A sudden onset of low back pain happens to everyone sooner or later. This can be very painful and debilitating at first, but don’t panic! Here are four simple steps you should take to start relieving low back pain as soon as possible. Most of my patients have heard me say this when it comes to pain: Motion is lotion! The four steps are also shown in the video below.
1. Start with mobility exercises
When you experience an episode of LBP, start by doing some nonthreatening mobility exercises to get some movement in your spine. Mobility is simply dynamic stretching, or stretching while moving through an exercise.
First, get on your hands and knees. Next, start rocking your pelvis, front to back, very gently by squeezing your abs. You don’t have to do a big movement, just try a little movement, ensuring it doesn’t hurt. Once you’ve done that a few times, slowly progress a little bit further with that front to back rocking motion, increasing the range of the movement. Do 10 of these.
Next, progress into flexion, by bringing your butt back towards your heels while keeping your hands in the same place. Do 5 reps. Finally, move your pelvis down, working your back into a little bit extension. Again, do this for 5 reps.
2. Contract your back muscles
The next step to relieve acute low back pain is to do some gentle contractions of the actual back muscle.
In the first step, we introduced mobility. Now, we want to start actually contracting the muscle. The easiest exercise to do this is a very gentle bridge, which will allow you to pace how far you go with the exercise.
Start by just doing very gentle glute squeeze while lifting the pelvis very slightly, up and down. You’ll start to get a little bit of contraction of the back muscle, but you can control the strength of the contraction. To progress the movement, lift your pelvis higher as you go.
Contracting your back muscles helps bring blood flow to those muscles which will help decrease inflammation and promote healing during an episode of acute LBP.
3. Extend your back
The next step relieving pain from an episode of acute LBP is to work your back into a gentle extension. These easiest way is to do some extension is standing.
If you can tolerate standing, simply put your hands on your hips and then passively lean back, letting your hips come forward and your shoulders go back. This is an easy way to get your back into extension and you can do 10 to 20 reps every hour, or even more, if needed.
If you’d rather not stand, or if lying down is more comfortable, then lie on the floor or on a bed and prop yourself up on your elbows. This easy movement helps you build a gentle extension in your spine by putting your erector spinae muscles on slack.
4. Finally, get your full body into motion!
The last step in reducing acute LBP is to do some nonthreatening full body motion. The first exercise I recommend is a simple sit to stand motion using a chair or a bed. This simple exercise helps flex and extend the hips and the low back and typically doesn’t cause a lot of pain in people. Just sit down and stand up again. Do 10 to 15 reps every hour.
The other exercise you can do is go for a walk. Walking is a very natural motion that your body does every day. It’s very familiar, and once you walking, you’re rotating , flexing and extending your body and you’ll feel a lot better by getting motion into your system.
There you have it: my four tips on what to do when you have an episode of low back pain. Go ahead and do them, and tell your friends who also have low back pain. Sharing is caring!
If you are an active person in Roswell, Alpharetta, or Johns Creek, chances are you will have an episode of low back pain. We at Mission Move Physical Therapy would love to help you get through it and give you the confidence to return to your active life after the pain goes away. Please reach out, we would love to talk to you! Call/text: 678-400-0300
