Low Back Pain and Training Volume
In North America, and many other places across the globe, we equate value with volume.
When we go to restaurants, we want heaping servings and overflowing plates. We want non-stop soda-pop and endless French fries.
Would you like a heart attack with that?
We want massive volumes of food for the dollars we spend. This is what we take as value.
In the gym, we think pushing ourselves until we vomit is better for us. We think doing more reps, more sets and more exercises is our salvation. We take this “hard work” as being optimal for our health and fitness.
We have it ingrained into our minds that More is better. More is better. More is better.
More is not always better.
In my experience as a physical therapist and human movement specialist, this is especially true when relieving low back pain through exercise.
Training when you’re injured is not the same as training when you’re healthy.
Sure, some of the principles may be the same but the major aim of the intervention is different, the goals are different. Or they should be!
When exercising to relieve low back pain, high performance should not be your primary objective. Motor control and return to function should be. Once you have gained or regained control again, then you can switch focus back onto optimizing performance.
After an injury to your low back, your first steps should be to get out of pain and find the root causes.
Your next steps should be to re-learn how to move your body efficiently while protecting your back. You need to be able to find that pain free zone and keep it.
The volume of your exercise program should always allow for perfect practice. Because perfect practice makes perfect. Practice just makes permanent.
Imperfection is not an option
If you’re cranking out set after set and rep after rep of an exercise, your odds of fatiguing and losing control of a movement are much higher. Your execution of a given exercise may get sloppy. Your movement patterns may get lazy. Your risk goes up. Your benefit goes down.
And in the end, a safe exercise could become a dangerous one.
Train smart, not just hard.
Dev Chengkalath
