INSTANT RELIEF from Lower Back Pain and Stiffness (4 EASY Exercises!)

A

pain

ful, stiff

lower

back

can easily ruin your day, limiting what you can do and leaving you exhausted. Follow the simple

exercises

in this video for

instant

relief

from long-lasting

pain

and

stiffness

. This is a very personal topic for me because I had surgery when I was 14 that left me with this pretty big scar here and I have a lot of personal experience dealing with

lower

back

pain, so if you have lower back pain, that pain comes back constantly. and you know you rest and do some things and it usually goes away after one, two or three weeks but it keeps coming back, then this video is for you because it will give you something to do when it comes back and also a way to go now, before you get into the

exercises

and the underlying theory, there is a study that I wanted to talk about that is really important because it gives a good perspective on low back pain.

Dr. B and I have talked about this study before and I just want to highlight the important findings. First of all, the study is done on asymptomatic people, that is, people who do not have any pain or any symptoms, and the study found that 50 of the 40-year-olds had a disc bulge. and 70 percent of people in their 60s had a disc bulge. Remember that these people don't have any pain, so what this shows is that what you find on an MRI or x-ray is not necessarily the reason for their pain. you have imaging findings and you have no pain or you might have imaging findings and you have pain, these are not the things you should focus on, the things you should focus on is how your body works and how it moves all days now if your lower back is painful and stiff.

Avoid the common recommendation to stretch by flexing, bending, twisting, and then holding that position. The reason is that this can cause the disc tissue or ligaments to slip, which can further irritate already irritated tissue. Now let me give you a little demonstration of something here this is the city of Toronto parking ticket and this one is completely intact if I just hold this little tab here this perforated edge here I'm holding a standard like a standard stretch I'm trying to stretch this paper aside, okay, no problem now that we have another parking ticket from the city of Toronto here and let me irritate the tissue a little bit.

I'm just tearing that perforated edge a little if I'm going to hold it. just with the same amount of pressure just holding it, holding it, holding it and then it just tears, it's already irritated and by maintaining that standard pressure, sooner or later we're going to tear that tissue that's already irritated or damaged even more, that's why we do not do it. Instead, we don't want to do static stretches, what we need to do is activate the surrounding musculature, so that around the lumbar spine, core stability, hips and pelvis, by activating these muscles we are telling the Brain, hey, we have stability here, we actually can.

Release this muscle tension and it will help you move more freely. The reason your brain tenses its muscles is as a protective mechanism because it already has these tissues irritated. Your brain wants to block everything so that you don't move and do more tissue damage, so the best way to relieve this pain and this

stiffness

and tightness is to activate the stabilizing muscles around the area to tell your brain to relax. and do it in everyday movements and positions. life and that is exactly what we are going to do with these four exercises. We are going to perform four exercises that activate the stabilizing muscles in the lower back around the pelvis and hips and the key to performing these exercises is to focus precisely on the appropriate signals and execute them think about three things your alignment breathe correctly natural relaxed breathing and control move under control and maintain the muscle activations that I am going to teach you as you perform the exercises when I demonstrate to you for the first time that I am not going to do it to tell you repetitions or sets or something like that, just follow me and focus on the technical signs.

Will cover reps and sets at the end of this video. The first exercise is the standard hip bridge. I'm sure you have. this before and it's good because you can do it in bed, if you're back, you wake up and your back is already sore and stiff, you can do it just lying in bed, lie down and you want to restore the natural curve of your lumbar spine. so you should be able to place your hands between your lower back and the floor, there should just be a little bit of pressure on your hand from there, make sure everything is relaxed, you can move your hips a little bit and relax everything and The first thing I'm going to do is to activate the pelvic floor muscles, it is also known as a Kegel contraction and if you don't know how to do it, think about whether you are urinating and stop your urine halfway to activate them deeply. pelvic floor muscles, then I will activate the feet.

