4 reason why you could be getting back pain after running?

Running is a popular activity; it’s great for your cardiovascular system, but can put a lot of stress on your joints. It’s a repetitive stress due to the long duration; this fatigues muscles and leaves you more prone to injury or pain.

There are a number of reasons why your back hurts after you run, one being, long duration. Others include; disc injury, vertebral fractures or sciatica. The latter are more serious that might effect a small number of the population. In this blog you’ll learn about common problems I find in people that are much more simple to overcome.

• Hip trigger points
• Poor core stability
• Poor core strength
• Training plan

Hip trigger points

Trigger points are small knots in muscles that cause pain elsewhere in the body. Trigger point in your hip can cause pain in your low-back, buttocks and legs.

Causes

Trigger points are caused by muscle injury or overuse, which harks back to the long duration of running. As a general rule I find the glutei medius and glutei minimus are de-conditioned, making these muscles more sensitive and prone to trigger points.

Glutei Minimus

The deepest glute muscle at the side of your hip. It works with the glutei medius to control the position of your knee as your foot strikes the floor.

Glutei Medius

Lies over the top of the glutei minimus and helps control the position of your knee. They are both shaped like a pizza slice, narrow at the bottom and wider at the top.

They become painful when…

These muscles are overused, they fatigue and as fatigue sets in trigger points can form. If you continue to run on top of this muscles become more sensitive and eventually you’ll experience pain. Trigger points can also lay latent for a long time and all of a sudden become active and painful.

How to release trigger points

Although they’re painful trigger point need you to press on them. You begin lightly pressing to a pain you can tolerate, eventually you’ll get used to this pressure and you can press harder.

You can use your fingers or thumb, tennis ball, hockey ball, or foam roller for this.

Poor Core Stability

Core stability involves balance, posture and control. During running this looks like; smoothness of movement and good technique. To have good core stability your spine and hips need adequate flexibility so you can get you joints into the right position.

Your muscles also need to work at the right time. If your core & hip muscles don’t activate as your foot strike the ground the forces will wear down your muscles and joints faster.

How to improve your core stability

Make sure your spine can do its 2 important movements, upper spine extension and spinal rotation. It doesn’t need to highly flexible but it does need enough range of movement. If you don’t have it already, also improve your hip range of movement in all directions.

Along with flexibility, reduce trigger points. It will help your muscles function better and they’ll absorb the forces better as your foot hits the ground.

Poor Core Strength

You may have heard me before say; core strength is really core endurance because it should last a long time. If your muscles fatigue quickly, they’ll not function properly. What can lead on from this; poor core stability or trigger points.

How to improve core strength

Improving your muscles ability to hold a posture or position for a long time while resisting fatigue. In exercise terms that means planks and side planks but done in a particular way.

Holding planks and side planks for longer times isn’t as effective as intervals. Hold for a maximum of 10s, rest for 5s and keep repeating this cycle 2, 3, 4 or 5 times. More if you need to. The 5s breaks train your body to remove waste products that cause muscle pain faster.

Your Training Plan

It could be as simple as muscle fatigue, if running too much or more than your body can cope with you’ll experience pain. By reducing, how many days you run per week, how long you run each session or how hard you run you low back pain can reduce or be eliminated.

Summary

You could have back pain because of one of the above, all of them or some of them. Take your time to understand which one it could be and build a plan to help you overcome it.

Please watch the tutorial above to learn more about lower back pain and running.

If you would like 2 of the best exercises and stretches for low-back pain please click here