Strengthen Your Core and Support Your Back

Strengthening Your Core and Supporting Your Back

Here at the Spine INA, we want all of our patients to find pain relief and reclaim their lives. Back pain can be debilitating, but we can provide the help you need. In addition to working with our spinal specialists for a back pain treatment plan, you can make helpful lifestyle changes on your own. For instance, you’ll want to add back and core strengthening exercises into your daily routine.

A routine of core-strengthening workouts can minimize your back pain and keep it from returning in the long run. No matter your age or your diagnosis, core and back strengthening with the right exercises and stretches can help you feel better. Engaging your core through exercise is one of the best actions you can take to combat chronic back pain.

What Are Core Muscles?

When most people think of their body’s core, they think of the outer abdominals. However, your core includes a number of different muscle groups surrounding your organs, such as:

• The back and gluteal muscles: Also called the extensors, the muscles in your back and glutes keep your body straight when you stand and move your thigh outward as you walk.
• The abdominal and iliopsoas muscles: These muscles, the flexors, let your body bend. They control your lower spine’s arch and move your thigh inward as you walk.
• The oblique muscles: Your oblique or rotator muscles, located along your side, stabilize your spine as you stand. They allow you to maintain upright posture and correct spinal curvature.
• The diaphragm. Your diaphragm is also part of your core. It sits below your lungs and heart and contracts as you breathe.
• The pelvic floor muscles. The muscles along your pelvic floor support your bladder, bowels and internal reproductive organs.

Each of these muscles helps with either stabilization or mobilization. Stabilization muscles support your body and let you maintain upright posture while sitting or standing. Mobilization muscles allow you to move your body while walking, bending, twisting or stretching.

How a Strong Core Can Relieve Back Pain

Core strength and back pain are often interconnected. When your core isn’t strong, your body will rely on other structures for stabilization and mobilization, such as your ligaments, which can result in pain. When you exercise to strengthen your core, you can minimize pain and prevent injuries. Research has found that building a strong core through exercise relieves chronic back pain — it’s even more effective than routine physical therapy.

Benefits of Core Exercises for Back Pain

Engaging in core-strengthening workouts will provide multifaceted benefits for your body, the effects of which are long-term. Here are a few ways core exercises can benefit your body.

1. Protects Against Injury

Having a strong core can protect against instances of acute back pain. It also prevents injury to other parts of your body — every body movement starts with the core. When you’re able to rely on a strong core, you prevent straining and injuring other muscles through over-exertion.

2. Builds Flexibility

Core workouts also improve your body’s flexibility, which can make everyday life easier. Bending, twisting, lifting and reaching are common movements in day-to-day tasks and hobbies, like gardening, child care and housework. A strong core will build your flexibility, so you can engage in simple tasks with less effort.

3. Helps You Heal After Spinal Procedures

If you’ve had a spinal procedure, core-strengthening exercises are a vital part of recovery. You’ll need to know how to build your core after spinal fusion or other spinal procedures. Simple core workouts can help you heal and regain your strength. Be sure to consult with a doctor before engaging in post-surgical exercises so you don’t accidentally harm yourself.

4. Improves Posture

A strong core is necessary for stabilization, even if movement is minimal. Sitting at a desk while typing, reading or writing engages your core — those with desk jobs often find themselves with a sore back at the end of the workday. A strong core allows you to maintain good posture, which will minimize back pain and promote long-term health. It also helps you maintain correct form while you exercise, which can prevent exercise-related injury.

5. Increases Balance

Your core provides the stability you need to stand in one place and navigate uneven terrain. Core-strengthening workouts improve your body’s balance. A strong core can help you avoid falling, which is the number one source of serious injuries for older adults. Research shows about one-quarter of older adults fall each year, often resulting in broken bones and head injuries. Many falls can even be fatal.

6. Eases Breathing

Remember that your core includes your diaphragm, the muscles that support your lungs and heart. A strong core lets you stand or sit up straight, which provides you with an uncompressed airway. In this way, a healthy core can make it easier to draw full breaths.

7. Helps With Digestion

Your core muscles affect your digestive organs. If your core isn’t flexible, it can compress your organs and complicate digestion. Keeping your core strong can alleviate digestion issues and keep related organs working as they should. If you’re experiencing digestive pain, enhancing your core muscles may alleviate it.

8. Enhances Physical Fitness

Improved core strength will make it easier to do almost any physical activity, boosting your performance. Whether you like to golf, run, hike, swim, garden or perform any other form of exercise, a powerful core will allow you to do it better and for longer periods of time. Simple core exercises will help you achieve your fitness goals, whatever they may be.

How to Strengthen Your Core and Back Through Exercise

Several different exercises, at varying levels of difficulty, will help you maximize your core strength. Before getting started with a core strength workout regimen, it’s important to do a few key things:

• Talk to a doctor first: Before starting any exercise plan, especially when you have pain or other specific health conditions, consult with your doctor or one of the doctors here at the Spine INA.
• Pace yourself: Do a few sets of repetitions several days each week. Try not to overexert yourself, especially if you’re recovering from a recent surgery or injury. You can increase the intensity of your workouts over time as your muscles grow stronger.
• Use slow, controlled motions: During any muscle-strengthening workout, it’s important to maintain slow, controlled motions so you can activate your muscles and avoid straining.
• Be patient: Keep in mind, it can take many weeks to see or feel any significant results. Be patient and recognize that muscle strengthening takes time.
• Keep it up: Once your pain diminishes or your injury heals, you may be tempted to stop exercising your core. However, you’ll still need regular exercise to maintain a powerful core. Keep core workouts a part of your long-term routine.