This is something we call a short slender foot or active arch, so I'll try to grip the ground with my feet. We have other videos about this on YouTube. From there, I'm going to activate the glutes, so this is the third activation that I'm going to focus on before doing any movements here, so now that I have the pelvic floor feet and the glutes, I'm going to follow everything and then I slowly raise my hips just as straight so as not to extend the lower back too much, not to use the lower back muscles too much, holding them here for five seconds and breathing naturally, nice and relaxed, keeping all those activations, then I'm going to go down holding all the way down to the soft floor Landing and on the floor I'm going to go down gradually Activation, so slowly let everything go well Relax again move your knees in and out move your toes and then the pelvis activation of the floor stop the pee feet grip the floor glutes put those glute muscles on and keep everything on as I slowly lift up holding for about five seconds breathing naturally not just my breathing without tensing my shoulders or my neck and slowly lower myself down until I land softly on the floor and then gradually letting all those activations relax, move and that's the way we're going to do the hip crest, teaching our body that we have activation of these muscles throughout this range of motion, so I am connected from my foot to my lumbar spine and I breathe naturally, so I am not tense and I allow my body to relax with this exercise that you may already find if your pain was a five, six or seven. from ten down one two or three notches the second exercise that we are going to perform is another very simple technique that requires attention to detail because you can't see much of what is happening and it is the contraction of the permanent glue that this exercise is going to perform.

Take those elements and those activation patterns that we learned in the hip bridge up to the standing position, so we're standing here and you want to make sure that you're in good posture, so nice and tall, aligned but relaxed, that you don't stay there with a lot of tension here, including the weight between my left and right foot, from heel to forefoot, shoulders are in a good position, chin is tucked in and I am upright. The reason this is so important is because we want to make this easier. I want your body to remember this throughout the day because when you're slouched like that, there's a lot of body weight that my lower back muscles have to support, which increases tension and also puts you in that push-up position that's going to irritate you. already potentially irritated tissues in the disc and/or ligaments, so adopt a nice, tall, relaxed posture to achieve good alignment.

You're going to start this exercise with your feet shoulder width apart and the first activation this time is the feet, so I'm going to activate the feet, so create that active arch, so I'm trying to pull my forefoot towards the heel and make my foot skin short and thin so from there I'm not curling my toes. I'm activating the Deep muscles in the foot and again we have a video that we'll link to in the resources in the description here so you can check it out in the intrinsic muscles of the foot from here they activate the pelvic floor muscles so stop the P current halfway on the way and then We're going to increase the glute activation, so gradually you'll go from zero to as high as you can without any irritation or discomfort, focusing on a slight internal rotation of the hips, turning the thighs slightly inward and this will activate some deep hip muscles that are really important for stability, including the tall adductors like the pectinium and the psoas, so we're increasing that activation.

Once we have increased, we will hold here for 10 seconds while breathing naturally, breathing relaxed and maintaining good alignment and good posture. when we're done, we're going to slowly lower everything down, relax everything and then just move around a little bit. Shake it. Let's do this one more time so you can get these signals and these technical tips. With your feet shoulder-width apart, create the activity. Arch so the short, skinny foot doesn't curl the toes, pull up your pelvic floor muscles, stop the P midway, and then layer on top of the glute muscle activation with some internal rotation by twisting thighs inward, towards each other. there as high as you can activation as high as you can without any pain or discomfort breathing deeply trying to relax your lower back as much as you can maintaining good posture and then gradually let everything go and then move a little and walk a little So that's the contraction of the standing glute with a little bit of internal rotation and that will ensure that now that we are in the standing position your body knows what stability and good posture feels like.

The third exercise is the classic bird core stability exercise. dog I first learned this from Dr. Sue Miguel when I was one of her students in biomechanics class at the University of Waterloo and I have been using it ever since personally and for clients, so it is very helpful to get a stick. I have my old hockey stick here a dowel the broomsticks something that can help you maintain good alignment and helps you make sure you are centered and maintaining your stability the preparation position is knees below the hips directly below the hips hands directly below the shoulders elbows straight and lock and move slightly off the ground to activate the scapular stabilizers like the serratus anterior, which is a good setup position.

Now you get the neutral spine and this is where the cane comes in handy so you can place it on your back. and you'll want three points of contact with your head between your shoulder blades and your tailbone and you should have a little bit of space between your lower back and the club indicating that you have your natural lumbar curve from here. What I recommend for most people is to lift one leg slowly, making sure not to move left or right, or forward or backward, and maintain those three points of contact, once the leg is straight, raise your arm and I like to go up to 45 degrees just to get a little more activation of the lower trapezius, it is commonly an underactive muscle here you hold it for 10 seconds staying off the floor breathing naturally from there Soft landing you can go one at a time or both at the same time and switch sides, so leg first, making sure not to move left or right, back and then arm up at 45 degrees, thumbs up, breathing naturally, holding for 10 seconds and then go down slowly with soft landing, like that, now the key is gone. moving your body to the left or to the right, so a lot of times when you lift one leg, you're going to shift your body weight away from that leg for balance, but we want to, we don't want to do that, we want to maintain that position.

