Lower Back Stretching Exercises
My dad actually asked me, last time I was home, if I had any recommendations for good lower back stretching exercises. “Sure,” I said, “I can show you a few things. But what you really need to do is work on strengthening your core.”
For someone like my dad, who doesn’t strength train as part of his everyday life, the idea of stretching to alleviate pain is straightforward. If you go for a hike and your legs are sore, you should stretch out. If you play baseball on the weekend and your arm and shoulder hurt, stretch them. It makes sense. However low back pain, as a chronic condition, is more complicated than these other examples.
True: the pain is most immediately caused by stress, overexertion, or tightening of the lower back muscles. Performing lower back stretching exercises that target this area, such as lying on your back and slowly pulling one knee at a time in to your chest can reduce the pain for a time. But to really resolve the problem we have to determine and target the real cause of lower back pain.
For most adults who suffer from chronic back pain, the real problem is weak abdominal muscles. The group of muscles that hold our bodies upright are generally referred to as the core muscles. Within this group it is very common for those muscles in front of the abdomen to weaken from too little use, due to a lifestyle dominated by sitting. We sit in the car, in front of the computer, at the office, and on the couch at home. All of this sitting does nothing to strengthen our abdominal muscles; yet still we expect them to hold us up whenever we decide to stand, or to sit without slouching. Because the abs are unable to do what we expect of them, it falls to the postural muscles in the back (which are much smaller than the true core muscles) to pick up the slack.
So to really alleviate low back pain, it is essential to begin a routine that will strengthen our core muscles; especially the abdominals. To someone like my dad, the idea of stretching to relieve muscle discomfort is much more acceptable than the idea of exercising the complete opposite side of the body. But the fact of the matter is that no amount of time spent on lower back stretching exercises will prove as effective a long term solution as overall core strengthening. Now that you know, what steps will you take to prevent future back pain?
Tags: abdominal muscles, core muscles, core strengthening, lower back muscles, lower back stretching exercises, stretching