Often my patients ask me “What is the best method of maintaining my low back on my own to avoid pain and re-injury?”

Combining stretching and strengthening, along with cardiovascular routines for stamina, function to minimize low back pain and injuries.

Personalizing your conditioning workouts to your back condition and your goals is also essential to maintenance of a healthy spine. Runners should do more lower-extremity stretching and “cardio” workouts, where a swimmer would do more upper-extremity and possibly strengthening activities. A proper warm-up and cool-down prior to and following exercise is mandatory to reduce injury possibilities. I suggest all joints be stretched in a controlled environment, no matter what your sport preference is. A brief “cardio” warm up is always a good idea to get circulation to the body and engage the heart rat to increase in preparation for increased activity.

Always keep a good conscious focus on your body and spinal posture when exercising. Keep the curves of the spine in balance and maintain a straight spine whenever possible. Use your larger, stronger muscles such as the gluteals in the buttocks and quadriceps in the front of the legs whenever possible.

Any continuous irritation or pain should be communicated to your chiropractor to check for asymmetries or imbalances in your structure. Taking responsibility for your own health by maintaining your spine with stretching and strengthening will definitely keep your doctor bills down and enhance your quality of life.

Taking the workout to the back of the body

Crunches, curls and sit-ups may be standard workout fare in gyms, basements and living rooms across the land. 

But the authors of a new book suggest people get plenty of that movement in their daily lives. They say to get a really strong midsection the back of the body needs to be worked.

 “Sitting at desks, working on computers, waiting in traffic, we are continually contracting our abs, throwing our shoulders forward and, ultimately, shutting down the back of the body, said Dr. Eric Goodman, co-author with Peter Park of “Foundation: Redefine Your Core, Conquer Back Pain, and Move with Confidence.”

 “If we’re going to keep our posture and our spines strong, it has to be done by exercising the back of the body as the core of the body,” explained Goodman, a chiropractor based in Santa Barbara, California.

 The exercises illustrated in the book require no machines or equipment and take the spine as the body’s center of stability. In the signature, or founder exercise, knees are bent over ankles, the body hinges from the hip joint, and movement originates in the pelvis, hips and hip joints.

 “You’re sticking your butt out on everything,” explained Park, a trainer and owner of Platinum Fitness gyms, said. “We’re aiming for the posterior chain.”  Park is cycling great Lance Armstrong’s strength and conditioning coach. The seven-time Tour de France winner wrote the forward for the book.

 “Lance needed it more than anybody,” Park said of the workout. “It opened him up. (With his) rounded back, rounded shoulders he almost looked funny off the bike.”

 The exercises are designed to augment, rather than replace, a regular fitness regime, Goodman said.  “We don’t want people to stop doing yoga or Pilates. If you’re currently doing cardio or other training just add foundation to it,” Goodman said. “If you’re doing it properly, 20 minutes is plenty. It’s hard.”

 Neal Pire, spokesperson for the American College of Sports Medicine, said the concept of “hinging” or loading the posterior chain while maintaining neutral spine is mainstream, but he’s never seen a book entirely devoted to it.  “Extension is key, because we do indeed live in a flexed state,” he said, adding that if the public perception is that abs are the core, the public is mistaken.

 “The core involves two sets of muscles: deep muscles whose roles are primarily stabilizing the spine, or more generally the trunk, and shallower muscles whose primary role is movement,” Pire explained.

 Goodman advocates a four-to-one ratio of back-to-front training.  “For every four exercises you do for the back of the body, you get to do one for the front. I think that’s the opposite of what most people are doing.”

 Park said too many workouts reinforce sedentary postures.  “You see a guy who is sedentary all day go to the gym, do bench presses and ride on a bike. He’s reinforcing what he did all day,” said Park.

 “We’re trying to bring everyone back to the center, where they should be. I think this is the missing link.”