90% of herniated disk can heal without surgery. But how can you make sure that you're doing the
right thing to be in that 90%? Well, we know that there's something about exercise that can
help out tremendously, but you need to be doing the right exercise, because the wrong exercise
can actually make a herniated disc problem worse. In this video, I'm going to explain three quick
exercises to begin to heal disc herniations. Without Surgery to notice I said begin to heal
because it is a process to heal a herniated disc, and it can take months even more than
a year to go through that process. But these exercises are where you can start right now.
I'll be explaining each exercise and you can know why they're so important because knowing the why
is important so that you can take control of your disc problem, so that you're not having to rely
on somebody else to do something for you. I go in depth about an imbalance in my other video, that's
disc herniations, everything you need to know. But to overview it really, really quick. If you
think about the muscles that are on the backside of the lower back here they go on the back of the
spine, those muscles are designed to produce extension or leaning backwards like this side
bending, which is bending sideways, and then twisting a rotation, those muscles are in a
position to put a lot of compression. And when they twist the spine too much, they
can really mess up the discs here in the spine. The muscles that oppose these back muscles and
can bring balance to the forces of your spine or the abdominal muscles, those abdominal muscles run
from the ribcage here in the front, all this space on the rim of the of these bones here and they
do send tendons into the back. And when you have enough abdominal muscle support, it allows those
back muscles to relax and not have to work so much so that you can get stability in your spine.
So getting abdominal strength is critical. All these exercises are going to be focused on your
abdominals. The first exercise is an abdominal activation exercise. Now all you're doing the
only point is going to seem kind of ridiculous. All you've got to do on this is learn how to use
your abdominals correctly. With a tilt a posterior pelvic tilt is what we call it or a pelvis tilt.
Now let me just hang on this point for a while you've got to make sure that you know
this movement otherwise you won't be successful in any abdominal exercise you do, because a lot
of people with back problems like herniated discs, know that abdominal exercises help.
But if you don't do it with a proper abdominal activation, like I'm going to show you here next,
then any abdominal exercise you do is going to be flawed moving forward and you're potentially
going to hurt your back because you'll inadvertently not use your abdominals right
and start to use your back muscles too much. So you've got to master this exercise here.
Otherwise, don't go on, don't go on at all. And you're not going to it's not going to be
quick for you. But for some people, they already have an idea of how to do this and
it'll be quick going through this and you'll be moving on to the next exercise. So watch me,
you're going to be lying down on your back with your knees bent just like this.
And then you're going to put a hand under your low back. And all you've got to do is
push your back against your hand like you're smashing the hand that's under your back,
you're going to tip your pelvis backwards. That's what a posterior pelvic tilt is called. When you
tilt your pelvis backwards. It's going to make your abdominals tighten up here on the front.
Now a key distinction that I want you to make is your upper abdominals are above your belly
button and your lower abdominals are below your belly button. When you flatten out your
back and tip your pelvis. You should feel like your lower abdominals are
working more than your upper abdominals. upper abdominals are going to work too.
But what you don't want to feel is the upper abdominals, doing all the work,
it should feel like your lower abdominals are working a bit more than your upper abdominals.
That is the key point that you need to master. And you might also feel your butt muscles working,
that's fine, that's actually encouraged. But it's not the focus at this point,
you need to make sure that you feel your lower abdominals working. Once you figure out how to
do this motion, you might need to play with it, you might need to rock your hips back
and forth and kind of get your muscles to work. And you might need to hold it a few
times. Do a 10 second hold each time you do it. That will get your abdominals to work properly,
right in here. And if you just can't do this, I have patients that take several weeks, maybe
even a month or more in some cases in the past to get them to fire their abdominals correctly. And
I won't move on into any other exercises that are more challenging, even if they've had a exercise
history and they did all this complicated exercise because all those exercises are
going to be done using the wrong muscles and it's going to feed into their back problem.
