Are Back Extensions Good For Back Pain

Are you trying to do back extensions to get relief for your back pain problem, stop it right now, it’s actually probably a very, very bad thing for you in nine out of 10 back problems, you don’t want to be doing back extension exercises, it’s way over done, and it actually feeds into the original problem? I’m going to tell you more about this and what you should be doing instead of bioethics and since to treat your back pain problem.

Real quick, my name is Dr. David Middaugh, I’m a specialist manual physical therapist, I work out at El Paso Manual Physical Therapy. And I’ve been helping out people on the internet, as well as here in the clinic for years with back problems. And let me tell you all about back extensions, it is way over done.

As a physical therapist myself, I see tons of physical therapists giving their back patients, the patients with back problems, back extension exercises, all kinds of varieties of them, the ones where you lie down on your stomach, and you push up like a cobra. Or you might even hold up like a superman stretch, or even just in standing where you lean backwards, and you push backwards like this. And the idea is to work the muscles that are right up and down the sides of your spine to get the back muscles stronger or moving better. And it kind of makes sense.

If you think about it, especially the physical therapist is telling you do these back extension exercises in order to help your back problem. Because if the pain is on the back where your back hurts, then it would make sense to work out the muscles right by the source of the pain or where you feel the pain more so. And the reality is though, that if you think about the spine and the way that it moves, you can google an image of a spine, if you just think of all the vertebrae, and the bones of the vertebrae, and the muscles that are right up against the back.

When you do back extension exercises, here’s why it’s not a good thing. When you do those exercises, where you move backwards, you’re actually compressing the part of the spine, where you’re going to get the joints pinched, the nerves pinched, you’re going to actually feed in the problem. Now the there is evidence, scientific evidence, and you might actually have had a little bit of success doing back extension exercises in the short term.

There is some evidence showing that back extension exercises can reduce pain briefly for a short time. But if you’re looking for long term relief, where you fix the back problem for goods, that you’re not having to deal with it again next month, or in six months, or in a year or two, so that you can avoid having some disc herniation or some sciatica problem or some other nerve, pinched nerve issue coming from your low back, that you don’t want to be doing back extensions for that.

Now we’re back extensions might be a good thing is if you’re lying in bed, and you’re just in a lot of pain in your back, and you’re afraid to get up because it might get worse. And you’re thinking, gosh, I just don’t want to have to take pills right now I don’t want to take medications, I don’t have to call up the doctor about getting an injection, then back extensions, if you have nothing else to do, might be an option at that point.

But if you’re looking to fix the back problem for good, like I was saying for the long term for months, and years, and indefinitely, then do not do back extensions do other stuff, which I’ll tell you about here in a moment. But before I go into that, though, I want to explain to you about muscle imbalances. And just real quick, I’ve got another video that goes deep into muscle imbalances.

I’m just going to give you a quick brief intro to it and how it relates to doing back extensions and why it’s not a good thing for you. But if you look in the description below, you’ll find the link for our video on muscle imbalances for lower back problems. But in most muscle imbalances, especially for lower back pain problems, there’s muscles on either side of the body that influence how joints move.

So in the case of the spine of the lower back, you have muscles in the back of the spine and you have muscles in the front, which we don’t talk about too much. But those are the abdominal muscles, there’s another muscle group the hip flexors that also attached to the spine. But let’s just think about abdominal muscles on the front of your spine. So those muscles do actually wrap around and have connections to your back.

And they can influence, or they can help control the position of the back and the movement which in which goes into the forces put through the spine itself to the joints of the back to the discs and all the other surrounding tissues and nerves, muscles, tendons, ligaments, all those other things.

So if you have a muscle imbalance, here’s simply put what it is. muscles on one side of the spine are too strong relative to the ones on the other side of the spine, those are too weak. And if you go further strengthen the strong muscles. In this case, if you already have very strong back muscles, even though they don’t feel strong right now because you might be having spasms. If your abs are weak, which most people agree on.

It’s rare that you find somebody it’s like I have the strongest ABS that I know. But most people will say I hardly ever workout my abs and now I’ve got this back problem. If that’s you then chances are that you’ve got a muscle imbalance and if you go straight than just your back muscles without working on your abs, then you’re going to feed into the muscle imbalance, because you’re going to be further strengthening the back problem.

The reason why people get relief in the short term from doing back extensions, is because you’re just putting in a different sensation into the back, you’re wiggling the joints a bit, you’re loosening up the nerves, you’re changing the pressures in the spine, and so momentarily for maybe a day or a few hours, you might get some relief. But like I said, it’s not fixing it for the long term, it’s only going to further strengthen those back muscles and then sets you up to have that pain again, later on.

