I’m not going to lie. There was a point in my own low back recovery where I convinced myself that bending the lumbar spine was the devil and if I ever wanted to be pain-free I needed to take all spinal flexion out. Little did I know years later (with some awesome coaching) I was going to use intentional flexion to bring healing and relief to my back.
I want to share the details on this and how you may be able to use the same strategy I did to bring more healing and relief to your sensitive low back.
The first bit of research I did on healing the spine from chronic low back pain convinced me that spinal flexion was bad. I went on to believe that a straight and rigid spine is what the body needs. To be honest, there is a lot of truth to this and I still believe this general idea but there is an exception that needs to be taught to every low back pain sufferer looking to heal their own body.
Repeated careless flexion is never good for the spine but fearing the ability to flex the spine safely is even worse.
This unhealthy fear of flexion had created this idea in my head that flexion would bring pain. I believed it so much that it actually happened. I felt unstable and vulnerable when flexing the spine and if I did it more then twice, back to back I was doomed to intense stiffness and pain for days after.
After hiring a coach and working through some basic mental roadblocks I started to introduce more flexion into my recovery. Keep in mind that I am adding these techniques to my typical workout/prehab protocol. I am not just carelessly bending over throughout the day.
I go into detail and show you exactly how I do this along with coaching this with clients who are ready.
Check it out!
After watching come back and let me know what you experience when you try this out. Pain? Tightness? Leave a comment below.
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To your success,
William
William, thanks again for a great post. The video was so helpful!
Thanks Sarah!
Interesting blog, good information given about how flexion helps in minimizing the risk, and stables the muscle. Was very helpful, thanks for sharing the blog with us.
Thanks for checking it out!
Hi Willaim,
Again absolutely spot on. Ive been there in that place.. avoiding flexion for a year as when my back pain first started it was always in that position. Once i finally started to get pain free and build strength and mobility i still admittedly avoided flexion to some extent. Which doesnt help! but as you say the brain is protecting you, neuromuscular tightness almost! I read a book called Explain pain which has a chapter on this, great read if you havent already.
Other exercises i felt helped me relive some tightness initially felt in first movements of flexion where cat/camel stretch, lying pelvic tilts and hanging out in third world squat position. I still have really tight hamstrings and am a long way off regaining my old ways of flexion but as you say its about slowly allowing your brain to realise that in certain situations its ok to be in flexion,,, just always be mindul!
But again great content, wish more people could find your material rather than going to their doctor to fix the symptoms of the pain rather than addressing the cause.
Thanks for your comment Matthew! Really appreciate the support! I try to share it with as many people as I can so anyone you know who needs to hear it, be my guest to share! I will be touching on a lot more of the mental side of working through this mind body connection in the future. It’s just something I want to approach respectfully. The mind body connection can be a hard topic to teach/consume depending on the reader. You can’t just “think” your way through beating back pain but there is a massive connection between how the brain processes stress, fear and movement. Can’t wait to dive into it more. Again, I appreciate you!