spring time & lower back pain
I hope you’re loving this spring so far. The blossoming of the flowers comes and goes so quickly, and as seems to be the case these last few years, I was almost too busy to notice it. Still, I was able to take a moment at Pilgrim Hill near Inventor’s Gate and marvel at the raining down of the pink blossoms.
That spot brings me right back to 2020. It was in the spring, when the park was my peaceful refuge—the quietest I’d ever seen it—when I had my final FaceTime with my grandpa. We weren’t able to say goodbye to him at the hospital in person, but when I received that FT call, he heard my voice, smiled his dopey smile, and said, “Hey, kiddo.”
Those trees are his memorial now. When I ride by on my bike, going from my gym on the Upper East to my other gym on the Upper West, I think of that smile. I remember him imploring me to always play the piano. “Keep it up,” he’d say after hearing me play a song. I will.
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There's something in the air right now—a revitalization—where people are coming out of their hibernation. Two new folks found me on Google Maps, and both were on the younger side—“far too young to be dealing with lower back pain,” in their estimation. And they’re right, minus the age part.
Pain—and the postural imbalances that cause it—have nothing to do with age. These issues plague us all, and until we understand the root cause, we won’t learn how to address and overcome them.
One of the new students who called is a trained performer—someone with a high level of proprioception (the ability to understand where your body is in space). I used to think this was a common skill, until I realized most people spend time learning their profession on a computer or in a book. It doesn’t take mastery of your hips to broker a merger or understand the geopolitical future of the Middle East.
Still, people with strong proprioception can be a tricky demographic. I was a trained performer too, and had my fair share of pain issues (you can read about them here). So when someone who knows their body well comes to me with back pain, I have a pretty good sense of where they’re coming from.
People often tell me they have good form, so they’re not sure where the pain is coming from—though they know something is wrong. My decision tree is pretty simple here. Let’s assume you have great form (though that’s an entire discussion in itself... Is there really no room for improvement in your shape? Is there such a thing as perfect form? Is there a version of the movement you haven’t tried because you’ve heard never to do XYZ—when maybe XYZ is exactly what you need to do...? I digress.)
Your form is great, so to my estimation, there are two main reasons why the exercise is still bothering you:
1. Your tension is off.
Core tension, to start with, is widely misunderstood. Simply pulling your belly button back to your spine can cause more issues than it solves. You instead need to learn to brace your core—imagine wearing a wide belt, like a corset, around your stomach and ribs.
You need to tighten around the entire cylinder by pulling your rib cage down toward the front of your belt buckle (SO important—I could write a whole email about your ribs), engaging your abs as if someone were about to punch you in the gut, and getting your pelvis to turn under you (you’ve heard me say it so often it needs to go on the back of my shirt: “TUCK!”).
But core tension isn’t everything. You also need to appropriately engage your hips, hamstrings, and back muscles. These muscles don’t easily turn on because we barely use them in day-to-day life. So we need to take extra time to prime the nervous system.
Which brings me to the second point—
2. Your posture during the rest of the day is the problem—not the exercise itself.
Let’s say you’ve done everything above correctly. Then you go back to daily life and let your posture run on autopilot. Your hips push forward, your weight shifts into the balls of your feet, and your ribs flare open. This is lower back contraction--this is your lower back overactivity finally making itself known to you.
This didn’t bother you before because you weren’t sore and fatigued from training. But now, with your system taxed from the workout, those muscles aren’t going to be happy about jumping right back in. And feeling them on now is going to put you on alert. So we need to down-regulate, get your lower back into a stretch (rather than contraction) and reposition your pelvis and ribs to more effectively work in your body.
We can equip you with simple exercises you can do at your desk to alleviate aches and get you back into the gym—so you can continue building strength and resilience.
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Spring is in the air. Let’s embrace the change, seize the sparks of creativity, and lean into what’s inspiring us.