticity. And when it goes down, we should get anterior pelvic tilting, in a sense, when we go into a squat, my head is relatively forward in a sense to be stacked perfectly back, we know that not that’s not how it works, right? I want to be in line with my joints to have a stack. So if I get a posterior tilt happening, that starts rounding and putting too much a sense, lumbar flexion in my spine with a load or with just gravitational load, my lower back doesn’t like that. And that happens because this doesn’t have enough range of motion to go through an elastic stretch or eccentric load. So it pulls it out. Now what if that’s a kind of a bilateral problem? What if we have one leg that’s too tight or tighter than another leg? Well, that can also take our pelvis and Lower back into a spin pattern or a flexing pattern, when I don’t have a bilateral symmetry in my flexibility or my mobility. Well, what do I do about that? Well, here’s the first thing I want people to understand. You’re probably or have an idea that you’re maybe doing too much load. Your body just can’t manage it. You’re progressing too fast. So first thing is just decrease wait and see if the form corrects itself. Right? That’d be my first thing. Just look at what’s on the back first, you feel like no, that’s not the case. I’m just doing air squats. Okay, well, maybe if we again like with our throat, let’s change our foot positions, if it’s especially a lateral tilting, or rotational tilting, if I counteract that rotation, let’s say I’m squatting, and you see kind of a little shifting happening. Well, what I put my right foot in front and do a squat just like that, well, I’ve already pre positioned my pelvis in that shift. So I’ve given my body more room to play. Now, if it’s that same shift how to do a left foot in front, I’ve taken away some of that play in my pelvis by pre rotating it. So that may cause pain a little sooner. In the depth of that squat. Is it okay that you do a workout with your right foot in front of your left? And just do some squats? Are you imbalanced? Yes. But did you get through the workout without chewing up your your lumbar spine? Yes. Is that worth it? I highly say yes. How often? Do we overdo one side of our body in our life? Are we okay? Yeah, we’re okay, we don’t have to be perfectly balanced in one training workout, if you to understand what’s going on with your client, to give them the opportunity to save their lower back from for another workout later. So to me that’s, that’s a well worth it being balanced for that workout just to get through without chewing up the discs in your lower back something that I would hope that you would consider as as well. What about taking a wedge, right? If I go into a more of a plantar flexed position, I can get much deeper of a squat, because I’m not putting the same amount of tension through my posterior chain. So that allows my calves at the very least and into my hamstrings to say, I’m giving you a little bit more breathing room, you can go a little deeper, or have the same depth without having a posterior chain over tension and then pulling that pelvis out of alignment. So something that you could focus on there. That’s an easy one. Very easy one. And then we also want to say what if we take our upper body and change the position of her upper body,
we changed our feet from a bottom up change? What if we change the position of our thoracic spine? Can we do the same thing to influence the pelvis or the lower back from the top side? Down? And the answer is yes. Is it okay to do a squat with a little bit of rotation? Absolutely. Do you want to manage your load? Of course you do. But it’s really important to realize that we do that all the time tying my shoe I bend down and I shift to my side, my pelvis is tilted as I tie my shoe. So it’s functionally very appropriate. The loading? Well, that was my first tweak, right and make sure your load is appropriate for that person in front of you by not going too fast too soon. Because this can’t manage this, this stress of that weight on their back, etc. All right, I dug in that one pretty darn darn deep. What about lunges very common drill that we get into that lunch. Now the problem with the lunge with lower back discomfort is more than likely not the action leg, not the moving leg. But the static leg, the leg that stays behind, because it gets pulled underneath tension as my other leg goes further away from it. So I better have good flexibility here. So typically, we do an anterior lunch as the the more common lunge that we go go through. So I would say there’s probably an over tension happening in the anterior chain. Okay, so what can I do about that easily change your plan of motion to a lateral lunge. Now it’s much more of a medial chain versus an anterior chain. If that remove the lower back pain, there’s still London, your athletes stoked, they’re still feeling like they’re with the rest rest of the gang, especially in a group or team environment. And