Back Pain – Why?
Editorials, studies, and news reports state that back pain is mysterious and difficult to remedy, but back pain is not difficult to fix or prevent.

Eight of ten people in the United States have back pain at some point- trying hundreds of thousands of daily treatments – physical therapy, surgery, exercise, massage, pain management, chiropractic, acupuncture... Why do they so often fail? The answer is simple. People do an astonishing number of things every day to strain, weaken, and pressure their backs. They stand, bend, sit, and lift wrong every day, hold muscles tightly while they move around, then do bad exercises that add to the strain. They may do "back exercises," but not be aware that strong muscles will not automatically give you good posture, make you bend and lift properly, or make up for all the things you do the rest of the day to hurt your back. People wonder why they still get pain even though they "do their exercises." Many wind up in back surgery, or long term or recurring pain, not understanding why their physical therapy or exercise program, or pills, or yoga "didn't work." They call it "stress." Instead, it is simple to retrain unhealthful movement and habits. Then you stop the cause of the injury and the pain will stop. Here is how:

1. Bad Discs (herniation, degeneration, bulging, slipping discs), Sciatica, and Lower Back Strain
You know you shouldn't lift wrong, But you do – all day, every day – picking up socks, petting the dog, for laundry, trash, making the bed, looking in the refrigerator, and all the dozens of times you bend over things. Then you go to the gym and lift weights bent over, stretch by touching your toes, do yoga by bending over at the waist, then lift and carry bags like that. No wonder your back hurts.

• The pressure of your own body weight on your muscles and discs over years of poor sitting, standing, and bending habits is enough to injure your back as badly as a single accident.
• All this chronic forward bending (flexion) overstretches the muscles and long ligament down the back, which weakens the back, and pushes vertebral discs outward.
• After years of squashing your discs with bad posture, and pushing discs to the back with forward rounding, the discs eventually break down (degenerate) and push outward (herniate). The resulting herniation can press on nearby nerves, sending sciatic pain down your leg. If you squash and push the discs in your neck with a forward head posture - letting your head drop forward, the disc in your neck may herniate and press on nerves, sending pain down your arm.
• Tight muscles from years of poor positioning and short resting muscle length can also press on the same nerves mimicking sciatica.
• A degenerating disc is not a disease, but a simple, mechanical injury that can quickly heal, if you just stop grinding it and physically pushing it out of place with terrible habits.

This is a side view of your spine. Left - normal disc between two vertebrae. Right - disc pushed out (herniated) from bad bending habits.
Chronic forward bending from bad sitting and bending over gradually pushes discs outward to the back.
If you sit and bend properly, you will stop pushing your discs out and they can heal.

Sitting with lower back rounded (and bending that way too)
can eventually hurt the soft tissue and push lower back discs out (degenerate and herniate or bulge them)

 

Discs Can Heal
Disc injury is not a life sentence. Disc degeneration or slippage (herniation) can heal - if you let it, no differently than a sprained ankle. Stop damaging your discs with bad bending, standing, and sitting habits and the discs can heal. It takes years to herniate a disc, and only days or weeks to heal it by stopping bad habits. Several things contribute to disc pain. Read the rest of this article, try everything that makes sense to you and doesn't hurt.

Muscles Can Heal
When you over-tighten muscles with hunching and bad habits, they can remain too shortened to let you stand properly. Or they stay tightened in “knots” or spasm. This changes their muscle chemistry. When you slouch, you keep muscles overly stretched, which weakens and strains them. Stop straining your muscles and they can heal.

 

Functional Exercises to Strengthen and Retrain Your Muscles
Back pain exercises are misunderstood. Are you injuring your their back all day then hope to fix it with a few exercises? This does not work. When you stop bending wrong many times each day, which injures your back many times each day, it will stop hurting and can heal.

If you lie on the floor to do exercises, then stand up and walk away with no use of the positioning or strength you just practiced, it is like eating butter and sugar all day, then doing 10 minutes of exercises and wondering why it doesn't "work." The key is what you do all day.

Try the following slowly. See how you feel the next day, then increase. Use these moves, not as exercises to do 10 times, but to retrain how to bend and move all day. Stop hurting your back with bad bending and your back will stop hurting. Start strengthening your body and legs with good bending and you will get free exercise all day:

- Squat. You know not to bend wrong to pick things up, but you do it. Every day. Hundreds of times a day. Instead, bend your knees. You already know that. But do you do it? Are you avoiding it because your legs are too weak, and it hurts your knees? Done right, it will prevent both back pain and knee pain. The squat is for all the times during the day you need to lower yourself to bend and reach things:

Use the squat for all the many times a day you bend instead of bending wrong

• Both feet are side by side.
• Your upper body stays upright, not bending over forward.
• Keep both heels down on the floor. Don't lift your heels.
• Both knees stay back over your ankles, not sliding forward, which hurts the knees. Good bending saves your back and strengthens knees and prevents knee pain.

