We’re talking about low back pain today and using isometrics to solve, some problems. Now, the reasons came up, we just had our No More Mindless Mobility Class and I was talking to one of our coaches and he said, Hey, love using isometrics for pain from your isometrics module, but I am curious what to do specifically for low back pain.
He said a lot of clients come in and they have pain in flexion or they have pain in extension. And he said, it’s kind of hard to figure out how to use isometrics for that. So here was the explanation I gave him based on a lot of experience and research. I said, the number one thing that we need to do, um, Is we need to get lateral flexion, which is a side bend back into the body, because what we almost always see with low back pain, neck pain, any kind of spinal pain is that there is a loss of lateral flexion as one of the primary movement problems.
So how do we set this up? How do we focus on low back pain? Well, pretty easy. I’ve got a strap here. It’s just going to run horizontally, or I can even put it up on one of my higher hooks here, depending on your comfort level. If you do not have a strap or a rope available, you can also use a doorway.
Basically, you just need something that you can lean into that’s going to give you some resistance. Now, if someone has low back pain, Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to test them first. So I have them bend forward, bend back, rotate right and left, tilt side to side. And I’m going to look for the greatest level of restriction.
But as I said, nine times out of 10, what you’re going to find is that they have a loss of clean lateral flexion movement in one direction or both. So to use the isometric protocols that we’ve talked about, if you don’t know anything about isometrics or pain, go back and watch about 5, 000 other blogs we have on it, but the idea is that we’re going to get in position.
We’re going to do a very, very small isometric contraction, which means there’s basically no movement happening. So right now my knees are slightly bent. My pelvis is in a neutral position. I’m trying to be nice and tall and I’m going to now try to bend my body to the left. but I’m against a strap. So there’s very little motion happening.
If I’m doing this correctly, I will tend to feel more weight on the side on the leg opposite the side I’m bending. And I should feel motor activity or muscles working hard on the side that I’m pushing into. Now, when I begin pushing, I’m going to try to get that pressure. and hold it for three to five minutes, which means that I’m not doing a hundred percent contraction.
I’m around 30 percent or even less of what I feel like would be a 10 out of 10 for me. So I’m here, okay, that would be about it. three out of 10 and I’m just going to hold. All right. And I’m going to stay here. Now, if people are in pain, they may not be able to go three minutes. So if you’re a coach, you can do 30 seconds, give them a break, another 30 seconds, whatever, but you want to accumulate some time.
Now after that, you can slowly come out of it and relax. And then you have them go back and recheck all those ranges of motion carefully. The trainer that asked me about this, it was funny cause he texted me about a week after the course. And he said, it was weird. He goes, I had patients with, uh, our clients with low back pain.
I tested them. We did this lateral bending. He’s like, it turned into something from the exorcist. They had so much more range of motion and they were pain free. And I’m like, yeah, that’s typically how it works. Because again, loss of lateral bending is one of the predominant things that we see. Now I’m going to give you a little bit more detail here because most of the people that watch us are movement coaches, we are brain based practitioners in Z-Health. So what you want to pay attention to as a coach or a very interested client, you want to watch them from the side, because what will often happen is as they begin contracting, you will see their pelvis or their trunk either been forward.
So we’ll do a posterior pelvic tilt or they’ll flex the lumbar spine, or they will do a anterior tilt or extend the lumbar spine. So basically if I’m here, they would be doing either as they begin tilting, they’ll do a posterior tilt. Or an anterior tilt or a lumbar flexion or lumbar extension. You want to notice that and correct it because what that tells you is that they are moving into a direction, with a given kind of motor pattern that may be less efficient for them.
So we want to emphasize as much as possible for this isometric, a very pure lateral flexion that can make all the difference, not only in getting them out of pain, but also making them better movers over time, utilizing the same exact muscles. process. If you are new to Z-Health, we are a brain based practitioners company, education company.
We work with doctors and coaches and therapists from around the world. And obviously we have a hundred plus thousand people here on YouTube who just watch us to go, Hey, my back hurts. What do I do? So regardless, if you’re interested in really precise application, how to blend neuroscience with biomechanics, this is what we do.
It’s what we’ve been doing for almost. 30 years now, uh, we have a lot of free resources online. You can check it out. Uh, so subscribe to the channel. It’s about 550, 580 videos here. It’s a lot of information you can find out to see if what we offer professionally is something you’d be interested in. You can always reach out to us as well.
All right. Have a great week and make sure you get your people bending to the side.
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