they’re feeling great. What instead of just a change of plane of motion with your foot, what if you add an arm reach to it, I can still do a forward lunge. But I can now reach down lower I’ve now reduced the amount of extension at my anterior hip by reaching down on my foot versus reaching up overhead is the exact opposite. I can also do the same thing with a rotation, I can take my put my pelvis and drive it into a more of a spin inward or more of a spin outward depending on how the hip is being influenced by the lower body or by the upper body. So cool thing you can play with many options here. There’s six options right forward, backwards, left, right, spin left and spin right. Each one of them do one of each and see where the point of successes just by adding a reach. And you can do the same thing by adding other different reaches a record drivers. What if you do a lunge but instead of driving the knee forward you drive the pelvis backwards, right, you can do a lunge and drive the pelvis to the side, I’m not doing anything with my hands, I’m just driving my pelvis with different focuses of movement that engage more muscles, and potentially help out the lower back from getting into an uncomfortable or a position that just has too much too much influence in itself by lack of influence somewhere else. So it’s a good way to think about how to drive the lower body and drive the upper body, besides just changing a plane of movement. And here’s the last one that typically kind of comes up is an overhead press or reach. As I’m reaching overhead, my thoracic spine can’t manage that transfer of load, and it bypasses it to the lower back. So as the lunge affects kind of the lower body and the upper body, and overhead press can affect the upper body into the lower back as as well. So when coming with an overhead press like typically has a grab on here, with a viper fighting over overhead press, you kind of see that over kind of overextension. And that lordosis and the lower back really coming into play. First, let’s check the load, right? Is your load too heavy, right, I really want to make sure that is that is understood, because typically, as trainers, we overload too quickly, progressed too fast, because we’re excited about the progress that they’re having. So decrease load first, see if the form corrects itself, maybe you need to make it unilateral. Maybe instead of a, instead of a double overhead press, you can do a single overhead press because look what happens, my shift in my thoracic spine happened here, I got lateral flexion, where when I go single, right, it’s very square with my with my press. So adding a single arm, the body will help by compensating in a positive way to allow more functionality to happen through my thoracic spine shoulder, and therefore potentially out of my lower back, you can also change not only go unilateral, we can change the direction of your press, I can still go bilateral, but change the press and go off to an angle a left to right angle, or maybe even add a twist, we can’t just assume a twist is going to be bad. So by changing your angulation, you can also find a successful path that thoracic spine can manage and therefore doesn’t bypass into the lower back. So it’s a really cool one that we do often. And we’ll also share in our next installment we’ll go to the shoulder. So a little preview there. And then we can always say like we it’s not about, it’s not about just doing a strict Overhead Press Right? If you’re a functional quote unquote, trainer, it’s okay to add a little squat to a press add a little bit of momentum. Because we certainly do that, I certainly do that lifting my Christmas stuff up into my attic, I don’t just straight arm it, I’ll kind of use a little bit of help from my from my lower body to progress some momentum up. To make that happen. When I’m just maybe at the threshold of my upper body strength, it’s okay to do a few more reps, giving support from the lower half. So I really hope this video gave a kind of a greater understanding and some insight to how you can start to think about your coaching and your training sessions. And if all your moving pictures out there like even if you are only training athletes or only training, you know kind of the general population or your athlete yourself just doing it by yourself. Hope this kind of gives you an insight that you’re not stuck in your ways. There’s so many different ways to help an athlete be successful. Because we need to think that a dysfunction is not where it is. It’s where it’s coming from. And to understand that greater is really helping your clients out be much more successful. So look out for this next installment we talked about the shoulder. If you want even more content from Gymnazo Edu, check us out on Instagram. Check out our podcasts and if you want to follow me Michael Hughes on Instagram. Check out at 3d underscore athlete as well and we’ll see you next time.
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