Stability and Flexibility- The 2 Keys Of Back Pain

Lower back pain is one of the most common musculoskeletal complaints in the UK, and it is estimated 90% of Brits will suffer from it in their lifetime. 

The effects of lower back pain can be extremely debilitating to the point where clients have had to stop their profession and consider retraining in a more sedentary role hoping this may help. Many people have had to stop their sports and passions in an attempt to prioritise and protect their ability to work and put food on the table, holidays with the family, walks along the beach have been compromised. Days playing with their children and grandchildren were lost due to the effects of lower back pain.

That is why I am going to share with you my 2 keys to resolving lower back pain long term. 

Before I share with you my first key point, it's important to know that lower back pain is a symptom of the true cause and not the true cause itself. It is essential to identify why the pain is present and what it is trying to tell you, and not to get fixated on the pain itself. 

Becoming hyper fixated on the pain itself will lead you down rabbit holes to nowhere, chasing a symptom that will worsen and not resolve, slowly taking more and more enjoyment from your life. Look out for phrases like “ I feel better for a day or two then it returns” or “ I feel pretty good today” as people who use language like this live their life one day at a time. Basing how they feel and what they can do on how they feel on that one particular day. 

In many cases the onset of lower back pain as be a gradual one over years and therefore the solution must be addressed with a similar field of view and not a narrow one.

My first key to resolving your lower back pain is STABILITY. Has your lower back ever gone into spasm, where your stomach goes rock hard, your glutes and buttocks squeeze together and you struggle to bend from the hips and waist. This is an attempt by the brain to provide your lower back with more stability. Stability is safe, it is protection and it is reassuring. The only problem with this spasmic-like stability is it is reflexive and protective due to a perceived danger or threat, it is not natural and helpful in the long term. 

You need natural long term stability to provide you with the strong foundations in order to build up from. Now before you waste your time doing planks, sit ups and crunches for a “stronger core” let me explain where stability comes from. 

When we assess the stability of a client's lower back and pelvis we look at 80+ different muscles, and assess them for strength. We know a weakness in any one of these muscles can reduce stability and cause compensatory loading patterns that put excessive strain on tissue causing pain. The cliche of “you need a stronger core and glutes” is lazy diagnostic work and outright wrong. Yes there may be more common causes than others but the amount of times I have seen clients with lower back who have been told they need “ a stronger core”  yet when tested the core is already stronger is staggering. 

For your lower back to be stable and for your nervous system to have the confidence in your back it needs all 80+ of these muscles to be stronger and working correctly 24/7. 

The second key to resolving lower back pain is full flexibility and range of movement. Again I warn you, do not fall victim to lazy diagnosing. The clients I have seen who have successfully resolved their lower back pain from hamstring stretching is  a drop in the ocean compared to those I've seen where it hasn't made a difference at all. There are people out there who have had success with this I'm sure, but if I'm hedging my bets I'm putting the house on red or black , instead of green. 

The flexibility you may require to resolve your lower back pain could be anywhere in the body. To help demonstrate my point I would like you to do an exercise. Firstly stand with your feet together, keep your knees straight and measure how far from the floor you are from touching it. Now find a hard ball, like a golf ball or a lacrosse ball even a dog toy ball will do. Spend the next 5 minutes slowly rolling the ball on the bottom of your foot from heel to front pad applying as much pressure as much you can. Stand up and retest your finger to the floor in the same way as before, and see how further you can reach now. 

This is thanks to a lesser known tissue called Fascia. Many have heard of plantar fascia or plantar fasciitis and inflammatory condition that affects the fascia at the bottom of the foot. Fascia is a thin layer of connective tissue like a netting that connects separate muscles together to form chains of muscles. There are 12 different fascia lines that connect the foot to the head, your right foot to your left hand and much more. 

Given almost all of these fascia chains pass through the lower back, this means any one or multiple of the fascia chains can be causing the restriction and loss of flexibility in your lower back. In which case an unlimited amount of hamstring stretches will not improve your lower back flexibility. In many cases jaw or neck movement unlocks the flexibility of a person’s lower back, or in others a previously injured shoulder is stopping them from having a full finger to floor and being one step closer to being pain free and gaining power over the theirs lifes again. 

The body is the ultimate machine and is unimaginably complex. 

Please don't fall victim to lazy diagnosing when addressing stability and flexibility. Learn from the thousands of hours wasted by others so you don't have to and seek the help of an expert first. The money it may cost you pays back 100x in the time you save from doing it incorrectly.