Hi, I'm Natalie here with Veritas Health, and today I'm going to give you guys some information on what exercises to avoid when you have low back pain. Exercise treatment can be a really important piece of recovering from low back pain, but sometimes it's appropriate to remove exercises or modify them for a certain amount of time when you're recovering from a back injury.
If you're someone who typically does heavy weight training and you suffer from some new onset low back pain, it's good to temporarily reduce either the volume, the intensity, or even stop doing some of the exercises, such as heavy squats, heavy deadlifts, or heavy lunges as these can be a little irritating for the back in the initial phases. Over time, once you're stronger and you recover, it'll be very appropriate to return back to those activities in a graded and progressive manner. If you're someone who does not typically do a weight training program and you're suffering from some low back pain, it may not be the most appropriate time for you to start a weight training program but working with a physical therapist who can give you an individualized program to help you gradually progress into that would be appropriate.
When you're suffering from some low back pain it can be good to temporarily avoid any forceful twisting. This can occur in sports such as golf, racquetball, pickleball, tennis as these put a lot of repetitive high force twisting through the spine. Temporarily reducing these can give your spine some time to heal, and as you get stronger and get your range of motion back, you can definitely return to these activities.
It can also be good to temporarily remove yourself from high impact sports such as running, horseback riding, gymnastics, basketball, anything that involves a lot of jumping and landing as these excessive forces can be irritating for the spine as well. Once your pain has been given a couple weeks to recover, you should be able to return to these exercises gradually and progressive.
It can also be helpful to avoid any deep forward bending. So this can occur with exercises such as deadlifting, deep squats, or even simpler exercises such as a standing hamstring stretch. If while you do these exercises, it increases your low back pain, you're probably someone who should temporarily avoid these and modify them so they're less irritating on the back. So instead of doing a standing hamstring stretch, you could lay on your back, lift one leg straight up and that would be a lot less pressure on the back. Instead of doing like a forward bending stretch, you could sit in a chair, roll a ball out, take a little pressure off your spine that way.
When you're suffering from some new low back pain too you may want to avoid excessive extension or backward bending. If you do some sports like gymnastics, ice skating, or dance, and these require a lot of excessive backward bending, you may want to take a couple days to couple weeks off these activities, so you can regain that full extension motion and do that safely.
Finally, avoiding exercises that put a lot of increased pressure on your spine and localized pressure on your spine are good to avoid temporarily. These are exercises such as crunches, sit ups, or straight leg raises, and can be modified for something that keeps you and a little bit more neutral, such as a plank. It's important when you modify or take out some of these other exercises to keep a good amount of healthy aerobic exercise in your routine, so doing something like walking, swimming, biking, ellipticalling, or even some light strength training if that feels okay, is very appropriate and should be done when you have back pain to help you heal. If you're struggling to find an exercise program that works really well for you, a physical therapist would help individualize a treatment plan for you so you can get back to all these things without any pain or discomfort.
To learn more about low back pain, please visit us at Spine-health.com and be sure to subscribe to our channel for more videos like this one. Thank you for watching!
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