Relieve Low Back Pain | Reduce Low Back Pain | Canada's Leading Authority in Human Movement | Dev Chengkalath

Doesn’t exist.

Because everybody is different and every body will respond differently to different treatment approaches.

But using the basic principles outlined in my post on the 3 most important steps to relieve low back pain will definitely give you a head start in solving your low back problems. 

Those principles are designed to take into consideration the root causes of your low back pain and not just mask the symptoms. 

Today, I just want to touch on an activity we do all the time yet take for granted. 

Sitting and Standing.

You do this when you wake up in the morning and roll out of bed.

You do this when you use the toilet.

If you eat breakfast, which you should be doing, there’s a good chance you sit then stand from the kitchen table.

If you drive or ride the bus or train to work, you more than likely sit then stand.

At your desk at work, sure enough, you sit and stand. Repeatedly.

Now if you are a low back pain sufferer, I can almost guarantee that you do this incorrectly.

Yes. You do.

I know…It hurts.

Sitting then standing seems like such a simple skill! I mean, after all these years of doing it, you should be a pro right?

Unfortunately, somewhere along the line, there’s a good change you picked up some pretty bad habits and developed a seemingly beneficial relationship with gravity.

I like to call this relationship the “plop”.  

Basically, this means you “plop” into you chair without any control; you let gravity do all the work and pull you into the chair. 

When’s the last time you thought about how you sit? Or how you stand from sitting?

If you spend a good part of your day sitting, you will end up inhibiting your buttocks, guaranteed.

When the glutes are turned off like that, it impacts how your pelvis functions, it impacts how your hips function and in the end, all of these changes will impact how your spine functions.

All these alterations in function affect the tissues up and down what we call the kinetic chain. This basically allows for a dysfunction in one part of the body to cause, through various compensations, dysfunction in another part of the body.

Think dominoes. You push one over and one by one, they all fall over in a chain reaction.

Now if your glutes don’t work properly, your low back has to pick up the slack.

Little muscles start doing the work of big muscles. Big muscles start doing the work of little muscles.

And some muscles just stop working altogether. 

Over the next few days I’ll be outlining some exercises you can add in to your daily routine to get your butt back in gear. 

As always, yours in movement.

Dev Chengkalath

In my experience as a physical therapist, a majority of my “bad back” clients hobble in the clinic door only when they’re in the midst of a disabling episode of low back pain.

And when I say hobble, I really do mean hobble. In many cases, they’ll be doubled up, limping and staggering with their faces contorted in agony. 

In fact, I’ve seen that pain grimace so many times I take it as their version of a friendly hello.

Friendly Hello!?

Sadly, this is usually a “typical” case of acute low back pain for them. By typical I mean a flare-up of their long-standing back issues. I’ve had clients come in with histories of low back pain spanning almost their whole lifetimes.

Some longer than I’ve been alive! 

Some caused by trauma such as falls or motor vehicle crashes. Others caused by sports or athletic related injuries.

But most often, these poor souls have just been mistreating their poor backs for way too long. 

Could you imagine 15, 20, 30 or more years of intermittent, chronic low back pain? 

What’s your magic number? How many days, weeks, months or years will you let it go on?

Two? Three? Four? Five? Ten? Twenty? More?

Leave a comment and let me know how long you’ve been suffering and what you’ve tried in the past. Let me know what’s worked and what hasn’t. 

Yours in health.

Dev Chengkalath

You’ve taken the first two steps.

You’re educated about your problem. You’re well versed in the causes of your low back pain. You have the knowledge bombs needed to make the right choices and decisions.

Cognitively, you are ready to go. 

You’re also aware of the control issues at stake. You know you have to get your motor control back under your control. You know you have to assess and fix your posture, you know you have to balance your muscle imbalances, you know you have to optimize your mobility and you know you have to improve your movement patterns and break those bad habits. 

So what’s left?

Getting fit. 

The many benefits of getting in shape.

This really means undoing all those years of de-conditioning that you may have heaped onto your body.

De-conditioned simply means you’re out of shape. 

Being in a state of de-conditioning makes it harder for your body to deal with the daily stresses that it must face. This can include simple activities such as climbing the stairs, changing positions, lifting things, walking and yes, even sitting. 

If you’re not in the kind of shape you should be in, chances are, you’re using poor posture, your muscular system is not working on all cylinders, you’re not as mobile as you should be, and most certainly you’re using faulty movement patterns through compensation or bad habit. 

In order to help you fix your de-conditioning and all the other causes of low back pain, I’m going to re-introduce you to GOYA therapy.   

I discussed GOYA therapy a while back, but I think it is fundamentally important, not only for relieving low back pain, but for any physical therapy intervention for almost every single type of injury or corrective exercise program. 

Apply the principles of GOYA therapy wisely and consistently and you’ll soon see fitness levels that will astound even yourself .

Yours in fitness.

Dev Chengkalath

Now that you’re educated about your problem, it’s time to take control of the situation. 

In the case of solving your low back pain issues, this means getting your motor control back.

Motor control issues encompass a broad spectrum of items that relate to how we move and how we interact with gravity and our environment. These include daily postures, our muscle function, our mobility and our overall movement patterns.

Motor Control at its finest

I like to split motor control issues into four sub-sections and will explore each one separately. Do keep in mind that each of these items interact with each other and should not be considered independent of the others.

Motor Control Issues:

1. Posture
2. Muscle Imbalances
3. Mobility Issues
4. Movement Patterning

In this post, I’ll just briefly highlight each of the above.

Posture: Posture is the combination of all the positions of all the different joints of the body at any given time. Faulty posture may put you into positions of stress while ideal postures may alleviate them.

Muscle Imbalances: This simply means that your muscles aren’t working properly. In most cases this relates to how your muscles deal with forces. If an imbalance exists in muscle function the end results is that they aren’t dealing with either creating or resisting forces properly.

Mobility Issues: Mobility is your body’s ability to move a joint under control. With mobility, three states of being exist: optimal, hypermobility, hypomobility. Optimal mobility means your joints can be controlled through any required range of motion. Hypermobility is when a joint moves too much (too much range of motion) without being under control. Hypomobility then becomes the opposite-when the joint doesn’t move enough to allow the required range of motion.

Movement Patterning: As humans we tend to move through the same patterns every day. If we’ve picked up some bad habits, this can put various tissues at risk of injury. Take for example a sit-to-stand. This movement is probably one of the most frequently performed functional tasks we do each day: think toilets, chairs, cars etc. Now imagine that you have a faulty pattern and you repeat that pattern every time. Day after day. Week after week. Month after month. At some point, there will be a structure in your body that won’t be able to tolerate that stress and it will fail. This is where your back “goes out”.

Now if you can apply the appropriate knowledge and take control of the above four issues using physical therapy, you’ll be well on your way to relieving your low back pain.

In the next post, I’ll cover the final element of the top 3 steps to relieve your low back pain: Get Fit.

Yours in movement.

Dev Chengkalath