Reasons Why Back Training Is Crucial in Your Workout Routine
Even if you regularly work out, you may be ignoring your back muscles. Training your back muscles is crucial to developing your overall health and preventing back pain, which is the leading cause of disability worldwide. By taking just a few minutes out of your day, you can strengthen your muscles to prevent back pain and live a happier, healthier life.
Why Work Out Your Back?
Today, many of us lead an increasingly sedentary lifestyle. All of that sitting leads to atrophy of the back muscles. Back pain often occurs due to posture and activity rather than illness or infection. By working out your back, you can combat atrophy and prevent future back pain. Here are some of the top benefits of back exercises.
1. Improve Posture
Improved posture is the greatest benefit of back exercises. Strengthening your back muscles helps correct your posture, creating a cycle where good posture reinforces back strength and back strength reinforces good posture. Low-intensity stretching exercises like yoga are particularly helpful in creating good spinal posture.
2. Stabilize the Spine
The more you strengthen the muscles around your back, the less pressure you exert on your spine. Spinal stability refers to the ability of the spine to accommodate physiological stress without experiencing displacement. As you increase your spinal stability through exercises like weightlifting and yoga, your body becomes better able to handle lifting weight in your everyday life.
3. Alleviate and Prevent Back Pain
Though it may seem counterintuitive, you can heal your back pain through the use of light exercise. When suffering from back pain, your first instinct may be to lie down, but doing so can increase your pain by reinforcing bad posture and muscle atrophy. Alleviate your back pain by doing light exercises to help build spinal stability and take the pressure off of your spinal discs and cord.
How to Work Out Your Back at Home
Just because you’re sitting at work all day doesn’t mean you can’t strengthen your back muscles. Once every hour or two, take a minute to perform some gentle stretches, like a seated cat-cow or backbend. To perform a cat-cow, roll your head and neck forward while you inhale and bend your back and neck backward toward the sky on your exhale. To perform a backbend, place your hands on your hips and lift your head and chest toward the sky. If you’re experiencing lumbar pain, lower back exercises such as flexion stretches can build your spinal stability. To begin, lie on your back with your face to the sky. To stretch your flexion muscles, slowly pull your knees to your chest as if you are in the fetal position. To stretch your knees and back, place the soles of both of your feet on the floor and pull your knees to your chest one at a time.
Alleviate Your Back Pain at Spine INA
At the Spine INA, we can help relieve your back pain through a variety of treatment options. We’re dedicated to providing you with the most effective and least invasive pain management procedures so you can get back to your daily life in no time. Schedule a consultation with our team of doctors and alleviate your back pain today.