Regularly stretching your tendons, ligaments, and muscles supporting the spine is crucial for a healthy pain-free back. Before setting off to doing these exercises to reduce back pain and neck pain, it is important that you consult a pain management doctor or physical therapist.
Stretching has several benefits including:
- Reducing the tension in the muscles supporting your spine. If unchecked, this tension can make worse the back pain and other back pain conditions.
- It helps improve your range of motion and mobility in general.
- There is a reduced risk of disabilities emanating from back pain.
In case your pain lasts longer than three months, you require weeks or months of stretching to deal with the pain successfully. You may include stretching as a part of your physical therapy program or do it at home daily in compliance with the doctor’s directions.
The Best Exercises to Reduce Back Pain
These exercises can be done anywhere and can make your core and back stronger to support the lower back. Specialists recommend these functional training exercises at least twice per week and about 30 minutes each session for lower back pain relief. Move through the routine and do each exercise 2 to 4 times as you pay close attention to your form.
1. Decompression Breathing
This technique will oxygenate your body as you lengthen it. Decompression breathing helps teach you how to breathe deeply as you keep the spine long. Begin by standing toes touching and heel slightly apart, then shift your weight into the heels while unlocking your knees. Proceed to pull the heels gently towards each other, reach your arms overhead and press the fingertips together. As you inhale, lift your ribcage from the hips and when exhaling, tighten your core to support your lengthened spine. Repeat this procedure till you feel tall.
2. Founder to Forward Fold
This exercise is designed to help build integrated core and back strength to support the spine better. It requires sticking out your booty and may put too much tension on your lower back. If that happens, try the modified founder instead. The goal of this exercise is to reinforce good movements patterns. These movements improve the spine motion ranges and strengthen the back muscles for an enhanced lower back support that will prevent injuries.
3. Adductor-Assisted Back Extension
This exercise efficiently isolates some of your deeper lower back muscles making them stronger. When you add some help from the inner thigh muscles, increasing the activation of the hamstrings, you can build stronger back muscles.
4. Eight-Point Plank
This plank with elbow and knee touching the ground may sound easy but is not. When you focus more abs in this exercise, you increase the spinal support reducing back pain. When repeated thrice daily for a few weeks or months, your back muscles will be stronger, and the back pain will be reduced or gone altogether.
5. Woodpecker
Doing this move will give strength to both your back and butt muscles. In case the full woodpecker is too strenuous for you, start with the modified one to build adequate strength to do the full one.
The Takeaway
Many studies have shown that regular core bracing and strengthening the back muscles, promotes long-term relief from lower back pain. Living a sedentary life has been shown to increase the risk of back pain, hence the need to do some of these exercises.
