Back Pain Exercises
Tuesday, October 28th, 2008Much has been written about lower back pain exercises and the preventive and rehabilitative aspects of specific back exercise for back pain sufferers. In fact, over the last two decades, more than a thousand books and magazines have featured an X-minutes-a-day exercise program, each one promoted as the lower back pain exercises plan to for you.
Back Pain Exercises
Since most people with activity-limiting back pain do back exercises on a regular basis – and still have limitations – it is obvious that the whole story about back pain exercises hasn’t been told. So let’s try to sort out the misconceptions from the facts by examining some commonly held but erroneous beliefs about exercises for back pain.
If you are athletic and fit you won’t have back pain. False. The physical fitness boom that took hold in the USA in the 1970s, galvanizing some 55 million Americans into regular fitness activities, did not banish back problems by any means.
Incapacitating back pain among weekend athletes is common. According to the US Health Insurance Association, an estimated 20 million sports injuries, including back injuries, occur each year. And, according to survey participants, racket sports such as tennis and squash, with their sudden lunges, starts and stops, seem to be especially risky for back pain sufferers.
Any reputable book, magazine article or printed sheet handed to you by a doctor can teach you the upper and lower back pain exercises you need. This is only half true. Roughly half the US back pain sufferers who got advice this way were not helped much by it – and about 10 per cent were injured by it.
If you have low back pain that is more annoying than incapacitating, and if you are in relatively good shape, the chances are that a conservative back pain exercise plan that progresses slowly may help you a great deal. But if you have activity-limiting episodes of back pain, or chronic back pain, you probably need an exercise plan prescribed specifically for you, lest you risk serious injury, or fail to make progress.
For the vast majority of back sufferers, appropriate exercises for back pain are essential to lessening or ending back pain. People with debilitating back pain have far more success with individually prescribed exercise programs than with back pain exercise routines in self-help books and articles or in health dub classes.
As for specific back pain exercise advice, experiences show that there are two very simple ‘non-back’ exercises that help just about everyone with back pain – walking and swimming.
Back Pain Exercise
Even back sufferers who can’t lead normal lives because of back pain usually improve in the long run by following their practitioners’ advice to walk or swim regularly. At least half an hour of brisk walking every other day is recommended, or building up to 15 minutes of non-stop swimming three times a week.
Results from a large international survey were remarkably similar for both swimming and walking, with around 70 per cent of participants getting back pain relief from these activities. One respondent, Jane, had this advice for others: ‘Keep active. Consider back pain exercises that keep you mobile and flexible such as walking, swimming, dance, use simple stretching and flexibility exercises, plan a short simple routine to do each day.’
And another, Michelle, advised: ‘Walking or swimming often relieves back pain. Don’t do high-impact sports like running. Avoid anything that demands jerky movements.’
Personally tailored back pain exercise advice is most likely to be forthcoming from one of the following exercise experts:
- Physiotherapist (practitioner trained in natural means of rehabilitation, who usually requires a doctor’s authorization to treat you)
- Sports medicine specialist (medical doctor trained to prevent and repair sports injuries, including back problems)
- Kinesiologists (expert in the principles and mechanics of movement)
- Yoga teacher
- Physical fitness instructor.
Not all yoga teachers and physical fitness instructors have the experience or the desire to work with back problems. On the other hand, some physical fitness instructors have advanced degrees in back pain exercises physiology or kinesiology, and may be especially qualified to prescribe exercises for back pain.
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