Back Pain: Using Movement as Medicine.
Let's talk about that thing that most of us have had, and if we haven't, we assume we will. It's that thing that seems to be happening in the adult population from a much younger age, and it’s something that we think we will all get, by the time we are old (whatever old is!)
BACK PAIN
Back Pain - The Stirland Approach
Speaking from experience – it can be awful: Debilitating, frightening, uncomfortable, exhausting, frustrating and overwhelming. I experienced back pain, back in 2012 when I was a Pilates Teacher. I thought I was doing everything right; I had a strong core, I worked on my posture every day and I worked my glutes which were strong and supportive of my pelvis. So, what was I doing wrong?
What I was doing wrong was probably everything that I thought was right, back then. My core was too tight and overworked which was affecting my capacity to move in the way my body should; my posture looked good if I was still but to keep looking that way, I held on to lots of tension; my glutes were as over worked as my core was and that was affecting my mobility in my hips and in my lower spine. Looking back, it was inevitable that pain and stiffness would happen. And this is why……
Unless we’ve developed back pain because of a specific injury or medical condition then the reason is usually mechanical. So, when you first feel your back hurting, but you can’t really work out what you’ve done, its become progressively more sore since it started, some days are worse than others and it might have been there for days, weeks or even months then it’s time to start looking at your skeletal mechanics.
Back Pain
Understanding the mechanics of the skeleton
Our skeleton is shaped in a way to facilitate movement. It is made up of different shaped bones, in between which are joints and joints are where movement takes place. To move the skeleton, we obviously rely on the synchronisation of our muscular system which is sent information from the nervous system to make this coordinated effort produce an output. But our system becomes very much used to the movements we are doing on repeat, and from these repeated patterns, habits are formed. However, some of these movement habits can be the cause of our pain. Let’s discuss why…….
Some of you might sit at a desk all day, and others might drive a lot. Some jobs might require you to do a movement action over and over. You might also train for a sport or hobby or use the gym where you train in certain postures and positions. Our system becomes familiar with the information its receiving and habits are formed that cause adaptations. These habits start to form dysfunctional movement patterns, and this is one of the reasons that we get pain and stiffness.
The thing to remember is this: its ok to sit a lot, stand a lot, and to train for your sport or in the gym, so don’t think I’m writing this to suggest that you shouldn’t or can’t. But what I am an advocate of is adding something that will be the change to your current situation. It’s about learning something that will act as an interrupter to your current movement habits. What a lot of people believe is that the best way forward is to become strong. Now I’m not denying that we need to be strong, but some of the people I see, who are experiencing pain, are extremely strong. They train frequently and do the things that they have been told will help them. They lift weights, they do the rehab exercises they’ve been given, but they are still in pain. But remember what I said at the beginning of this blog: my core was strong; my muscular system was extremely toned but I developed back pain. The difference now is that at 52 I have NO pain. I don’t ache anywhere. But what I do is I move properly, and I constantly work on making sure my movement habits are good. I regularly do Bodyweight classes which incl 200 press ups, 200 squats, 200 lunges and lots of loading of my body in different positions, and I rarely ache afterwards. So, what is the secret?
The secret is to move in the way our body was designed to move and to make our system efficient at moving us properly. We achieve this by:
- Learning about our skeletal mechanics
- Using the correct amount of effort as we move
- Understanding our skeletal chain
- And learning how to work with the information the nervous system gives us
My aim as a movement Teacher is to help my clients achieve these objectives. We do this by unlearning poor movement habits and relearning better ones. To begin with we keep movements simple, and we repeat them. Our nervous system starts to identify this new information, and from it new habits are formed. It’s like learning a ‘new normal’.
It’s easier than you think and the beauty of it, is that we might start to experience small changes quickly. However, this is NOT a quick fix. But nothing is. It takes time to change the habits that our body might have been using for many years. We must be consistent, and we have to be patient. But in time most people will notice the benefits of changing the way they move.
Remember we don’t achieve movement efficiency by:
- Over engaging our muscular system when we don’t need to
- Constantly holding our core
- Blaming everything on the glutes and then working them hard
- Focusing on our static posture.
However, doing some core work, doing work on your glute strength, using repeated actions as training for your sport/hobby/or in the gym is ok, if this is the way you have to train (for sport) or the way you like to train.
BUT
..our body wants balance. And remember if you’ve got pain and if your joints are stiff when they shouldn’t be, then this is your body telling you that something needs to change.
And to quote that famous line by Henry Ford;
“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got”.
If you feel that you are ready to rethink your movement, contact me through my website. Remember Movement Is Medicine
Thank you for taking the time to read this blog this far