 

- Lunge. The lunge retrains bending habits and gives you free leg and back exercise at the same time. Done right, it will prevent both back pain and knee pain. Use the lunge for daily bending:

Another way to bend properly is the lunge (left) for all the many dozens of times you bend every day.
Keep front knee over ankle (left) not forward (right).

• Stand up, feet apart. Slide one foot comfortably back, keeping foot straight not turned out.
• Tuck hip under to remove back arch and stretch back hip.
• Bend knees to dip to the floor without touching the floor. At least dip down a few inches.
• Don't let your front knee come forward. Keep your front knee over ankle. This is the most important part of using the lunge to save your back - you shouldn't hurt your knee. Done properly, the lunge strengthens and protects your knees too.
• Don't arch your back. Tip your hip under to prevent arching and straighten your posture. Don't lean back.

The key to how the lunge fixes your back - is it not an exercise that you do 10 times a day. You use it for all the hundreds of times you bend and reach down in a day. Stop hurting your back with bad bending and your back will stop hurting. Start strengthening your body and legs with good bending and you will get free exercise all day.

 

- Upper Back Extension. Most people chronically over-stretch their back through forward rounding, but don't strengthen the muscles that hold the back upright. Upper back extension strengthens at the same time that you practice moving your back in the other direction. Discs spend so much of the day being loaded by forward bending. Extension unloads the discs, not compresses them the way previously thought.

• Lie face down on the floor, (or on a bed or bench if that is easier) hands and arms off the surface.
• Gently lift upper body without using your hands. Don't force.
• Don't crane your neck, keep it straight, just lift using upper body muscles.
• This exercise does more than the standard "hands and knees lifting arm and leg." It strengthens back muscles in a functional way, without additional pressure to the discs.

- Lower back extension. Extension is an important exercise to strengthen without loading the discs. Discs are pressured by forward bending. This backward lifting unloads them. This backward lifting exercise does more to strengthen your back muscles than bending over forward to lift weights. It is also better than the common exercise of kneeling on hands and knees and lifting one leg and arm. Kneeling exercise is barely any exercise, and tough on the knees.

• Lie face down, hands under your chin or wherever comfortable.
• Gently lift both legs upward, knees straight.
• Don't yank or force.
• Don't pinch the low back, just use lower body muscles.

 

2. Lower Back Pain After Long Standing/ Running/ Walking -
If you feel you need to lean or bend over forward or lift one leg to stop the pain, this kind of pain is usually from standing with too much inward curve in the lower back. 

Standing with too much inward curve of your lower back is called hyperlordosis or lordosis. Hyperlordosis (overarching) is a major cause of "mystery" back pain and injury. It does not often show up on x-rays and scans. Some people overarch by sticking their behind out in back. Another common hyperlordosis position is to lean the upper body backward when standing, reaching overhead, and lifting things.

• Hyperlordosis is an increased inward lower back curve (arch). Also called“swayback.”
• The increased arching presses on the joints of your spine, called facets. This is the cause of facet pain and much general low back pain.
• Hyperlordosis is not a medical or structural condition. Hyperlordosis is a posture you can control by using torso muscles to move your spine away from the arched position into a straighter healthier position.
• “Hyperlordosis of Pregnancy” is the same preventable bad posture. It is juts leaning backward to offset the load in front. Don't lean backward.
  

How To Stop Back Pain From Lordotic Arching

1. Stand with your heels, backside, upper back, and back of your head against a wall.
2. Press lower back toward wall. The large space between your back and the wall becomes a smaller space. Do not flatten against the wall. Belt line is horizontal from front to back. Back pain from overarching should stop right then, if you do this right.
3. When you walk away from the wall, use this new neutral spine position all the time.

• Use your own muscles to reposition your spine, no matter what else you are doing
• Don’t lean your upper body back when carrying things in front of you (anterior loads) like a chair, grocery bags, a pet, or baby.
• Don’t lean back when lifting or reaching overhead.
• Don’t let bags or loads pull your posture away from healthy position. Stand straight no matter what you are carrying.

