What you should and should not do for sensitive back?

In the last article I have listed out different types of back issues and what could be the reasons that you suffer back pain. To continue with what we have left from the last article, I have listed down some useful exercises for majority of the population who suffer chronic back pain (such as tightness from prolonged sitting or poor postures) to train their core safely.

Before we get into what we should do. There are two exercises for anyone who suffers lower back pain should NOT do.

When we talk about strengthening our core, it’s about our deep core muscles and stabilizers including multifidus(which lies deep along our spine), transverse abdominus (which wrap around our torso), pelvic floor and diaphragm.

Our familiar name “six packs”, rectus abdominus is one of our superficial core muscles (and erector spinae), which most people often activate these superficial muscles too soon or before the deep core muscles when we perform certain exercises in poor form. That will become an issue and trigger lower back discomfort/pain.

The correct sequence to strengthen and incorporate our deep core muscles in training, we should ensure that “we are using the right muscles at the right time”. By activating our deep core muscles prior to superficial core muscles can save us from getting ourselves injured. Here are a few tips below.

#1 Sit ups or crunches

This is definitely my lease favourite exercises on the list.

There are uncountable good exercises to train our core/abs without doing sit ups! As most people compensate the “crunching” movements during sitting up phase/flexion by a quick/jerking motion with their hip flexors and that easily trigger lower back discomfort/pain.

#2 Static plank

This is a great exercise when you do it properly, not only the form, also the length of time while holding up a plank. We need to remember, holding plank for minutes does not mean that you are training your core harder. Human bodies are smart, when certain muscles fatigue, in this case our deep core muscles tired out after you have been holding a plank for over a minute or even 5 minutes, then the superficial core muscles and other muscles will jump in to help out with whatever you are doing to support the body. This is when things go wrong that your body compensate for this prolong period of planking. Still want to plank? Try to do a 10 seconds interval planking and perform multiple sets instead. This is a much safer way to train your core and it is more challenging than you think!

In our next pain-free exercise routine, we will show you a few more exercises where you can use this two combination of exercises to form a Lower Back Pain Free session in the gym. Until then!