Back Pain? I’ve been there.
As someone who has a herniated lumbar disk, I know first hand how debilitating it can be. It’s difficult to think about anything else when you can barely stand up. Through research, my own personal struggles, and working with other low back pained individuals, I have narrowed my process to significantly reduce and/or eliminate back pain to Nine Steps. If all steps are COMPLETED and IMPLEMENTED on a regular basis, pain reduction is INEVITABLE.
Step 1. Position of Respite
We begin by finding your specific position of respite. This is a position that you can go to when you are starting to feel a “tweak” or “spasm” coming on. This could be as a result of a long day of work or maybe just moving a way your back didn’t like. This will vary from person to person dependent on the mechanism of the individuals injury. Positions can very from creating self traction, laying in various positions or a few specific stretches. Your position of respite is a powerful tool to help prevent and ease worsening symptoms of pain.
Step 2. Detailed Injury History
Here we will discuss all your previous injuries and what might have led up to the injury in question. We use this information to know how to tailor your recovery plan with minimal chances of re-injury. This is also important because past injuries can cause future injuries. If we know what has happened in the past we can have a much better idea of the ways your body might have coped with that trauma (Ie. reduced range of motion, scar tissue ect.).
Step 3. Provocative Tests
Provocative testing allows us to determine the exact movements, postures and loads that irritate your back. Simply put, if we don’t know the exact mechanisms of your pain we can’t expect to find solutions for them. The movements we will be testing are lumbar flexion, extension, compression and shear. Once we can identify your unique triggers we will know exactly what daily movement modifications to give you in order to keep you feeling your best throughout your day!
Step 4. Movement Competency Test
The goal here is to see what kind of movement quality you have. How do you bend over, get off the ground, lift heavy or light objects, get out of a chair ect. It’s very common to see back pained people move with very spine heavy movement patterns in appose to hip dominant patterns that would allow the inflammation to decrease and encourage recovery. This step will further help us tailor your daily movement modifications!
Step 5. Fundamental Four
The Fundamental Four is what I like to call the 4 movements that you ABSOLUTELY have to have a clear understanding of (and how to modify them to serve you best) early on in your recovery. These Movements are bending variations, laying variations, sitting variations and getting up and down. With a clear understanding of these movements we will have a pain free variation for almost every scenario.
Step 6. Cleaning up Movement Patterns (daily life/hobbies)
From here we take a deep dive into the activities you do most often throughout the day (aside from your job) and determine what could be having the biggest impacts on your pain. From here we can suggest more spine friendly movement alternatives to keep you doing the activities and hobbies that keep you sane during all of life’s many stresses .
Step 7. Cleaning up Movement Patterns (Occupation)
The last area for us to clean up is your occupational life. Jobs with constant walking on hard floors, sitting, bending and twisting cause cause a lot of stress that can compound if not dealt with properly. Once some spine hygiene is implemented into your work life you can start leaving work feeling refreshed and not like you got hit by a train.
Step 8. Exercise
What makes our exercise programs different is it is truly goal oriented. Every exercise you are programmed has a specific outcome and is tailored to your individual deficits that we identified earlier in the assessments. You never have to worry about re-injury because we know exactly what movements trigger your symptoms. With this in mind we can create a program around building stability and strength in the spine’s supporting structures and the hip complex.
Step 9. Mobility
Fun Fact: Not all stretches are going to help your recovery. In fact, often times the lower back needs more stability in the area than mobility. In regards to a injury you can’t just “stretch” for stretchings sake. You need to have intention and solid reasoning behind every stretch you do.
