Back pain is a terribly common ailment in Western society. The sedentary lifestyle added to the long hours that most of us spend sitting are the main causes of this type of pain. In fact, more than 60% of the population will suffer from back pain at some point in their lives.
The prevention of this type of pain, or at least the prevention of serious problems related to its evolution, almost invariably involves physical exercise. Regular and continuous physical activity will not only help us with back pain, but it will also provide us with a series of powerful benefits for our health that are essential.
If you want to start physical activity or look for exercises that can help with back discomfort , in this article I present some very simple ones that you can practice from home. Still, if your back pain worries you or becomes unbearable, we recommend that you seek immediate medical attention.
Exercises For Back Pain
Exercises for back pain are incredibly helpful. Either to avoid this type of discomfort, to strengthen the muscles and tendons in the area or for some type of post-surgical rehabilitation, exercise is key in the improvement of symptoms. For both chronic and acute pain, science seems to point out that exercise is the only safe preventive measure against these disorders .
Dependence on medication for pain relief, for example, is a serious problem that can be remedied in some cases by combining our medication with exercise. Of course, always with the approval of our trusted doctor, who will know if the exercise we want to do is positive for our recovery.
If you do these exercises separately, they will be good for your back. But we encourage you to practice them in a row to maximize the benefits of physical activity, if your body allows it.
1. Pelvic Tilt
This exercise is ideal to relieve and strengthen the lower back, which is also the one that usually affects the majority. To do this, we start lying on our back in a comfortable position. We can rest our head on a pillow, although we recommend doing it on a mat like those used by Yoga practitioners.
With the knees slightly bent and the feet on the ground, in a natural position, we will observe that our lower back does not make contact with the ground. This is natural and is due to the shape of the spine. The objective of this exercise is, by tilting the pelvis, to reduce the space between the floor and our back .
We will hold this position of "flat back against the ground", with the abs flexed for about 3-5 seconds, and then relax and allow our body to adopt its normal posture. By repeating this exercise about 10 times a day, we will soon begin to notice results in the lower back.
2. Half bridge
The half bridge (although in some cases the distinction is not made and it is directly called the bridge) is an exercise similar to the pelvic tilt, but with greater intensity. In this exercise we will place ourselves in the same position on our back, with the legs semi-bent.
From this position, we will lift our hips until they form a straight line with our legs. We will hold the elevated position for 3-5 seconds, and then descend in a controlled way (slowly, not violently or relaxing ahead of time). We also repeat this exercise about 10 times at the beginning, being able to add more repetitions as we strengthen our muscles.
It is important that the weight is only supported by our feet and upper back, but you can use your arms flat against the ground as a slight initial support.
3. Knee To Chest Stretch
This is also a great exercise to stretch your lower back. We start in the same position as the previous exercises. In this case, our goal is to grab one of our knees with both hands (this can be done by pushing the knee from the front, or by grabbing the thigh close to the knee from the back if we have knee problems) and push it in the direction of our chest .
Once we have brought our knee closer to the chest as much as we feel comfortable, we will hold it there for 30 seconds before gently lowering it and repeating the process with the opposite knee. We recommend doing this stretch a minimum of three times per side.
Once you have achieved it, you can encourage yourself to take both knees and stretch them against your chest. Again, we will hold the position for about 30 seconds before lowering the legs gently.
4. Trunk Rotation
We start in our favorite starting position (that is, the same as in the other exercises in this article). After that, making sure that our knees are bent, we will move our hips to the side, as much as our flexibility allows us . Our legs will naturally position one on top of the other towards the side we move.
For this exercise to work, we must keep our shoulder blades against the ground as much as possible . It is normal for the shoulder blade to be raised on the opposite side to which we are moving our lower body, but we must try to prevent this from happening or to be as minimal as possible.
We recommend gently stretching for 5-10 seconds in each direction, and repeating this process 3-5 times.
There are several exercises that can help us alleviate our minor pain and prevent health problems in the long run. We recommend that, if you are interested, you look for a low-medium intensity activity that is to your liking, since it will be the easiest way to exercise constantly and benefit your health without seeming a heavy task.
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