So, this video is all about back pain. More importantly, the truth about back pain. Because
look, whether or not you bent over to, let's say, tie a shoe and you got a stabbing pain in
your back that makes it hard for you to stand up, or maybe you even just woke up feeling that way
and you really can't move. You can't bend forward to brush your teeth because you don't know if you
get back up. Or you can't put on a sock because even when you just lift one left off the ground,
it feels like you're not going to be able to get back up. Guys, back pain is an extremely common
thing that happens to all of us. Up to 90% of us will have back pain at some point. But what you
do about it is where the problems lie. Because the truth of back pain is the advice that you're
being given is usually directly opposed to the advice that you actually should be following. And
that means instead of resting your way through your back pain, you need to be working your way
through back pain. So what I did in this video is I put together a series of exercises in a specific
progression. So I'll show you what you can start doing right now, even when it's hurting the most,
and where you can get yourself to, to make sure that this pain never comes back again. Now before
I jump into the exercises, guys, as a responsible physical therapist I'm going to tell you this:
there's a big difference between nerve related discogenic type pain that goes down your legs and
muscular pain. The good news is, that 80% to 90% of the time it is muscular related pain. In which
case everything I show you here is going to be exactly what you need to do. In the rare instance
that it is a disc related issue, I will tell you something more encouraging. 90% of those issues
are not operated on. And all of those issues, whether or not you're going in for surgery and
you come out or whether you never have it, but you still need to treat a disc related injury,
are still going to revolve around exercise. Rest is never going to be the answer. Exercise is
always going to be. And one more helpful thing that I want to make sure that I point out is if
you're right now in acute pain, meaning you could hardly move and that's why you're on this video,
I want you to do one thing for me: watch this video. I did this before on this channel and it
has helped millions of people to get rid of back pain right away. It is, again,
targeted at muscles specifically in your low back, give it a try first, because it's going
to help you to get yourself ready to do everything else here I'm going to show you now. All right, so
the first exercise we're all going to do here is a simple bar hang. But I want to point out
something very important here, and that though the location of your pain might be your low back, the
source is almost never the low back. Because we realize that the body is a kinetic chain, passing
forces up and down through the good old low back, or in this case, the poor old low back. We know
that things like the hamstrings and the glutes are going to feed into this area, and we know that the
mid-thoracic area is going to feed down. So you've got to be cognizant of what's going on everywhere.
But this exercise happens to help us to do a couple things. Number one: you can see that my
feet are in contact with the ground. I'm trying to just get a decompression of that area that right
now feels like crap. Okay, and the good thing is if my feet stay on the ground, I'm going to allow
myself to relax. These muscles in the low back are going to actually release and give you some
temporary relief without any additional stresses placed upon them in their most acute, painful
stage right now. If it's joint related, again, you're going to have the opportunity to decompress
those joints just a little bit to provide you with relief. All I'm looking for here is about
60 seconds of a hold, two or three times a day, to start chasing some of that temporary relief to
start building upon now in these next exercises. And so remember I said that prolonged rest was
the worst thing that you could do for back pain. The reason is that the long term cause of what's
going on here is almost always weakness. So if you're going to rest, you're not progressing,
and the enemy of progress is stagnation. And in the case of back pain, the enemy of back pain
is prolonged rest. We need to get moving and we're going to start right now early with this exercise.
It's just a seated row. And there's a few benefits that make this really easy to do at this point in
the game really early on when you still have your problems. Number one: we're sitting down. So we
take away all those stressed that I talked about when you're in your standing position. Number two:
we're able to do this either at home with a band or at the gym with a cable. But we don't load
ourselves up that much here. It doesn't matter how much we're using it's the positioning that
we're benefiting from. Because you can see right here at the bottom, we're getting a good stretch
of the lumbar paraspinals, right? Those muscles right there that run up and down like cables.
