If you’re a back pain sufferer, you’ll do almost anything to get relief, from using acupressure mats to using lumbar supports to improving your posture. Chronic back pain or back pain from sitting can make your life harder and anything that brings relief is welcomed.
We stumbled across this awesome 3 step process for back pain relief from a doctor dedicated to helping people relieve their back pain. Hopefully this 3 step process for back pain relief complete with videos can help you find some relief from back pain!
Step 1 to Back Pain Relief: Hamstring Stretch
Stretching your hamstrings is an important part of keeping your body in tune and preventing back pain. Here’s how to do a hamstring stretch:
- Stand like a soldier facing a chair and put your heel on the chair with the knee extended.
- Turn your foot out to stretch your outer hamstrings.
- Now bend at the hips keeping your back straight (look at a spot where the ceiling and the wall meet).
- As you count to 30 slowly stretch without bouncing.
Step 2 to Back Pain Relief: Abdominal Strengthening
Strengthening your core muscles in an important part of improving your back pain.
To strengthen these abdominal muscles you can do abdominal crunches on the swiss exercise ball.
This is always the second exercise in the three step process for back pain relief. If you have acute or severe back pain you should not do this section and should contact your doctor.
To do these abdominal exercises:
- Lay on the exercise ball facing the ceiling.
- Look straight up at the ceiling while doing crunches.
- Support your head and neck with your hands.
- Your upper torso, neck, and head should move as one unit.
- Move upward until you feel it in your core and then lower back down.
Try to build up to a count of 50 crunches for strengthening your core.
Step 3 to Back Pain Relief: The Fixer
The final step in the 3 step process to back pain relief is the cobra extension on the swiss exercise ball. This final move is a core strengthening back exercise and also pushes the jelly back into the center of the disc (Extension End Range Loading). It is the last exercise in the series.
Two other exercises here are flexion exercises. It is best to end with an extension exercise so the bulge in the disc is pushed back into the center. You can see from the demonstrations in the video of how this is supposed to work.
- When doing this extension exercise you should not hyperextend your neck.
- Look down and bring your shoulders up while squeezing your shoulder blades together.
- Don’t strain your neck by trying to look upward.
- Always keep your feet separated widely on the ground for balance with your feet against the wall if possible.
Hat tip to Doctor Fix Your Back for this great series on steps to relieve back pain.