Recurring Back Pain

Do you have recurring back pain after your favourite activities, whether that’s being on a surf board or playing sport? If you’ve got recurring back pain, the condition of your glutes may be your problem.

I am Brigid from Move to Nurture Pilates and I love helping people solve their regular back pain. The thing about recurring back pain is it can turn into chronic episodes of back pain that can lay you out for a week or more. What starts as a dull ache after you’ve been active can leave your back vulnerable over time.

Strong glutes:

If your glutes are strong and functional, they will support your lower back by engaging and holding your sacroiliac iliac joint in a good position and provide support for your lower back, essential to avoid recurring back pain.

Fitness Mindset

Alright, you think, ‘I’ve got to go to the gym and strengthen my glutes’. So you do heaps of Clams. You lie on your side and  go until the muscle starts to burn, you get a little bit tired and collapse a little and keep going for that last set and keep going until your glute is on fire! That’s good right?

Then you go hard at your squat set. At the bottom of each squat you uck your pelvis because your glutes are a bit short and tight. So each time you squat your pelvis tucks and your lower back opens. Each time you squat you put more pressure on your lower back.  And you’re not really targeting your glutes  because your pelvis tucks at the bottom of each squat your glutes don’t get to work particularly well.  So you still have recurring back pain.

Move to Nurture approach

Clams

What if we take a different approach and we look to be very mindful of our pelvic position, when we’re doing our clams then we can get a much better result.

So if I’m on my side, I want to lift my lower ribs off the mat a little bit or at least have the sense that there’s a little lift happening because I want to lengthen my spine.

The other way of finding this is to reach your top foot away from you. And you find your ribs kind of lift off the ground naturally. You get this lovely length in the waist. The top hip travels away.

You want to hold that position for your clams so the spine stays nice and long, ribs lifted from the floor as you work and this will definitely fire off your core.

You want to keep your spine neutral, it’s not moving around. It’s not collapsing.

Then you can start to feel this work back in the back of the hip.

If your top hip is rolling back every time you do your clam, you are opening your back and not doing much for your glutes.

You want to keep your top hip stacked on top of the bottom hip.

Sometimes you can put your hand on the front of your hip point and push into it. And you’re just moving your knee up and down to the point where you can keep your pelvis stable.

If you go too far and you have to roll your hip back. You’re not doing your glutes  or your lower back any favors.

Now I don’t want to over do the clams!

The other thing that’s great to do is then keep that long position through the spine is then reverse the exercise to lift your foot.

Now you’re working the internal rotation of the thigh bone. You are working the glute and lengthening it at the same time and that is gold!

More ways to lengthen and strengthen: Squats

I want to give you some ideas for squats that are going to lengthen you glute max as well as strengthen her.

You can easily do this on the front of your kitchen counter, hold onto the lip of your sink.

Straighten your arms and  hang back, bend your knees a little so the back of you ribs are in line with the back of your hips. As though you are doing a mini wall sit against a wall.

Keep that alignment as you come down into your squat. So you’re you’re fairly neutral through the spine again, and your tailbone is neutral so you’re not tucking your pelvis.

When we come down, we want to keep the spine neutral and the pelvis neutral and that keeps our low back happy.

Then we press up. From there we use the glute max to push up, keeping the ribs over the hips.

We keep the pelvis neutral as we come down. With this alignment you’ll get much more length in the glute.

As you’re working on these glutes you’re not tucking the pelvis under and opening the back while you’re doing squats.

Hip extension

The other thing I want to show you for reducing back pain with good glute activation is the importance of hip extension.

I’m going to show you this in a standing position  but you can do this lying on your side or lying on your tummy.

Hip extension is when your thigh comes back behind your pelvis.

To take a step forward our front leg moves into hip extension every time our other leg swings forward.

What we want when the thigh swings back, we want that glute max to switch on to protect the lower back.

If my glute max is not working, as I move my thigh back, my pelvis tips forward with the top of my thigh bone, that crunches my back.

So we keep the hips square to the front. We straighten the back leg and lift, it is only a little lift because it’s enough to gets the glute max working nicely, with no change to the position of the spine. Stay square to the front. minimal movement through the lower back.

Alignment is everything

If you suffer from lower back pain, do give these moves a try and I would love to hear how they go for you.

You shouldn’t feel any low back pain when you’re doing these movements. And if you do, it’s a sign that you haven’t got that correct alignment.

So listen to your body reset. You can do small sets, especially if by the end of a long set you have lost your alignment. Just do small sets if that’s the case.

Learning to maintain the alignment of your pelvis while your legs are moving, in clams or squats or hip extension, is essential for minimising pressure on and damage to your lower back.

Do have a try at these and let me know how they feel for you.