The ones that tend to get tight and painful when we have low back pain. But beyond that, what are
we doing from the top down? You can see that we're actually getting good work here of the muscles of
the lats in of the thoracic region that's going to help in two ways. If we can get better extension
through our upper back, then that will allow our low back to functional more normally. The spine
is one connected unit. You got to start moving, right? Moving, not resting, moving to get these
things to start moving the way they're supposed to move. This is the first exercise I want you to
do. All right, so the next exercise is called the reverse hyper. What's happening here that's a step
up from where you just were is that now we got to involve those glutes. Ultimately, your key to
long term freedom from back pain ever happening again is going to be strengthening the glutes,
working that kinetic chain from the bottom up. And you can see that all you have to do is support
yourself on the edge of either a bed or a bench and the key is getting above parallel. Right,
because we want to make sure that the glutes are driving hip extension, getting your hips up past
parallel to the ground. And to insure that, we got to lift them as high as we possibly can. Now how
does this work the low back? Well, it's feeding into the low back, but it's driving the movement
from the glutes up here. So we're going to use this first as a transition to the next exercise,
which is actually going to start driving the same thing, but from the top down. Realizing that the
focus on the low back first is going to be a little bit more intense. So for you to start,
I want to make sure that you're learning how to drive through the glutes first and then into the
low back. And so you've worked out reverse hyper, and now you're looking for that next
exercise up in the progression. Right, and what we do is we do another version of hyperextension,
but this time we drive it from the top down. Or at least it looks like we're driving it from
the top down. But always when we do any of these extension movements, guys, we are still driving
it from the glutes. You can see that I'm going to contract here first and stabilize so I can support
the low back and then I pull up and lift up with the upper body. But what's more important about
this progression is we're still off of our feet, which allows us to do this at an earlier stage,
only four steps in at this point. But what's more important is we're involving more muscles, right,
we're getting the lats now to be a little bit more engaged by having a little additional weight in
our hands. Not to mention this additional weight is going to allow the low back to get stronger,
progressively overloading those weak muscles in a synchronization that is important for its
ultimate function. And, more importantly, to having you never have to experience this low
back pain again. All right, so by this point now your back is probably feeling better,
but where do we take it from there? Because remember it's not just about feeling okay,
or not painful, it's about feeling strong and to make sure this never returns again. So we got to
get on our feet. I mentioned the last time when we get on our feet here, that's when things start
to get serious because we activate that kinetic chain. The forces that start all the way down
here at our feet are going to be transferred all the way up through those hips and to the low back,
and I got to make sure that your back is able to handle it. This pull through exercise is where we
like to start. And the key here is this, not only is it reinforcing and teaching you how
to properly hinge for good hip mechanics that feed low back mechanics, but more importantly,
it's getting those hamstrings, glutes, and low back to work together, as you can see here, in
one shot. Glutes, hamstrings, low back, all firing at the right time and the right sequence and able
to handle heavier loads because this exercise provides us the opportunity to do that. All
right, so now you're feeling good about the pull through, you don't have the same pain in your back
anymore, you're getting stronger, but where do you go from there? Remember, the truth about your back
pain was that it wasn't coming from structural issues. But more importantly, likely coming from
weakness up and down that kinetic chain, then the strength of that kinetic chain is going to be your
salvation. And this exercise is one you probably didn't see in the future if you were someone
that's been dealing with back pain for a while, and it's the dead lift. It's probably got a bad
rap. It's actually the exercise you need to do if you have a bad back, but done after you've built
that foundation and that base up. Because what it does is it reinforces the same thing we've just
been working on here through the pull through. Right, it's letting the glutes be the main driver
of hip extension. Feeding that kinetic chain, and more importantly, the low back muscles from the
ground up. At the same time, you can see that at the top here, it's not just all about the lower
half, right? It's all about the ability of all the muscles of your back to contribute to what's
ultimately happening here and being borne by the low back, right? Working that kinetic chain from
the top down and working it from the bottom up. The fact is because you can overload this exercise
to the next level and reinforce all the things we were working towards. It's the perfect next
step for you to get over this back pain and to build the strength necessary to make sure it never
comes back again. Finally, last but not least, we have the barbell row. And you might be thinking,
Why is this above a deadlift? How is this more difficult or more demanding on your low back?
It's all about the positioning of your body. And we've been talking about how important it is to
support your low back first and foremost with your glutes. And what the glutes are doing here
is while they are contributing, they're really contributing in a more isometric way. They're
not driving this movement. You can see that they are getting in position there and staying locked
in that position. Not to mention the fact that what that does is it shifts the demands onto
the low back more significantly to hold and lock yourself into place. Anybody that's ever done this
exercise knows that you have to have a good strong back to maintain the proper posture. Thirdly,
because of where we carry this load when we lift it, it's a little bit further out in front of
our body than it would be tucked tight against our body in a dead lift. So that increases the
demands on your low back. For all these reasons, guys, it's not something you should avoid,
it's just something that you should save until you have the strength necessary to be able to do this
right. So there you have it, guys, remember the truth about back pain is that in most instances,
we're talking about weakness in the muscles of your back up and down that kinetic chain.
It's time to do something about it. And by doing something about it, it doesn't mean resting more,
it means actually getting into action and doing something in a sequential way that makes sense
and builds upon the foundation you're trying to build to make sure that there's no slip-ups
along the way. If you're looking for a program, guys, where we make sure that all of our exercises
are selected in a way to support the proper sequencing of them, they're all available over
at Athleanx.com. If you found the video helpful, leave your comments and thumbs up below. Let me
know what else you want me to cover. I'll do my best to do that for you on the days and weeks
ahead. And if you haven't done it already, guys, make sure you click subscribe and turn on your
notifications so you never miss a ne video when we put one out. All right, guys, see you soon.