2 practical steps to deal with your back pain

If you’ve been around my content for a while, you’ve heard me say it 1000 times. Don’t avoid moving your back. Get it moving to help it feel better because you’ll build up your spine’s strength and capacity.

But how do you practically do that when you’re afraid of doing something that might make things worse? This is the biggest fear I come across with new clients (and even longtime ones). Most people know that movement is generally good, but fear holds them back from doing exactly what would help them.

So how do you know when to push? How do you know when to back off and rest? Here’s a 2-step framework you can use.

#1 - Change your mindset

This has nothing to do with finding the perfect stretch or the right strengthening protocol, but it can affect your back pain prognosis just as much. I know, it's easier said than done to change your mind about anything, but if you go into something thinking it’ll hurt or that your spine is fragile and that you can’t build strength there, you’re going to have a hard time rehabbing your back pain.

While pain isn’t all in our heads, we are capable of “thinking” ourselves into worse pain and catastrophizing our situation, both of which make the entire rehab process harder unnecessarily.

Our mindset affects our behaviours. Our behaviours shape our outcomes.

#2 - Find your entry point in movement

Secondly, you need a system for moving that allows you to challenge yourself, without irritating the issue. In other words, finding your entry point with movement.

There are 3 key variables you can use to regress and progress the movement.

• Load

• Range of motion

• Tempo

Decreasing load is the simplest and most obvious way to make a movement tolerable. The next is to decrease your range of motion. Oftentimes, only a small part of the range of a movement is what’s painful, so you can portion it out as necessary. Tempo, or the speed at which you complete reps, is an underrated way to modify a movement.

When we slow things down, we not only get to focus more intently on technique, but we can turn an intolerable movement into a doable one.

You can mix and match as well as combine these variables as needed to find the right spot to build from.

You can just as easily speed things up, increase your range of motion, and increase load to progress movements, provided they’re relatively pain-free.

In the absence of pain, aim to leave 2-5 reps in the tank by the end of a set. You don’t need to go to complete failure to get benefit from an exercise, and this is an easy framework to find the sweet spot between challenge and fatigue management.

Remember, it’s okay to do things that are uncomfortable, not things that are painful. In other words, you don’t have to be completely free from discomfort during a movement.

To sum up:

1. Manage your mindset. Don’t expect to be hurt by movement, and don’t believe that your spine is fragile

2. Find the sweet spot between challenge and irritation by manipulating different training variables

Good luck and happy moving!

To your good health,

Coach Stephen

P.S.

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