American Fitness Professionals & Associates

Dr. Jolie Bookspan

 Recent news articles quote sources saying that no one knows what causes back pain and nothing seems to work to fix it. But back pain is not mysterious or difficult to fix. Surgery is almost never needed. Most of all, you don’t need to “live with pain.”

An Injury, Not A Condition
The majority of back pain comes from bad standing, sitting, and bending habits. The strain and pressure of letting your body weight grind on your joints over years of bad mechanical habits causes pain, and leads to arthritis, curvatures, impingements, and bad discs. Just as smoking one cigarette at a time eventually can cause trouble, back pain almost always develops from years of simple bad habits. Back pain that comes on suddenly is like a heart attack that developed over years.

Chronic Bad Standing and Reaching Overhead

You know you’re not supposed to stand slouched so that your low back arches, but you do it. Most people arch their back every time they reach overhead, or look up, or try to “stand straight” by pulling their shoulders back. Then they go to the gym and the trainers tell them to arch their back and stick their behind out when exercising. This is a major cause of back pain. Test yourself now. Reach overhead. Does your back arch? When you pull your shoulders back to “fix” your posture, do you arch your back to do it? Instead tuck your hip without bending forward or leaning back, to take the large arch out of your back when you do other things like lift overhead or stand up. When you get your upper body weight off your low back by reducing the arch, you will immediately feel reduction in low back pain and pressure. Exercise magazines say “use neutral spine” but then they show exercises done with the low back arched to an unhealthy degree. It is not sexy, it is a sloppy posture. It is as bad a habit as smoking. More on this follows.

Chronic Bad Bending and Lifting
You know not to lift things by bending over at the waist. But you do it - all 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, then stretch by bending forward, do yoga bending over, then lift and carry things bent forward. No wonder your back hurts.
All this forward bending (flexion) weakens back muscles, strains soft tissue, and pushes your discs to the back (posteriorly). Over years the disc moves back until it is sticking out (herniated, or “slipped”). The resulting herniation can press on nearby nerves. This is how you get a “pinched nerve,” also called “impingement.” If it presses on your sciatic nerve, you get sciatic pain down your leg. If you slouch your head forward all the time, you can push discs backward in your neck, sending pain down the nerves in your arm.
Tight muscles can also press on the same nerves mimicking sciatica. A degenerating disc is not a disease, but a simple, mechanical injury that can heal, if you just stop grinding it and physically pushing it out of place with terrible habits.

Picture yourself standing sideways facing right.
On the left above is a normal disc between two low back vertebrae.
On the right is a disc pushed out (herniated) from years of forward bending habits.
Forward bending gradually pushes discs out to the back. Lift and bend properly to avoid disc damage.

Sitting with your low back rounded is a bad habit. It eventually can degenerate, then herniate your low back discs.

What To Do
Back pain often comes and goes. People desperate for relief during acute episodes try strange things. Don’t fall for pills, gadgets, and potions. Most back pain is easily remedied if you change the constant, injurious process of bad body mechanics.

Back pain often comes and goes. People desperate for relief during acute episodes try strange things. Don’t fall for pills, gadgets, and potions. Most back pain is easily remedied if you change the constant, injurious process of bad body mechanics.Remember that “doing back exercises,” or getting a shot, but not changing the bad habits that hurt in your back in the first place, is like eating cake and ice cream morning, noon, and night, then doing your “exercises.” You are not balancing the harm.
Bad Posture 1- Arching When Standing and Carrying Things
Look in any fitness or health magazine and you will see people standing and exercising with their behind stuck out in back. Although trainers and aerobics instructors often tell people to stand this way, it is a major source of back pain.

Allowing your low back to sway, exaggerating the normal inward curve when standing, walking, and reaching allows the weight of your upper body to grind down on your low back. “Sway back” (excessive lordosis) is not a structural condition, but bad posture.

Don’t arch under the weight of your handbag, or other things you carry. Don’t hunch forward or to the sides. Reduce lordosis by tucking your hip, as if starting to do a crunch but without bending forward. This will straighten your body. Use this technique all the time, particularly when reaching and lifting overhead. Your packages can be a built-in ab exercise. For more, read the article about using abs to help your back on this web site.

 Bad Posture 2- Forward Head
Jutting your chin forward is a bad posture called a “forward head.” It looks old, creates much neck and upper back pain, and is a prime contributor to herniated cervical discs. Are you sitting with your head forward right now reading this?