We start and force the stabilizing muscles to hold us in position and those stabilizing muscles are the multifidus, those are the main ones we're trying to hit here, the lumbar multifidus, and they're really important for that deep spinal stability that maintains the spine. in place while you move and avoid, and that helps you avoid excessive wear and tear on the discs and ligaments Now, if you are having problems and you are not sure if you are moving left or right, what could you do? is to put your hip right against the door frame and when you go up let's see that I'm lifting my left leg the tendency will be for my right hip to move to the right so when I'm doing my left leg put my right hip against the door frame door and that will help you be more aware of your position and maintain better form during this exercise.

The fourth and final exercise is the activated squat and this is a movement pattern that we need in daily life. getting on and off chairs, getting on and off the toilet and this is something that when we tell our body how to do it withstability, it will help relieve back pain, but then maintain it as you move throughout the day. We're going to layer on those activation patterns that we just learned in the standing glue crunch and then bring them into the squat movement pattern and you won't lose those activation patterns, that's the key to this movement, so to do that we have feature support.

With the part again, the first thing we're going to activate is the intrinsic muscles of the foot, so make the foot short by pulling the forefoot towards the heel and thin along the metatarsals, which is just above, just below the toes, from here the pelvic floor is activated and then a layer is applied. On top of that glute activation with a little bit of internal hip rotation, so turning those thighs slightly inward, now maintaining good posture, going very slowly, let's squat down maintaining that activation pattern that we start and just go as low as you can, so if this is as low as you can go, you stop here and then go up, but if you can go down, go down, the key is to stop before you.

Lose any of those activations that we started and then go up very, very slowly at the top, get all the way to the top, don't let your hips widen, so externally rotate at the top that way, keep that slight internal rotation in the top. up and then let it all go, let's go over that again, shake it up a little bit, first things first, the feet, the short skinny foot, now the pelvic floor, the ramp up and then the gluteal layer, which in the top, a slight internal rotation keeps everything held well. posture relaxed breathing and go very slowly squatting and just scanning those activation patterns feet pelvic floor and glutes once before you start to lose it come back up staying slow until you reach the top keep that internal rotation and then let everything go slowly Do it once again Shake it, wiggle your toes a little, breathe, then engage your feet and then the floor and then your glutes.

Keep all of that in that slight internal rotation, squat down just before you lose your balance, pause briefly, and then come back up. No matter how low you go right now, we're just trying to teach your body stability and activation at the top, keep internal rotation and then let everything go and shake it out, and this activated squat will help you get that stability back. again. you need in the lumbar spine in the pelvis and in the hips and then bring it into a movement pattern, so basically both hips do this at the same time, but through flexion and extension, which is useful for climbing stairs, walking, bending, whatever it is. what you need to do in your daily life you need stability to tell your back and your brain that everything is fine here just relax, calm down and relieve some tension and relieve some pain for the sets and reps of the bridge exercises of the hip, do one to two sets of five repetitions holding for five seconds at the top for the hip IR standing glute crunch do one to two sets of three repetitions holding for ten seconds for the bird dog do one or two sets of three repetitions per side holding for 10 seconds and finally for the activated squat, do one or two sets of three to five repetitions.

Now you want to do this first thing in the morning and then once or twice more throughout the day so that you can do it first thing in the morning once before. you go to bed or any time in between. One thing I'd like to show you if you work at a desk is that you can do the activated squat all day long, maybe every half hour or hour, just do one or two reps. you are sitting here you are working maybe you feel it your back starts to hurt a little so you do the same but you are starting in this position activate your feet so the short and thin foot activates the pelvic floor activate your butt so that you feel like you are doing higher in your seat and then from there, don't go in with a lot of momentum, but try to go in slowly keeping those activation patterns up to the top, so slightly internal.

The rotation and then all the way back to your seat at the bottom is when you let everything relax and then do it again and this may help you get rid of any pain that may arise when you are working. in the office or at your desk and I can help you get back to 100 pain-free much faster. Now this video is for quick

relief

, so if you try these exercises, let me know how your back felt in the comments below. and like if you found it useful. Make sure you are subscribed to our channel for more information and

easy

, effective exercises you can do at home to help you move freely and pain-free.

As I said, this video is for quick relief, this is not a comprehensive solution that addresses all the root causes of low back pain, so if you want to learn more about our approach you can watch these videos here, but also our comprehensive guided program to address the root causes of low back pain. Check out our low back pain solution program. This will take you from where you are to zero and a lower back that remains pain-free no matter what you throw at it. Thank you for joining me here today. Moving