So you have got to tip your pelvis backwards like this, get your butt muscles to fire a little bit,
squeeze your abs in the lower abdominals below your belly button and just hold it for 10 seconds,
try to relax your leg muscles, except the butt muscles are fine to work. But after 10 seconds,
you can relax and work on smashing your lower back in. That's another way to do it. smashed
your lower back down against the floor here. If you have gotten this motion down. Now
what I want you to do is practice it in other positions. So sit on up like I am, and practice
doing it right here. Now watch what I'm doing. I'm actually slouching in my back. I'll do it
from the chair when I do this motion. And that's okay, because I'm using my abdominals correctly.
And even though I'm slouching on my lower back, it feels good on people that have herniated disc.
And it's actually just fine for them. Once you've mastered doing it in sitting, and you can
accomplish it there then practicing and standing to. So when you stand up, it looks like this,
you're just pushing this part of your back that way as if you're doing it when you're lying down
and hold it there, your butt muscles might work, you're kind of shoving your hips forward a bit in
sucking in those lower abdominals below the belly button, my belly buttons right here.
So I want to feel it right below there, tighten up a bit. Now once you have figured that out,
you can move on to the next exercise. But if you have not figured out, this is not going to
be quick, you need to stop the video right here. And go back and practice this over and over again.
And as long as it takes, if you don't get this down, what's going to happen is you're going to
make your back problem worse, you're going to end up with back arthritis, or worse herniated
disk or multiple herniated discs in your spine. This movement is just foundational to any other
exercise that you're going to do if you're going to heal your herniated disc and heal from other
back problems naturally without surgery. And even if you do have to have surgery, if you
don't master this motion, you're going to have a failed surgery, it's going to come back again,
I see that all the time, I've seen so many people that have had multiple disc surgeries.
And once we fix this problem by getting your abs to work properly with the pelvic tilt, then things
improved tremendously. Right now, if you've gotten that tilt down, you can strengthen those abdominal
muscles like this. Get on your back, do your tilt motion, get those little abdominals working,
then reach your hands out towards your knees, like you're trying to touch your kneecaps.
Then bring your chin to your chest, make a double chin and bring your shoulders up,
keep smashing your back down. Your butt muscles might work. But try you might you may,
you may touch your knees, you may not depends on how long your arms and your legs are,
and hold it right there for 10 seconds. And think about pressing that back down against the table.
Because when you do that, it makes your lower abdominals work even harder. And usually,
once you're doing this correctly, people feel the sensation of ooh,
I feel it in my lower abs, I absolutely feel those muscles working. If you don't have that sensation,
there's something not happening right, you need to do this a little bit better.
Even in people that are very fit and strong. They still because we're isolating the muscle
out this way they still feel at work quite a bit. So just to go through it again, here
you're pushing your back flat, coming up, push the backside even more, try to reach the knees,
you don't want to come up more because it gets easier actually, if you come up.
In some cases, you just messes things up, you want to find the point where you feel your abs working
and hanging out there for 10 seconds. Now normally tell people do this 10
reps at a time. So if you're going to do this today, right now, you're going to lie there,
hold up for 10 seconds. And then after 10 seconds come down and that's one rep then repeat it.
That's two reps after you've held for 10 seconds again and go 10 times. And that's
one round. And then you're going to do this every hour throughout the day until you get
100 reps. This will strengthen your abdominals a lower abdominals very, very well and begin to
take that pressure off your herniated disc. But you have to have mastered that first
exercise that I told you about where you're just activating your abs properly. Now, if you can't
get up to 100 reps right away, that's fine. Start with 10 for the day, and you might even need to do
one at a time every hour. It's important that you spread it out throughout the day though,
because you activate your abs and you get some pressure taken off your abdominals.
And then you'll maintain that for a little while before your abs kind of shut down again, then
the pressures back on your disk. But if you do it again in an hour, then you take off the pressure
again, so it's important to spread it out. Now once you've gotten good at doing 10 reps
throughout the day, then you can begin to do all the reps together and work up towards doing 100
reps, but you should have already spent some time doing them around the clock while you're awake,
of course, so that you can get that pressure off your disk and get it to flare down.
