Are you built for low back pain?
There are some people who are just NOT built for certain exercises.
Not everyone should be squatting deep.
Not everyone should be dead lifting.
Not everyone should be bench pressing.
You get the point, right?
As I’m sure you’ve noticed, there are very few people whose bodies are built the same way, with the same shapes, sizes, limb lengths or proportions.
So if everyone is built a little differently, why would you have everyone do the same exercises?
This concept is even more important when you’re dealing with relieving low back pain or any other form of injury or trauma to the body.
She is definitely built a little differently.
One of my major tasks as a physical therapist is to assess my client’s biomechanics as well as their body structure. How does their body move? How do their limbs move in relation to the rest of their body? Do they have any compensations? Are they in control of their muscles and joints? Do they have body awareness? These are all very important considerations when designing and prescribing beneficial exercise.
Key word: beneficial.
Anyone can make up an exercise program. Pretty much anyone can “train” someone hard. However, without having a defined structure or purpose behind it, does it actually help or does it put you at risk?
When looking at biomechanical faults, the biggest reason for disqualifying someone from an exercise is lack of motor control.
This pretty much means that the movement is too advanced for you at this point in time: you can’t move your limbs , joints and other tissues the right way. I’m not saying you can’t improve your control or body awareness, I’m just saying that at this instant in time, because of that motor control deficit, the risk outweighs the benefits.
Using the same dead lift technique that was on the video clip in the previous blog post here, you can see that biomechanically, this young man should not be dead lifting. His spine crushing technique with severely rounded low back and poor posture will only end up creating the ideal environment for serious low back pain and pathology. That is, if he doesn’t already have it!
He just doesn’t have enough control over his muscles and joints to be dead lifting, therefore, he wouldn’t make the cut in my book.
Now on the other side of things there are structural faults.
When looking at structural faults that would disqualify someone from an exercise, it still comes down to biomechanics. Although this time, motor control may not be the issue.
Structural faults are simply acquired or adaptive changes in your body’s structure. These can include various bone related issues such as spinal curvatures (scoliosis), adaptively shortened muscles (contractures), or other changes in the actual structure of the body tissues.
These structural changes may then in turn cause biomechanical faults.
For example, someone with a significant leg length discrepancy (one leg shorter than the other), may have muscle contractures as an adaptation for this fault. This may change weight distribution patterns and shift weight to one side or the other. If we had this person squat, uneven loading may occur through the spine because of these shifts which would increase the risk, while decreasing the benefit of the exercise.
Unfortunately, with structural faults, improving motor control won’t solve the problem. Instead, alternative exercises will need to be found.
So there you have it. Some of the physical therapy criteria I use to qualify my clients for certain exercises, especially as they relate to relieving low back pain.
Yours in movement,
Dev Chengkalath
