Back Health & Exercise Course

Core Activities: Lesson 1 

Hello and welcome to the first lesson "Core Activities" of your Back Health & Exercise Course.  If you haven't read the Course Overview please go here first so you understand the way the course is designed.

This course is designed to help you understand how to stop your siatica and back pain and build yourself a strong, healthy back.   Along the way, hopefully you'll expand your understanding of your back and how it all works. This way you'll get to see what an amazing mechanism it is and appreciate how you can look after it.

Disclaimer:
As always, make sure you read the disclaimer before attempting any of the exercises described in this course and elsewhere in the site.

The Exercises

The first part of the course - Lessons 1-6 - cover back basics and some gentle (but still effective) exercises. (Exercises start in Lesson 2)

The later part of the course from Lesson 7 onwards involves more challenging exercises such as Yoga and Pilates.

Back Basics:

(Note: if think you already know this stuff, hop to the key points below)

More than 80% of us will experience back pain at some point in our lives. In fact, your back might be hurting today in which case I hope this course helps you.

The factors that increase the risks of you experiencing back pain, or sciatica, include common conditions such as:

• Sitting or driving for too long, especially with an incorrect posture, without breaking for a stretch or a walk
• Repeating incorrect movement patterns over and over
• Ignoring your age and capabilities e.g. if you're like my husband, insisting on playing sport way past your use by date.
• Being overweight
• Smoking
• Heavy lifting

Now, many people believe that most back pain is caused by a slipped disc, but in fact less than 5% of lower back pain results from slipped discs. (A slipped disc refers to a disc that has either ruptured, or moved out of the correct position in your spine.)

Some back pain is caused by the disruption caused by an injured or inflamed disc. Discs can be injured "just enough" to cause you sever pain and disconfort, yet paradoxically not be injured enough to show up on any normal medical diagnostic procedures. Furthermore, discs have a poor blood supply like other ligaments and cartilage, so they often take a long time to heal.

I speak from personal experience here. I had to endure nearly 3 months of severe pack pain and disability, yet during thi swhole time, despite X rays and visits to specialists, nothing specifically wrong with my back was ever diagnosed.

Eventually - and after some valuable lessons along the way- my back healed by itself.

Because of the sensitive nature of your back and surrounding muscle, ligaments and nerves (all designed to protect your back's role as a critical organ in the body), commonly back pain is caused by the muscles in your spine "seizing up", or going into spasm and putting pressure on the surrounding tissues and nerves in protection of an injured disc. It's this pressure and tension that causes most back pain.

Why do they do this? It's an automatic, protective mechanism that is triggered when your nervous system detects what it thinks is a threat to your back or spine.

E.g. the moment you say "I'll show them I've still got the moves", your back might say "Oh no you don't - I'll show you". And before you know it you're bent over double, making noises like alligators mating.

The "seizing up" is really your back bracing itself against what it thinks is a threat of injury, or to protect an existing weakness or injury.

What's In Your Spine?

Your spine is a column of 26 bones that extend in a line from the base of your skull to your pelvis. Twenty-four of these bones are called vertebrae. These link to each other and are cushioned by shock-absorbing disks that lie between them.   Your vertebral column provides the main support for your upper body. It enables you to stand upright, bend and twist, and it protects your spinal cord from injury. Think of your spinal cord as the main transmission and distribution mechanism for your nervous system.

Your spine and vertebrae are organized as follows:

• Neck - 7 cervical vertebrae
• Chest - 12 thoracic vertebrae at the back wall of your chest;
• Lower back - 5 lumbar vertebrae at the inward curve of your lower back; 
• The sacrum - 1 bone that is composed of 5 fused vertebrae between your hip bones;
• The coccyx or tailbone - 1 bone composed of 3 to 5 fused bones at the lower tip of your vertebral column.
• Between each vertebra there is a disk. These are pads of cartilage filled with a gel-like substance, which act as shock absorbers. In addition, nerves leave and join your spinal cord through 2 openings in each vertebra.

Now the tendency is for us to take our backs for granted until the moment when we get back pain, then we think "what's gone wrong with my back".

Try looking at things differently.

Stop and think for a moment about the complexity of what your back does, the stresses and strains that it has to cope with every single day.

It's amazing that it works as well as it does most of the time. All the other joints in your body have a simple job compared with what your back has to do. And of course, when your back does go wrong, you really feel it, because it's so central to your body.

So, it's worth repeating, the point is to realize that moment by moment, through each day, you have a choice about how you treat your back. Most often it's the combination of lots of little things that can make all the difference to your back and not "one big thing."

Many people say "I did so and so and my back just went out!"  However, it's rarely "just one thing" that puts your back out (unless it's a major accident or fall). It's usually the build up of lots of little things over a long period of time and finally your back goes "out"!

It's important to understand that usually your back likes and wants the right type of movement (this applies almost all of the time, but not if you have recently injured your back Also, as usual check the wellbeing comments below before you do any exercises).

It certainly doesn't like being locked in the same position for hours and hours on end e.g. slumped in front of the TV like Homer, or hunched over a desk, or a steering wheel.

Key Points To Remember:

A key point to understand is that for most people back problems come from patterns of behaviour that weaken the back over time. It's not usually just one event that causes your back to "go out", such as lifting the shopping out of the trunk, despite what you might think.

Obviously injuries and accidents such as car crashes are an exception to this.

Typically it's a build up over time of "small things" that steadily irritate and weaken your back (and of course ageing plays its part too). Then one day a seemingly routine action sends it over the edge and it "goes out", or freezes and goes into spasm.

So there are simple but important things you can do to help yourself.

1. Change your existing behaviour and movement patterns

These are probably contributing to your back pain. Change these patterns to reduce the number of times your back pain recurs.

• This could be as simple as getting up from your desk or workbench every 20 minutes and walking around for 30 seconds.
• If you drive long distances, stop your vehicle once an hour, get out and walk around it once then carry on with your trip.
• The same with flying long distance, get out of your seat every hour or so and walk up and down the plane.
• If you stand at work for long periods, seek regular sitting breaks i.e. the reverse of sitting at a desk for long periods.

Basically, just give your back a "break" and a vary your movements. In fact, if you listen closely enough, you'll learn to hear your back say "Hey Buddy, give me a break!".

These breaks mean your back is much less likely to get locked into a painful pattern.

2. Follow an exercise routine that strengthens and "reprograms" the supporting muscles in and around your back to behave differently.

There is a range of exercises described in this course starting in Lesson 2 (the course includes videos also).

Note: Whenever we suggest exercise we always ask you to read our disclaimer first.

The material in this site and this course is all collected together in the The Better Back System.

The Book (in e-book format) describes a whole set of different exercises and routine plan you can follow to strengthen your back. uses a set of unique exercises to loosen and strengthen your back. The results can be amazingly good in a very short period of time. The exercises stop back pain for more than 97% of people who use them.

Let's end this lesson with some good news:

Fewer than one person in a thousand who experience back pain will need surgery. In the next lesson we'll talk more about how your back works and some simple things you can to look after it.

best wishes

Rita & Chris