Home Workout: Core Exercises to Help with Low Back Pain

I have been talking to a lot of my clients as I have been setting up virtual training lessons with them and the same question keeps coming up: “What can I do about my low back pain?”

Low back pain can be caused by several different things differentiated by medical terminology.  However, I am not going to get into the specifics of each type of low back injury.  I am just going to go with general discomfort in the lumbar region.  Specifically, we are going to look at 5 overall good exercises to warm-up and strengthen the back muscles and stretch the muscles. For the general population, the biggest source of low back pain is based on how we walk.  The main contributing factors are weak deep core stabilizers (muscles that attach the hips and spine that keep us erect). Those muscles are the erector spinae, multifidi, glutes, and transverse abdominus.  Also, we tend to be tight in the hip abductor muscles, i.e., the piriformis muscle.  By strengthening the deep core stabilizers and stretching out the tight muscles, we can significantly reduce our low back pain.

How Movement Causes Back Pain

One of my favorite things to do is people watch. If I am sitting waiting for my wife to come out of a store, I do a quick gait analysis on people as they walk by and think about how I would correct their walking and posture. One of the most common walking mistakes I see is the duck walk.  I am sure you all know this one.  This is when people walk and their feet are turned out.  Why does this happen? 

Typically, people are not using their glutes and when we don’t use our muscles, our body goes into caveman mode.  Caveman mode is doing everything possible to conserve calories because our bodies have not caught up to our modern day lives.  Our bodies are always worried about food scarcity and optimizing calorie usage.  When this happens, our bodies reduce neural activation to the muscles we don’t use.  Here, it would be the glutes.  Instead, the body has to recruit other muscles to move, and with the feet turning out, the body goes to the inner thigh muscles to stabilize use as we walk instead of our glutes.  Thus changing how our bodies keep our pelvis in what is known as a neutral position and putting us into a position that can cause pain.  And this goes through the whole kinetic (joint movement) chain.

Once the pelvis is out of neutral position, the body starts compensating everywhere to give you the illusion of moving in a “neutral” or “normal” gait.  For some people it manifests as low back, pain, others it is knee pain, hip pain, or shoulder/neck pain.  And for the really unlucky of us, it could be all the above.

What Exercises Can I do to Prevent this?

As I mentioned above, the best thing you can do is strengthen your deep core stabilizers. The best exercises to work the deep core are planks, side planks, bridges, squats, and cobras.  When I am working with my clients, these are usually my go to exercises to start off with because they help retrain people to be more aware of their body and posture.  Also, as you may have already guessed, these are all body weight exercises. These exercises are what really help people get ready for a harder routine. It was explained to me a long time ago that it is like building a house.  You want to make sure you have a good foundation to build off of.  Also, from an exercise physiology standpoint, it takes 2-8 weeks to get past your brain telling your body to move better before you start putting on muscle.

Planks

• Lying on your stomach
• Activate your core by pulling your belly button to your spine and squeezing your glutes
• Actively move shoulders down away from your ears
• Squeeze your shoulder blades together
• Make sure your elbows are under your shoulders
• With your legs straight balancing on your toes, lift your upper body off of the ground
• Keep squeezing your butt and drawing your belly button to your spine

Side Planks

• Lying on your side with your elbow under your shoulder
• Activate your core by pulling your belly button to your spine and squeezing your glutes
• With your legs straight balancing on your bottom foot, lift your hips off of the ground
• Keep squeezing your butt and drawing your belly button to your spine

Bridges

• Lying on your back with your shoulder out of your ears and knees bent
•The back of your heels should be just in front of the bend of your knees
•Rotate palms so they are facing up to open up and stretch the chest
•Activate your core by pulling your belly button to your spine and squeezing your glutes
•Press through your heels and lift your butt as high as you can
•Come back to the starting position and repeat as necessary

Squats

• Place a chair against a wall so it does not move
• Stand with your feet hip-width to shoulder-width apart
• Toes may be slightly turned out
• Activate your core by pulling your belly button to your spine and squeezing your glutes
• Keep shoulder blades back with shoulder out of your ears
• Sit down and back into your hips trying not to drop your shoulders • Arms can be out stretched for better range of motion

Cobras

• Lying on your stomach with your hands palm down at your side
•Activate your core by pulling your belly button to your spine and squeezing your glutes
•Actively move shoulders down away from your ears
•Squeeze your shoulder blades together while rotating your thumbs away from you and up
•Return to the starting position

Posterior Pelvic Tilts

Piriformis Stretch

Hamstring Stretch

Quadriceps Stretch

Sways

Biggest Mistake People Make with the Exercises

The biggest mistake people make with low back exercises is that once the pain is gone they stop doing them.  This is what keeps physical therapists in business.  This is not a pill or a one-time solution.  Once you have these movement disorders you are always prone to them. This is why exercise physiologists, like myself, always incorporate some variation of these exercises and stretches in our clients’ routines.  Maintenance is the best way to keep the pain away.  It is also a lot cheaper and a lot easier than surgery.  Anyone who has visited my website and seen the quote now understands why I love that quote so much.