Pull your chin in, gently, not stiffly. Don’t tip your chin up or down. Use “chin-in” as daily posture, not an “exercise” you only do a few times daily. To practice, stand with your heels, hips, upper back, and the back of your head against a wall. If you can’t do this comfortably, you are too tight to stand up straight. This is common. One helpful stretch is to hold both arms up, bent at the elbows, like “a stick up.” Don’t let your back arch. Pull your elbows back, chin in. Do this many times a day.
Bad Posture 3- Round Back
Slouching when you stand, sit and bend so that your back curves, like an “old person,” eventually overstretches the long ligament down the back of your spine, weakens your back muscles, and pushes discs outward. Disc herniations usually result from mechanically pushing them posteriorly with chronic flexion - that means sitting rounded and bending over wrong instead of bending your knees. Are you sitting rounded right now reading this?

Bad Bending and Lifting
People go to the gym and pay a trainer to make them do squats and lunges with an upright back and properly bent knees. Then, they bend over at the waist and pick up their gym bag to go home. Bend properly for everything, even the water fountain, to pick things up from the floor, to look in the refrigerator, or take things out of the dishwasher. Keep your torso upright and bend your knees. Keep your knees over your feet, not slumping forward, which is hard on the knees. Don’t stretch by bending over at the waist without supporting your body weight on your hands. Many people are surprised to find that they injure their back doing forward yoga stretches. You wouldn’t pick up a package that way. It is not really a surprise.

Don’t hunch forward under the weight of the things you carry. It is not the pack on your back making you slouch. It is not using your muscles to counter the pull, that is the problem. Check your posture against a wall, described above, each chance you get: in the elevator, against a wall or door jam. When you walk away, keep your great new posture.
Strengthening And Stretching Is Crucial But Not The Whole Answer
Tight, weak muscles cannot do their job and easily cry out in fatigue and stress during motions that in-shape muscles easily support. Strengthening is needed, but will not automatically “give” you good posture or make you bend and move properly. Plenty of slightly people stand properly with no back pain. Plenty of muscular people have terrible posture, gait, and lifting habits, and the back pain that comes with it. You just need to retrain bad habits. Take our fun classes No More Back Pain, Stretch and Feel Better, The Ab Revolution, Lower Body Revolution, and others.

Fix Your Own Pain
Is it natural to slouch? As natural as wetting your pants, but you learn to hold it even when you don’t feel like it.

Back pain is not a normal result of carrying heavy things or getting older. It’s not because we walk upright on two legs. Bed rest and inactivity make back pain worse.

The average person does so many mechanical things every day to damage their back and neck, it is amazing they don’t hurt more. Use your muscles to keep posture when standing and carrying things, and don’t lean back when you pick things up or reach overhead. You’ll burn calories, get great exercise without going to a gym, and fix your own back pain.

Homework

Watch other people’s posture, gait, and movement habits.
-Notice injurious postures doing “fitness and health” moves in fitness magazines
- Notice your own habits.
- Use principles learned to identify and eliminate the cause of your own pain.
- Send me photos showing the principles in action. Prizes for best candid.
- Send me your success stories about using these principles.

You Don’t Have To Live With Pain  

Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats. - Howard Aiken

That said, this information is ©

Classes
For a fun and healthy class to fix your own back pain, take our No More Back Pain class.


Articles
- For an indepth understanding of how to fix your back pain, plus learn effective exercises, read the full back pain article.

- Lean how a disc herniates and how to fix it yourself.

- Learn how to fix neck pain, bad cervical discs, and upper back and shoulder pain.

- For why crunches don’t help back pain and how to retrain your abs to help your back read about The Ab Revolution™

- To avoid ineffective habits that work against your health, read this article on “Why Fitness Isn’t Working”

- To learn how to tell how to move in healthier ways, read about “Bad Exercises and Ones To Do Instead.”

- Learn how to stretch the way you need for real life, and learn which stretches help, and which stretches harm.

Books
The Ab Revolution™ No More Crunches! No More Back Pain! Expanded second edition.
Revolutionary core training method - No crunches. Combines sports medicine with fun exercise to get a workout at the same time that you retrain your muscles for healthy movement for ordinary daily activities. Burn more calories and get incredible abs. Used by military, law enforcement, and the nation’s top spine docs.
Order Toll Free: 800-839-8640 www.TheAbRevolution.com

Health & Fitness in Plain English
Previously sold out and unavailable, now bigger and improved in a bigger, better second edition. 31 chapters on health, nutrition, exercise, and pain prevention. 363p. Order toll free (888) 229-5745 www.HealthyLearning.com