Lower back injury prevention (avoid hernias, lumbagos and sciatica)

Lower back pains, ( hernias, lumbago, sciatica) are part of the most common pathologies in the sport industry.

How do we prevent or get rid of them?

Is it only about stretching the back? Is it about strengthening that area?

In this article we will help you understand more that issue and give you the right tips to get rid of it.

I)               How to perform lower back injury prevention?

-       Bad fitness forms:

Most people believe that back injuries only take place when you incline and grab something heavy keeping your spine not straight with the wrong form.

Even though issues can certainly most of the time take place because of that, it is not the only main factor.

Basically, back injuries can start occurring in many situations.

Whether you are working out your chest, legs, shoulders or back, the real risk would be linked to the pressure you put on your intervertebral discs during hyper extensions or flexions in the upper and lower area of your spine.

-       Weak and imbalanced muscles (Create a healthy balanced muscle mass)

For this point let’s take a simple example:

If you like the aesthetic of chest muscles (front part of the body) and neglect its exact opposite like the trapeze and rhomboid muscle (upper back area); The tension will be stronger in the front part creating a bad upper back posture making you round your spine forward.

You will then compensate by hyper extending the neck to be able to look straight forward and start with the cervical pains.

Here was an example of one among many muscle imbalances you can have.

The same logic applies for glutes for example.

Glutes are responsible to stabilize the hip.

Bad hip stabilizers are impacting directly your lower back for compensations.

Therefore, bad posture on a daily basis.

In the good combo, we help you identify these imbalances and educate you on how to understand the logic to get rid of them.

II)             How do I prevent from these back pains?

-       Learn how to position your hip

Lower back hyper extensions:

If we analyze the main fitness moves like the back squat, deadlift, bench press, shoulder press etc. Any good trainer could notice a common mistake happening during these moves called spine Anteversion. (aka lower back hyperextension)

This term simply defines the arching of your lower back more than its natural “S” curve putting pressure on your intervertebral discs. Degrading these discs would be responsible with time among others to intervertebral discs hernias/ lumbagos or sciatica for most cases.

Learn with us how to position your hip using a simple pelvic tilt and train safe on the long run.

This would be one of the key advices I would give in this article.

This good positioning of your hip will be used in many fitness moves or even running and is common to many physical activities

-       Use your scapula belt and other back muscles

After positioning the lower area of your back properly through that pelvic tilt, do not forget that the upper part has a key role in saving the lower area a well!

Indeed, we saw up here that we try to avoid spine hyper extensions in the lower area by simply squeezing the glutes through a pelvic tilt and make the spine more neutral.

On the other hand, we actually also want to be able to isolate the upper area of the spine and squeeze the upper back muscle (scapula belt) among others to help erecting the spine by squeezing in the opposite direction as the lower back.

Ps: Rounding your upper back area will tend to automatically impact the upper lower part and round it too.

The good form mix of both is key!

Understanding how to isolate the upper and lower area would be key for safe long term injury prevention workouts.

Learn more about it with our coaches

-       Increase your muscle and joint mobility and remain flexible

Stiff and unflexible muscles are biomechanically putting pressure on your joints.

Make sure to remove the pressure leftovers from your past workouts by stretching among others the back, glutes and paravertebral muscles to avoid a long term small remaining pressure on the long run responsible for back pains.

Understand also that mobility doesn’t only come from muscles and tendons but also to the joint themselves.

It is obvious to mention that warming up would be key to reduce the injury risk.

Make sure to add in your warm up joint mobility movements (such as spine rotations in the upper and lower area of your back) in addition to muscle warm up to be fully reducing the injury risk on your discs.

-       Avoid muscle imbalance (As seen previously in point I)

III)             CONCLUSION:

As you could have noticed, back injury prevention is complex and most of the time these issues do not come from a unique source but from a cocktail of wrong:

-        fitness forms related to each muscle group you are working out

-       Mobility

-       Existing Imbalances among your opposite muscles creating joint tension

Our team are composed of professional certified trainers qualifies in this kind of injury prevention.

If you are already suffering from this. The situation is totally reversible!!

Do not panic and let us help during our personal training sessions.