03. The Positive Influence of Activity

Episode nr. 3 is about respecting and understanding your pain as well as a guide to a selection of safe exercises designed to enhance metabolism and blood flow in your back muscles and how to adapt them to your individual needs.

 

Golden Training Principles

• Training should feel good 

• Adjust exercise if it feels painful/bad:

change the range of motion

change the position

change the intensity

change the duration

change the training frequency (trainings per week)

change the resting time or interval time between training

 

Good vs Bad Pain Patterns

Pain in the leg that vanishes or pulls back upwards (i.e. first pain was being felt from buttock to shin, than pain is being felt only from buttock to tigh) even when pain in the lower back gets worse has a good prognosis.¹ 

Whatever you do, when you feel that pain radiating down the leg is getting worse or pain in the leg that wasn´t there before now is being felt, this is a good indicator that things have to be done differently. Even when pain in the back vanishes but pain in the leg starts or is getting worse or is getting now further down than it was before stop with whatever activity, movement or posture you are doing and try differently.

 

Exercise-Videos

find all the resources at: http://mybackrecovery.com/resources.page

(Always check with your medical professional if there are any health related problems that do not allow you to exercise and that these exercises are safe for you to perform!)

Videos

Warm Up 8-10 times carried out gently.

Bird-Dog (also called superman)

Side lying-leg lift

Bridging

 

Sets and Repetitions

20 repetitions of each exercise (leg raise 20 each side). Three rounds. Always ‘pain free’.

Pain should never get worse during the exercise. If this is the case, try to adjust the exercise or proceed to the next exercise. During the course of this podcast series you will get to know many different exercises, therefore you will always be able to find exercises that work for you. Just take your time, experiment and adjust the training to your personal needs.

 

Other Content including Quotes

• Static work, decrease of blood flow, build up of local by-products of metabolism.^2,3

• Prolonged dynamic exercise produces a long lasting (60–120 minutes) increase of blood flow in the muscle even after cessation of muscular activity.3 Some studies even suggest that this effect can last up to 13 hours.⁴

• Decrease of strength and LBP.⁵

• Changes in the brain could contribute to the persistence of the problem and might represent a legitimate target for therapy.⁶

• Safe exercises/loading profiles of the spine.⁷

 

More infos at

http://mybackrecovery.com/

 

 Literature

1. May S, Aina A. Centralization and directional preference: a systematic review. Man Ther. 2012;17(6):497-506. doi:10.1016/j.math.2012.05.003.
2. Plowman SA, Smith DL. Exercise Physiology for Health Fitness and Performance -. 4th revise. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; 2013.
3. Korthuis RJ. Exercise Hyperemia and Regulation of Tissue Oxygenation During Muscular Activity. Skelet Muscle Circ. 2011;(Figure 10):1-11. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK57139/.
4. Kenney MJ, Seals DR. Postexercise hypotension. Key features, mechanisms, and clinical significance. Hypertension. 1993;22(5):653-664. doi:10.1017/CBO9781107415324.004.
5. Steele J, Bruce-Low S, Smith D. A reappraisal of the deconditioning hypothesis in low back pain: review of evidence from a triumvirate of research methods on specific lumbar extensor deconditioning. Curr Med Res Opin. 2014;30(January):1-47. doi:10.1185/03007995.2013.875465.
6. Wand BM, O’Connell NE, Di Pietro F, Bulsara M. Managing chronic nonspecific low back pain with a sensorimotor retraining approach: exploratory multiple-baseline study of 3 participants. Phys Ther. 2011;91(4):535-546. doi:10.2522/ptj.20100150.
7. Liebenson C. A modern approach to abdominal training-Part III: putting it together. J Bodyw Mov Ther. 2008;12(1):31-36. doi:10.1016/j.jbmt.2007.10.005.