The third exercise, it's kind of an exercise. And it's kind of not,
I like to call it an exercise. It's functional abdominal training. Now,
all this means is you should have already mastered getting your abs to recruit or to
turn on to tighten when you want them to, and I'm talking about the lower abs. If you can do that.
Now you've got to practice that while you're doing everyday things. While you're sitting while you're
standing in while you're walking. If you're lying down to relax to you know, go to sleep, take a
nap, just chill out and watch YouTube television at the end of the day, don't worry about firing
your abs because chances are your back should be supported decently well shouldn't be a problem.
But if you're upright, and your backs not really being supported, or even if it is kind
of supported against a backrest, you should be sucking in your abs a little bit. If you
think about doing that same motion where you're sucking in your pelvis, or tipping your pelvis
and second year abs, you're doing the same idea but to a smaller intensity, like 10%, maybe 20%
at baseline like if you're just sitting around. So right now, I'm just chilling here talking to
you, I'm doing that same abdominal maneuver at 10 15%. Now, as you do more intense activities, like
if I get up to go walk, I need to bump up that percentage to maybe 30 or 40%. Now if I'm walking
while carrying something heavy, then I need to be up at like 60 or 70% or more, this should be
in proportion to the activity that you're doing. So I'm going to walk fast, maybe not even holding
anything, then I do need to walk with my ABS brakes a little bit tighter. Now what that does,
when you brace your abs, it keeps your spine from twisting too much. Because those abdominal
muscles, the way the muscles fibers attached to your spine and flow through your body,
they keep your spine from rotating too much which protects your discs, chances
are you have not been using your abs correctly. And so you've been over twisting your spine in
all the regular things you do walking around the store, doing chores at home, getting in
and out of chairs this way. And you just have been relying on using your disk to limit the motion in
your spine. And that's why it's become herniated. So doing these three things here, you're taking
the pressure off in more than one way, by just learning how to recruit the muscles properly,
you're set up to do the next two things. That one where I was lying down and coming
up and holding for 10 seconds. That one's kind of intense. That's a strengthening exercise,
it's very important to get the muscles to get stronger than doing this functional thing that
I'm telling you the functional abdominal training. That's a coordination exercise,
which is training you to use your abdominals now in everyday things because that's key.
If you can go through your normal day and use your abdominals to take pressure off your discs,
then now you can decompress your discs, all the time doing just normal things. And you
don't necessarily have to pursue a bunch of extra exercises or stretching. Now, this is
still basic. And there's a lot more to go into. In order to build the integrity of your discs,
make sure that they're very healthy so that you can do more advanced activities. But these three
things are the basic level to start at to make sure that you're healing your disk properly. Now
the next steps in the process involves getting stronger, potentially even lifting weights,
there's a right way to lift weights. And you know, this is kind of controversial.
There are some healthcare professionals out there that say if you have a herniated disk,
you should not be lifting any weights where it loads your spine. But you have to for just normal
everyday things. What if you're a parent, you pick up a child, how are you going to clean your house,
how are you going to do the laundry, a heavy basket of laundry is some considerable weight.
Sometimes, there's so many things that you need to be able to do normally, but you need your disk
to go along into that activity. So you need your abdominals to be able to support your disk. Hey,
if you're looking for more help with herniated discs, I've got a playlist in the description
below. Just hit that See More button and find the herniated disc help playlist.
And then even further down from there is a program called the 28 day back health and
wellness boost program. And that's a paid program that's designed to take you through the entire
process of strengthening your core fixing the root problem to depressurize your herniated disc.
I hope this video was helpful for you please share it with somebody that needs to start
these exercises and get that pressure off their disk so they can heal for the
long term without surgery. Thanks so much for watching. Don't forget to give us a thumbs up
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