Finding a back pain treatment that works for you is the biggest part of your rehabilitation. Many therapists and coaches like to talk about how specific your rehabilitation needs to be. This has a lot of truth but I’ve found there are also common threads in back pain treatment.

Since 2008 I’ve been working with people with low back pain and the more people I worked with the more these common threads came up. They have become the foundation of my rehabilitation method. But first...

Do you need surgery?

If you've been told you need surgery don’t dismiss it straightaway just put it to one side for the time being. Surgery has its place in back pain treatment but I find it’s for the very few. Take yourself through this rehabilitation method and see if it makes you better. If it does put the idea of surgery at the back of your mind.

My rehabilitation method

• Rest
• Move
• Pain triggers
• Massage
• Stretch
• Exercise

At first you'll work through these one at a time but as you work through...

Low back pain treatment can be simple is you know the cause of the pain. When I work with people with lower back pain I have to find the cause of problem first.

One of the common causes I find are trigger points in the hip. These aren’t necessarily where you feel the pain but it radiates there. As you relax the trigger point the pain reduces without any treatment to the lower back itself.

Your low back pain treatment may also need stretching and exercise to work with treating these trigger points.

1. Massage/ foam rolling to relax the trigger point
2. Stretching to bring greater length and flexibility to the muscle
3. Exercise to retrain your body to use muscles correctly as you move

These three steps get your hips and lower back working together. They help the right muscles work at the right time so they don’t fatigue and cause trigger points.

If you want a low back pain treatment program I have put together a 12-week online course. It uses these three steps to reduce low back pain,...

Lordosis exercises are important for correcting your spine.  The right exercises can speed up the process. Most importantly it’s doing the exercises the right way.

I work with many people that want to do the right lordosis exercises and they can be impatient. Just doing the exercises doesn’t ensure they help you. Making sure they perform them well is the difference.

Two teaching points

When you perform lordosis exercises there are two teaching points you need to apply. Tighten your abdominals and tighten your glutes. These two teaching points help reposition your spine and pelvis.

Just doing lordosis exercises doesn’t mean you’re including these points, you need to add them as you do the exercises.

Four Exercises

In my experience the exercises need to simple enough for you to include the teaching points. If the exercises are to hard you won’t feel the abdominals and glutes tighten.

The easiest exercise to begin is the quadruped, it helps you tighten your abdominals and position ...

Lower back pain treatment can be simple, even for long standing pain. As I work with more people I find common patterns in their symptoms.

Sophie’s Back Pain

Sophie came to me with back pain in her low back; she’s had it for years. She had seen other professionals but they couldn’t get to the bottom of it. This isn’t because they weren’t good professionals they might not have been looking for what I was.

She showed me where her pain was and I began an assessment. I found a trigger point at the top of her hip. Immediately she reacted and I knew I had found a possible cause.

My lower back pain treatment process

When people come to me for lower back pain treatment I first assess the hips. For most people this is a problem area. If it’s a trigger point, I use sports massage to release the pressure.

As the muscle relaxes and the pain reduces, I use movement training to retrain the muscles to work correctly. Over time your muscles work better, you move better and your body becomes stro...

If you enjoy health and fitness, you might have come across the terms ‘Core Strength’ and ‘Core Stability’. In general, many people might be under an impression that both the Core Strength Stability means the same. It is no surprise if someone uses these words interchangeably. Therefore, missing the subtle difference between the two terms.

Core Strength

Kraemer and Knuttgen define the term ‘strength’ as the force a muscle or a group of muscles can generate in a specified movement pattern. Therefore, a person who is able to produce a better movement has more ‘core strength.’

It’s appropriate to refer to the core strength as core endurance. This includes the time you are able to hold in that movement pattern i.e. duration of the position. If you are able to perform the same task repeatedly over a period od time or a day, you have more core strength for a specific task. If you are able to resist fatigue, you will be recognized as having more core strength, but not necessarily core stab...

Non-specific low-back pain is defined as not attributed to a recognizable, known specific pathology (e.g. infection, tumor, osteoporosis, lumbar spine fracture, structure deformity, inflammatory disorder, radicular syndrome or cauda equine syndrome). Most cases of low-back pain are regarded as non-specific (a staggering 96%). A third type of low-back pain cause is a traumatic injury, such as a fall or sudden jarring of the back.

A muscle associated with the non-specific low-back pain is the psoas. It attaches to five lumbar vertebrae and the top femur. Muscle pain in the psoas is often related to tension, overuse or muscle injury from exercise or physically demanding work. You tend to experience pain either side of your lower back, during or just after activity. If muscle tension remains injuries can occur because of stress building up adding pressure to the spine and vertebrae attached to the psoas muscle.

With cases of psoas muscle tension, releasing the fatigue built up through ma...

Finding an effective Lordosis treatment plan is essential to managing and overcoming the condition. Here is a 3-step process I use in my 1-to-1 training and online training programs. But before moving on to the Lordosis treatment, a brief explanation will be done on the term Lordosis itself.

Lordosis Explained

Lordosis happens to be an excessive curve in the lumber and cervical region. And I most cases, it poses excess pressure on the spine leading to pain and distress. Lordosis is viewed by many as a postural defect which can make an individual’s appearance unattractive causing such a person to lose self-confidence among others. But it is apparent that whenever there is an issue, there must be a cause. Therefore, a handful of reasons have been validated to bring about lordosis in people, and there are mostly medical conditions which include;

• Obesity
• Excessive visceral fat
• Pregnancy
• Osteoporosis – the fragility of the vertebra
• Spondylolisthesis – forward slipping of the lower
...