Fix Your Back with THESE Exercises
2015-02-22
Fix Your Back with These Exercises
You have probably all heard the stat, 80% of Americans are going to experience some type of back pain in their lifetime. I’m guessing, most of you are like me and have already have encountered that oh so not wonderful day when your back goes.
Laid up, crawling around, cringing to just shift positions laying down are just SOME of the perks of having your back give you some serious pain!
The truth is we don’t have one singular reason that people have back pain. Typically it is a combination of a few different issues.
Flexibility/Mobility: Yea, the fitness gurus like to try to make a big difference between mobility and flexibility, but let’s make this simple, you need to move well! I’ve seen some pretty wild stuff make people move better, but the reality is I’ve rarely ever heard of someone stretching and working on their mobility on a consistent basis.
While most people think that just stretching their hamstrings and hip flexors is good enough, the reality is we need more! I know from experience, I use to spend day after day stretching my hamstrings (as doctors told me to do) with the feeling of ground hog’s day every time. “Have I ever stretched before?” was my thought, maybe it wasn’t my problem!
No, we don’t need two hours of flexibility/mobility training, but we do need to go a bit deeper. One of those REALLY big issues we need to address is internal rotation of the hip.
What?
Think of this simply as the ability of your hip to turn inwards. Doesn’t sound that hard, but since most of us sit and do things to train the external rotators hip we lose a lot of the ability to internally rotate our hip. In fact, research has shown that if you have low back pain, the chances are you already have a loss of internal rotation of at least one of your hips already!
Improving internal hip rotation can both help your low back pain but also prevent the powerful muscles of the lower body (like the glute maximus) from working and you will be losing a ton of strength and power as well!
Core Strengthening: Of course, you have heard if you have a strong “core” your back will be better. Well, kinda. What a lot of people don’t know is that their core stability and mobility are actually intertwined.
Huh?
Your body has natural protective or breaking systems. The job of these systems is to prevent the body from being injured when it perceives a risk. Have you ever been stretching and all of a sudden cramped up?
No, you don’t need to eat more bananas, rather, your body thought you were going to hurt something so it tried to shut down the area. Planks are a good start to learn to develop how to “brace” the torso, but they usually don’t help the deep core muscles like some other exercises like our half and tall kneeling Around the Worlds.
Working with the Milwaukee Fire Department it was essential we taught them how to move and feel better!
DVRT Master Chief, Kari Negraiff, demonstrates the fundamentals of this VERY important DVRT drill.
That is why today I wanted to present you two really powerful DVRT Ultimate Sandbag Training exercises. Whether you were looking for an ideal warm-up, or a way to progress some of your foundational exercises like deadlifts, you have to look no further.
The Half Kneeling Around the World is a progression of the Tall Kneeling due to the less stable base your body creates. The goal is to still prevent any motion of the lower body or trunk as the Ultimate Sandbag moves SLOWLY around the body!
Both Crossover Deadlfits and Tall Kneeling and Half Kneeling Around the Worlds will help tremendously in both building better flexibility/mobility, as well as strong core stability. Try these two DVRT Ultimate Sandbag Training drills and see if you can find where your weaknesses lie and how much more of your fitness potential you still possess!
DVRT Crossover Deadlift is an amazing drill to make you move and perform at all new levels!
The Crossover Deadlift may be the MOST important type of deadlift exercise you could perform. If you do it right there is so much about how the body does and does not move that you can learn. You load the glute medium which is actually extremely important in preventing and helping low back pain while improving stability of the pelvis. Check it out!
If you have pain, please clear with your doctor first, but slowly add in these drills with focus on both lighter loads, slower movements, and perfect execution!
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