Lower Back Pain Exercises

It happens all the time. You spend a weekend doing some kind of strenuous activity that you’ve been trying to get to for awhile. Then you wake up Monday morning with an aching lower back. Or worse yet, the pain in your lower back is so bad that you can hardly move. Now you are in search of some specialized and targeted lower back pain exercises to bring you quick back pain relief.

You often here the phrase “targeted exercise”. But what does that mean exactly? Well, many body builders will use this to describe a series of exercises aimed specifically at strengthening and growing a single muscle group such as the pectorals, biceps or triceps.

Unfortunately, many bodybuilders jump in head first without properly educating themselves on proper lifting techniques or how to properly develop certain muscle groups without making other muscle groups weaker. Because of this, many body builders are plagued with certain “malformations” such as the “turtle back syndrome” without even knowing it.

The turtle back is a condition that develops in weight lifters who focus solely on developing their chest and lats (those bat wings under the arm pits) while completely ignoring the upper back. While this may make the chest bigger and stronger, it decreases flexibility, gives you a hump back and sets you up for upper back, neck and shoulder problems down the road.

When we talk about targeted exercises, this body building definition could not be farther from the truth. When we talk about targeted exercises, we are aiming at increasing back health, flexibility and muscle balance. We are not as interested in size increases and how the muscle looks as we are about flexibility, function and performance to support the body in the way it was intended to. We work toward eliminating the muscle imbalances that have developed over a period of time as a result of improper lifting and just plain bad body posture. The result will be better health, better muscle performance and function, less sick days and fewer days spent in pain and discomfort.

So now we know what we should not be doing. What SHOULD we be doing?

Before this question can be answered, we need to find out exactly what the problem is so you can focus on the stretches and exercises that you actually need to be doing. The only way to do this is to perform a self evaluation and assessment to pinpoint the tight muscles that need to be stretched out and the weak muscles that need to be strengthened.

The good news is that you can do this completely on your own and do not need to visit a physician, physical therapist or other health care professional. A series of simple assessments has been developed to self assess your muscle imbalances. Even if you are not currently suffering from low back pain, you should learn this technique as it will most likely come in very handy at some point down the road.

Click here  to learn how.