Straightening for a healthy back

Many of us, from time to time, have felt or constantly feel some kind of discomfort in some area of the back. A common question of each of us is – why is this so? The answer is not always simple, but I dare say that in the vast majority it is a not very ideal load on our axial-support system, the spine, which leads to the aforementioned discomfort – pain that we feel. Why is it all happening this way?

For the very beginning – it would be good to clarify certain laws a bit, how it works with our back and body as such. If we talk about any movement we perform, every single movement will come from the deepest layer of our muscles and will gradually be transferred to larger muscle parts. More professionally, Þ every single movement begins on autochthonous muscles (the deepest layer of muscles), which form a complex of serially arranged muscle groups of the back of the torso, from the pelvis to the skull – mutihids and rotators. These muscles do not have the classic spindle-shaped muscle (the simplest form of muscle), nor do they have a fascial system (the sheath of the muscle) and ligaments predominate. What do these facts mean for us ?

Again, I dare say a lot. Based on the above-mentioned facts, it is good to know that insufficient loading and repeated mechanical overloading of our spine binds these muscles, which results in a certain restriction in movement and the accompanying phenomenon is pain in most cases. At the same time, it doesn’t really take much for prevention and proper development . Because these muscles have a high threshold of sensitivity, we influence them with a larger muscle or just the thought of movement. And how could we influence them? Or how should we approach the overall optimization of muscle tension in the area of our torso? Here I will follow up on the word from the title – straightening. Because straightening is very important for the regeneration of our spine . As well as straightening, the ability to rotate (natural counterrotation of the shoulder and pelvic girdle) in kypho-lordosis (natural, anterior bending of the spine) is also important. And here I will pause a bit – let’s think about what our movement looks like with basic locomotions such as ordinary walking or running? And now let’s realize one thing – is my movement actually relaxed and I perform it with a kind of counterrotation of the upper and lower part of my body? Hmm, to be honest, it’s unimaginable, but I’ll help with a little help. Natural rotability is the first to disappear from our movement as soon as we start to have even the slightest problem on our spine. The stiffness that arises and the pain associated with it is a kind of defense mechanism of our body. And all this happens as a response to a certain supra-threshold stimulus in everyday life.

Now let’s imagine the situation I find myself in every day, and that is the gym. We come there in order to get rid of a certain problem on our back, but this is not always the case. Whether based on ignorance or a certain stubbornness, it is a common phenomenon that pain is associated with some kind of weakness and the most common solution is to reach for an external load in order to increase muscle strength, or to choose an exercise that has been seen and recommended somewhere, but the result actually comes in the form of deepening our problem. Here I will pause a bit and mention one fact that stiffness in the area of our core of the body is very important, because it will provide us with better mobility of the limbs. But this is not the same as stiffness caused by a certain overload. So what can we do about it? What could a certain prevention, warm-up, activation or even relaxation look like? Again, I will return to the word straightening, because it is the right straightening that can relieve our spine, as well as activate the deepest muscles, prepare our body for the next load, or compensate well enough after the previous load. With the right choice of exercises, we can influence everything. I will divide my selection of presented exercises into mobilization and stabilization exercises.

The first mobilization and stabilization exercise is a deep forward push. It affects the straightening of the spine, mobilizes the chest area of the back and the wide back muscle. The arms are only slightly wider than the shoulders, the spine is straight, creating a straight line from the cervical-thoracic to the thoracic-lumbar area of the back. We get into the position of deep forward several times repeatedly and stay in it for three to five deep, slow breaths and exhalations.

The second mobilization and stabilization exercise is the “pigeon” position (in the original version the exercise is called “pigeon”) with a gradual transition to the “S” position of the arc. A position that will mobilize our loins. It relaxes the posterior lumbar – gluteal – buttock muscles, when bending to the side, we relax the lateral muscles of the posterior abdominal wall, namely the quadrangular lumbar muscle (very often its contraction causes pain in the lumbar area of the back). We can get into both positions repeatedly for a period of three to five deep – slow inhalations and exhalations.

The third exercise is the “Quadruped” position. The importance of the quadruped is the strengthening of segmental stabilization, which precedes the verticalization itself, i.e. standing on two limbs Þ bipedality. From developmental kinesiology, we can say that insufficient time spent in the quadruped position leads to poor segmental stabilization and therefore there is a high probability of a problem on our spine. Scoliosis is a common phenomenon. In the position, we place great emphasis on straightening the spine, sufficient stabilization of our shoulder blades and neutrality of the pelvis. We get into the position for a period of several inhalations and exhalations, and to make it more difficult, we can play with taking away one support, whether the upper or lower limb, and other more complex positions. The variability of the exercise is actually really great.