Back pain exercises

Back pain: the purpose of exercise prescription

First of all, do you know what’s causing your back pain? Muscles, disc, joint, nerve, spondylosis or even spondylolithesis, have you even heard of these, If not a diagnosis would help, so speak to your osteopath or physiotherapist.

If you know and understand what’s creating your pain, what tissues are involved then your exercises don’t have to be just guess work. Remember one size does not fit all!

When prescribing exercises for back pain or other problems I consider the treatment and progress made then as a way of recovery put in place a plan of action for the rehabilitation process.

I break down my rehabilitation exercises for back pain into three categories:
Mobility- improves how things move
Flexibility – improves your range of motion, reach etc.
Strength/Core stability – addresses imbalances and strength.

Each category works very differently, let’s look at a couple of examples:
1. If you have pulled your back lifting (assuming a consultation and treatment has taken place and we are at the rehabilitation stage) your muscles may be tight, the joints stiff and muscular imbalances due to the amount of time you spent living with it. We deal with what’s actually causing the pain, then look to improve and maintain how the body is actually working, keeping it moving so mobility exercises are given to get things going, once there is relief we can then improve flexibility and exercises for strength to help the imbalance adapted in the muscles.

2. If the injury is from a repetitive action and there is some excessive movement (hyper mobility) at the vertebral segment (a joint in the back) then stretches, particularly static ones such as yoga will initially be avoided; yoga is a favourite of mine but not always the best option, on occasions like this core stability and strength exercise will be included in the plan.

3. A semi-prolapse disc (disc bulge) may put pressure onto the sciatic or femoral nerve, both can give pain down in the leg, (note these very different nerve irritations are a sign not a diagnosis) to reduce the pain we need to take the pressure from the nerve at the joint level, we do this by mobilising the joint and relaxing the surrounding muscles, exercises given will be given to improve movement and restore the muscles surrounding the joint.

Hope this is useful, any questions drop us a line or
email: info@manchester-osteopaths.co.uk

Francis Connor
www.manchester-osteopaths.co.uk