Correlation between low back tightness and core strength.
Any suspicion of neurological signs or symptoms including shooting pain, weakness, changes in sensation, radiating symptoms, or unrelenting pain should always be referred to a qualified healthcare professional for further evaluation
I am not a doctor or physical therapist, so if any of the above symptoms are occuring DO NOT ATTEMPT THESE EXERCISES! I am a personal trainer and my certification & education allows me to deal with anything musculoskeletal related.
Please understand the difference between tight (muscle soreness) and pain (sharp, stabbing, radiating).
What I am going to touch on today is 90% of the time directly related to poor posture and lack of core stability and hip mobility. Very simply put, there are two types of joints throughout our body; mobile and stable joints. Some mobility joints include ankles, hips, thoracic spine, and shoulders. All of these joints are made to…move! Examples of stability joints are knees and lower back. If a stable joint becomes a mobile joint, that is where injuries happen (yes the knees bend, but they are still a stability joint).
Typically when a mobile joint, the hips, becomes very tight and locked up, the surrounding joints have to become more mobile to compensate for this lack of hip mobility i.e. the low back. Stable does not mean we don’t want it to move, we just don’t want it to be the prime mover. We want it to be secure.
I’m not saying we need to strengthen your low back here, because with very poor posture, your back is the main support system and takes the load of a lot of daily tasks…essentially all day every day.
The next question we have to ask is what muscle or muscles can take some of the load off of our back…CORE! A lot of people when they think about strengthening the core they do a bunch of crunches, sit-ups, and leg lifts. But let’s take a minute and think about the core as an ANTI muscle. Anti-flexion, anti-rotation, anti-extension, etc…
We want to get your entire core to fire simultaneously, BRACE! A good cue I like to use is to think about when someone is going to poke your stomach and everything hardens up! I do not like the “Bring your belly button to your spine”, because this is more of a “sucking in” motion, not BRACING!
So far in this example we have established some correlations of low back tightness; tight hips, weak core, and an unstable back that is working double time with a weak core. So what can you do to help assist in making your hips more mobile, core stronger, and back more stable?
In the video below I show some stretches right out of my NSCA book, stretches that have helped my clients, hip stretches, and core bracing exercises. The bracing exercises also function as stabilizing exercises. We want to focus on ONLY moving our extremities without moving our trunk. Try them out, just about everyone can benefit from these low back tightness or not.
Here are some links to two different articles about low back tightness and core stability.
https://www.nsca.com/education/articles/ptq/low-back-painthe-mobility-stability-continuum/