Aren't You Supposed To Overarch and Stick Out The Behind In Back?
Overarching is not the normal curve to the lower back, and it is not the way to protect your back when lifting or exercising. An unfortunate phenomenon in fitness and "health" magazines is for models to stand and exercise with their hip and behind stuck out and their lower back arched. It is not attractive because it is not healthy. It is sloppy posture, unhealthy for the lower spine, and shows a lack of understanding of how to use core muscles to hold neutral spine. The fitness article may state to "keep the back straight," or to keep "neutral spine" but the photos show badly arched posture (which is not neutral spine). Overly-arched posture is promoted by popular fitness personalities, and popular exercises, where it is mistaken for, even advertised for, fitness and trimness. Trainers often tell clients to stick their behind out when squatting or lunging, however this is too much arch. It is not neutral spine and becomes anatomically damaging to the low back. It also does not use core muscles effectively.

What Do Abs Have To Do With This?
Abs work like any other muscles - they bend the joints they cross. For example. biceps bend your elbow forward (or keep it from straightening). Abs cross your vertebrae. They bend your spine forward or keep it from swaying backward, but only if you voluntarily engage them. You need to deliberately use your abs while standing to hold you from backward arching, particularly when reaching overhead and carrying loads.

Using Abs Does Not Mean Tightening Them
Using your abs doesn't mean “sucking them in” or making them "tight.” You can't breathe or move properly with tightened muscles. Tightening does not change your posture or reduce the pain-producing arch.

How Do Abs Help Your Back?
Using your abs means voluntarily moving your spine away from overly-arched position, and into neutral spine when standing. It is not a matter of having strong abs. A slightly-built person can stand with neutral spine, and muscular people can have overly-arched spine posture. It is a matter of using abdominal muscles to prevent the overarching that causes pain.

Doesn’t Doing Crunches Help That?
It is not strength that makes you stand correctly. It's how you hold your own posture. Many muscular people stand with terrible posture and have back pain.

• Crunches don't work your abs the way you need for real life.
• Crunches don't train you how to use your abs the rest of the day.
• Crunches promote poor posture, even when done properly.
• Crunches make a person, who likely spends much of their day already hunched over a work area, practice that hunched posture which may be mechanically promoting the back and neck pain they think they are working their abs to prevent.
• Most people do their crunches then stand up arched with no knowledge that back support comes from voluntary posture, not automatic strengthening.

What About Pelvic Tilts?
A common ineffective exercise often given for back pain is to lie on the floor and tilt (tuck) the hip. But then the person gets up off the floor and lets their lower spine arch as they walk away, and the pain returns. It is no mystery.

• The purpose of the tilt "exercise" is to practice how to use your ab muscless to move your spine out of painful arching, into healthy position that you then *use* for all your standing movement.
• Tilts will not strengthen.
• Even if tilts strengthened, back "support" is not automatic. Strengthening any muscles will not change an injurious standing posture which causes pain. Stronger muscles do not automatically move any body part anywhere. You have to use them to move you into desired posture.
• The use of pelvic tilts is to retrain how to reduce your lower back position, then use that knowledge to move your back into proper position when standing.

Pain When Your X-Ray is Normal
You may be in great pain from simple damaging mechanics. Your X-rays and scans are normal. You may be told nothing is wrong, or to give up favorite activities. Your pain persists from bad postural habits. This is no mystery. Change the bad habits to change the pain.

When Pain Is Not From What's On Your X-ray
Other times, the scans show some minor problem like arthritis, herniated disc, or degenerating structures. Just like car tires that are mid-life, but perfectly good, some wear may show on exam – but this is unrelated to performance or pain. Pain is falsely ascribed to the arthritis. Patients feel doomed, and are often told to give up activities. Pain (even the anomaly itself) may mostly result from poor mechanics. This is no mystery. Change the bad habits to change the pain.

Sometimes, the scans show some major problem, and major surgery is performed to correct it. When the original problem was from the bad positioning, often pain persists or returns because you never corrected the mechanics that caused it. The defect itself may return from uncorrected mechanics. Surgery can be avoided. Fix the source of the problem and the results of the problem can heal, usually without surgery.

Food Contributors
There are foods that promote inflammation - dairy, meat, refined sugar, white flour.
Instead, eat anti-inflammatory foods - leafy green vegetables, flaxseed, cherries, grape skins, blueberries, spices like ginger and turmeric.

• Use healthy positioning to stop the cause of disc damage and muscle pain and they can heal. Then no need for pills or surgery or adjustments.
• Don’t memorize complicated rules. Just use muscles easily to reposition for daily life.

How is your body positioning right now? The whole point of exercise and therapy is missed if you don’t learn to consciously use healthful positioning the rest of the day for standing, sitting, bending, and shock absorption.

• Send me your photos and success stories showing the principles in action. Prizes for the best ones.
• Please do not e-mail me saying you are "doing the exercises and want me to tell you how to fix pain from bad positioning." I get hundreds of those e-mails daily. "Doing exercise" is missing the point of using your brain to stop unhealthful positioning and habits the rest of the day. Stop the causes and the pain will stop. This free article above summarizes