Gravity Fx Fitness

Not long ago, I attended a seminar with a top spine researcher. This doctor of spine biomechanics, Dr. Stuart McGill, has a lab where he does research on what causes low back pain.

He has people coming from all over the world to see if he can help them with their pain. Often, these people have been to several doctors prior to this, with few results.

In this lecture on spine stability, he brought up some interesting facts on exercise and back pain.

Have you been told that you should do your situps with your knees bent to take pressure off your back? Doesn’t make much difference. In fact, most people shouldn’t be doing situps at all!

Seems that several soldiers are coming back from Iraq with back problems. What is one of their physical training tests? Timed situps – how many can you do in a minute or two.

What is the problem? Simple, this is not what your abs (stomach) were meant to do. It creates an imbalance between the muscles on the front and back of the body.

Your abs are meant to help stabilize your spine and you need to train them to do that. Herniated discs can be a result of this repeated flexion (bending). So obviously, if you have had problems with your low back, you would want to avoid doing situps and crunches.

Another point was having adequate mobility. Some times your back hurts because certain areas such as your hips and pelvis lack proper flexibility.  Your hips need to be both flexible and strong at the same time.  A lack of flexibility in the hips can cause your lumbar spine to rotate too much.

And oh yes, posture! Poor posture places unnecessary stress on the joints, as your muscles are fighting against gravity, working harder than they need to. Good posture places you in a more mechanically efficient position.

While he didn’t go into too much detail on flexibility and mobility, you should already know my philosophy – we each need a proper blend of mobility and stability – the ability to be flexible and strong at the same time. The researcher believes that your lumbar spine (low back) isn’t meant to be flexible, but stable.

One other interesting note, he said that back strength doesn’t necessarily prevent you from having back issues. The endurance of the muscles surrounding and stabilizing the spine is more important.

A good exercise to strengthen your abdominal wall is the front plank.  “Brace” your abs as you hold this position for 10-30 seconds without letting your stomach sag towards the floor.  You can do the modified version from your knees to make this exercise easier.

Get moving!

Brian

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