Once you stand too long, or sit too long, or bend over wrong, or pick up that thing that’s just a bit too heavy for your back to take today. So what to do, instead, you need to start working on your ab muscles with clients that we see here personally in person in the clinic, about nine out of 10 of them were working on abs intensely.

Now I’ve got another video for you, that goes over three quick exercises for lower back pain also linked in the description here below, you can check out some ab exercises on there. They’re ab exercises that we recommend our clients start with whenever they’re seeing us here in person, but you’ve got to work your abs out. And I would actually look to avoid using your back muscles.

And we’ve had some clients that come in here and they say I’ve actually read the research. And I know that it says that abdominals are where it’s at as far as improving back problems for the long term. But I went and did sit ups, I wanted to do this exercise and that exercise for my abs. And it actually made my back problem worse.

We hear this all the time, and we troubleshoot it here in the clinic, there’s a very specific way to make sure your abs are working. So that you can get the relief that you need for the long term and reverse that muscle imbalance so that you’re not suffering with these big back muscles that are putting way too much compression and bad forces on the back part of the spine.

Now you might be saying yourself, well, I’ve tried abdominal exercises, and I’ve done the back extensions. And I’ve tried other stretches that I found on the internet are recommended by friends or family or even healthcare experts I’ve been to physical therapy or chiropractors or doctors’ physicians have told me what exercises to do as well. And it’s just not working for me what then what do I do, then what else could be going on?

Well, let me list a few things for you. It could be that even if you are doing the right type of exercise your joints in your spine, especially if you’re the arthritic type, or this different type. If you are genetically a stiffer person, you’re not that flexible or your family history is you’ve had people that had arthritis, or they’re also not flexible, then your likelihood for getting stuck joints in your lower back really all over your body is going to be higher.

Some other characteristics of these people is their joints pop a lot like they can get up in the morning or get up after sitting for a while and their knees pile bones and their feet pop, they turn their head and shoulder, and neck joints will pop as well. That’s me, I’m a stiffer person genetically. And I just pop and click whenever I move around.

Now, the downside to having these genetics is you’re definitely going to be predisposed to getting arthritis as if you don’t take care of yourself. But if you’re healthy and active, you’re avoiding having these muscle imbalances, then you should be fine. You should live to be old and not have to suffer with problems related to arthritis. And if you have these stuck joints, what I recommend is going to go see a specialist who can by hand free up those joints.

I’m definitely biased towards manual physical therapists. But there are chiropractors that can do a great job out there as well. You just got to find who works for you. Here in the clinic, we are very good at isolating specific joints and telling you were some are stiff and some are looser. And the the problem that we find oftentimes in patients whenever they come in for lower back pain problems, and they have very stiff joints is there’s a lot of joints in the back and we have to check each one because oftentimes, there’s one that’s way too loose, and then one nearby, that’s severely stuck.

And if we go do like a chiropractic aggressive adjustment, it is possible that we don’t actually loosen the joint, but we overstretch the already loose joint. So it has to be handled with care and finesse, we have to time it right as well. There’s it’s a process and a procedure. It’s a process to get this done. And that’s why when patients come in here, the clinic we’re telling them right off the bat, this is not going to be a quick fix, we usually need to free up joints gradually over time to get the best long-term effect.

Another thing that you might check if you’re if your exercises and stretches aren’t going well for you is your technique. abdominal exercises are gold for lower back pain problems. But if they’re not done right, then they can actually hurt you. And getting to make sure that your upper abs and lower abs are working right is a big deal here in the clinic.

What happens oftentimes is we show people in the app exercise and they’re using their upper abdominal muscles way more than the lower abdominal muscles and oftentimes, their lower abdominal muscles just aren’t active, and they aren’t aware of that they they’re like when we bring it up to them, they’re like, nobody ever told me this, I don’t even know that I have muscles in that area that I’ve never felt a burden.

They’re even competitive athletes that do a lot of ab work, we’ve found that their lower abs are kind of shut down and not working, right. And that’s what’s feeding into the back problem or hip problems as well. So make sure that your technique is right, revisit where you learn that technique. If you’re using a specialist like me, that if you’re looking at our videos, and go back to that video, and make sure that you’re doing everything just right for you, so that you can get the technique down. That way you can definitively say, I did the exercise just right isn’t for me, and there’s something else going on.

Which brings me to my next point, there might be something else going on, it might not just be purely a back problem. Maybe there is some systemic issue like a like a rheumatoid arthritis problem, an autoimmune issue, that there’s a slim chance that that could be going on. And usually, you’ll know about that.

Because there’s other symptoms besides back pain and, you know, nerve pain that it could be also there’s a nerve problem like a static issue, that’s causing a back problem because the nerves can nerves can send pain up as well as down more commonly we see it go down radiating down into the legs, but you can have a hip issue that’s causing problems up into the back.

And if you’re just looking at fixing a back problem, but you also have a hip problem or even a knee or ankle and foot problem, then it could be related altogether as far as the hip, ankle, knee, foot and feeding into the back problem. So that has to be thoroughly investigated, you might get an expert’s help. Or if you feel like you can self-diagnose your way to the problem and address it, then you can take your chances that way too.

But just be aware that it may not be purely an isolated back problem, it could be other parts of your body, or other tissues within your back, feeding into the issue. And the exercises alone may not be the only thing that’s going to fix the back problem.

The last thing I want to leave you with that could be stopping you from improving despite you trying abdominal exercises, or if you did do back extensions, find out that didn’t work for you either, or any other stretches or movements that you’ve been doing for your back problem, it could be that it’s the intensity as well, we find this is often a problem with patients is they’ll start doing some ab exercise. And it didn’t really hurt them necessarily. It didn’t bother them.

But they didn’t see an improvement either their back problems still bother them later on. And once we are going through treatment, and we figure out what’s going on, we find that they actually needed to increase the intensity of the exercise because it was a good exercise for them. It’s just that they weren’t getting stronger because they weren’t challenging themselves enough during that exercise.

Oftentimes, in order to reverse that muscle imbalance, you need to increase the strength in those weaker muscles. And the best way to do that is by increasing the intensity, it’s the same exercise strengthening principles. I mean, if you want to be able to run a marathon while you got to work your way up to it, you’re not going to just do it right away.

Same thing with abdominal strengthening, if you want to have enough strength to throw off the muscle imbalance and put your back in a healthy position as far as your your bones and joints, you’ve got to increase the intensity of the work that you’re doing. So that you can meet the level of the back muscles and take the pressures off the back joints and nerves and discs for the long term.

So check your intensity as well. And what that looks like is it may be that you need to do more reps do more frequently. Do it with weight, in some cases, advanced the movement of the technique. There are all kinds of variables to play with. Of course, if you’re if you’re looking for exercises on the internet right now, and you’re trying to figure out, you know what to do, you might look for that if you’re working with a specialist, they should know how to progress you in your specific situation.

If you thought this video was helpful for you, and you’re thinking that we might be the right people to help you out for your back problem, because you need some more specialist care than just doing exercises and stretches on your own at home. Then what I recommend to you is scroll down to the bottom of this page and find the button that says request a free discovery visit what a discovery visit is it’s a 20-minute appointment with a specialist physical therapist, which we can do in person or virtually through a video software, we can talk and see you online. And you can see us as well. And we want to diagnose your problem.

What we’re doing is we’re doing this free for people that are watching the video right now. Go get that hit that discovery button right there. And we have a limited amount of free discovery visits that we can offer each week. So request yours right now go down there, hit that button, a little form will pop up, leave us your details. And one of my staff will call you back as fast as possible to hear your story about your back problem to make sure that it’s a type that we can help here in the clinic.

Because we don’t want to waste your time if it’s not the right type. Once we get your information if we can help you out then we’ll set you up to talk to a specialist physical therapist will diagnose your problem tell you about what you should avoid what you should be doing. And if you’re willing, we can start talking about a plan to get this problem taken care of for the long term so that you can get back to being healthy, active and mobile. Without having an unnecessary surgery, that would be bad news for the back, or injections or having to rely on pain medications.

That is not a good thing for your other organs as well. Of course, your liver and your kidneys. Do not like drugs, especially your stomach with ibuprofen, which side tip if you’re taking ibuprofen for a back problem, it is not a good thing to be taking long term. It’s okay in a pinch for a few days, maybe a week at most. But there’s some serious side effects.

You can research all this stuff on online or ask a doctor, a physician who prescribes a proof and they want to take it for more than a few weeks. If you’re taking around the clock, it tears up your stomach. So it’s not a good idea to rely on pain medications for the long term. What we offer here is a natural solution to take care of a back-pain problem for the long term.

We teach a lot so that you can know what to do as it comes up again. Most importantly, we put you in a position where you can prevent it from having to come back so you’re not having to worry about it the rest of your life and having to think about it stopping in your tracks or preventing you from doing the things that you love.

So anyways, if you think we can help you out if you’re interested in hiring us, hit that button down there below for to request a discovery visit so that we might help you out. Have a wonderful day.