Once you’ve consulted with a doctor, you can start planning a workout routine. Consider some of the following workouts to strengthen your core and back muscles for a better-supported spine. These are beginner core exercises, ideal for seniors with back pain.

1. Glute Bridges

One of the best exercises you can do to strengthen your back and core is glute bridges. If you’ve ever seen gymnasts do a bridge, you may think it’ll be too difficult, but these bridges are a bit different. For the glute bridges, you:

1. Lay flat on your back and bring your heels up towards your buttocks.
2. Leaving your shoulders on the ground, raise up your hips in order to make a straight plank from your shoulders to your knees. If someone were to view you from the side, you’d look like an acute triangle.
3. Hold this position for the count of 15, lower and repeat. To make this exercise harder, you can try marching in place while holding the bridge position.

2. Modified Crunches

If you have lower back pain or sciatica problems, crunches may be pretty painful. A modified crunch will take some strain off the sciatica and sacroiliac joints in your lower back. Follow these steps for a modified crunch:

1. Find a chair or couch and sit on the floor next to it.
2. Lay on the floor with your feet up on the couch and your knees forming a 90-degree angle over the couch cushions.
3. Attempt a normal crunch, keeping the motion minimal and focusing on squeezing the lower abdominals. Start with two sets of 10 and work up to more.

3. Russian Twists

Russian twists will take some time to master or even work toward, but they’re an effective way to build a powerful core. They’redone sitting on the ground. You’ll need to:

1. Get comfy sitting down.
2. Lean back a little bit, lift your feet and balance on your tailbone.
3. Once you’re in this position, pretend you’re holding a tray. Serve the tray to the right and then to the left. Each time you serve the tray on both sides counts as one repetition. You can do a certain number or track your progress by the amount of time you can do this exercise.

4. Supermans

An easy exercise to strengthen your back muscles is the superman workout, in which you:

1. Lay on your stomach.
2. Lift your arms and legs off the ground at the same time.
3. Hold this position for a designated count.

To make it a little more difficult, you can do the swimmer modification. For this, you’ll kick your feet in a flutter as you lift them off the ground.

5. Warrior 1 and 2

Yoga is an important source of core-empowering exercises. A beginners’ yoga class can get you moving and do a lot of good for your body. Doing Warrior 1 and Warrior 2 poses at home will help make your core stronger. For the Warrior 1 yoga position:

1. Take a medium to low lunge stance.
2. Let your back foot rest perpendicular to the rest of your body and push forward.
3. Raise your hands up over your head and stretch upward, focusing on holding a solid position. That’s Warrior 1.

For Warrior 2, move into Warrior 1 and then let your arms come down into a “T” position. However, you’re going to have the matching arm to the leg in front reaching forward and the matching arm to the leg in the back reaching backward. Focus on opening up your shoulders and keep your arms parallel to the floor. Hold these positions for a designated amount of time.

6. Plank With Knee Up

Planks are excellent exercises to build both abdominal and back strength. There are many ways to do planks, and you can modify them to fit your needs. What matters is that you focus on engaging your whole core in order to reap the benefits. For this particular modification:

1. Start on your hands and knees.
2. Using your arms to support yourself, walk your feet backward into a standard plank.
3. Hold this position and focus on keeping your shoulders firm.
4. Lift one leg and, focusing on your abdominals, bring one knee up towards your nose.
5. Release your leg back down.
6. Repeat this with your other leg.

There’s also a modification in which you’ll extend the opposite arm and contract it with the leg you’re bringing up towards your chest. Keep the movements slow and even.

7. Forward or Backward Lunge

Lunges are a simple exercise that will help build strength all along your legs and core. To do a forward lunge, you’ll need to:

1. Stand straight with your legs shoulder-width apart.
2. Take a big step forward with one leg, letting your heel hit the floor first.
3. Lower your body until your forward thigh is parallel to the floor. Make sure your knee doesn’t shift forward further than your toes.
4. Press into your heel to bring your leg back until you’re in the starting position again.
5. Do the same with the other leg.

For a backward lunge, you’ll step your leg backward instead of forward. The thigh in front will still be parallel to the floor.

8. Arm or Leg Raises

Arm and leg raises are another way to activate your core. To do them, you’ll need to:

1. Start with your hands and knees on the floor. Make sure your arms and thighs are parallel to each other, with your knees under your hips and your hands under your shoulders. Keep your back straight and face the floor.
2. Lift one arm and the opposite leg up, in a slow and controlled motion. Lift them both straight out, so your leg, back and arm make one even line.
3. Return to the starting position.
4. Do the same with the other arm and leg. Alternate either side of your body.

9. Dead Bug

A dead bug is an ideal core exercise to relieve lower back pain. For this workout:

1. Lay flat on your back on a padded mat. Put your arms and thighs straight up, perpendicular to your back and the floor. You should hold your calves parallel with the floor. You can place a towel or cushion under your shoulders to support your neck if needed.
2. Reach one arm over your head and straighten the opposite leg, so both become parallel with your back.
3. Return your arm and leg to their starting positions.
4. Do the same with the opposite arm and leg, alternating each time.

What if Core Exercises Aren’t Helping Your Back Pain?

If you’re engaging in regular lower back core workouts and still experiencing pain, you may need medical intervention. Plenty of minimally invasive treatment options are available for lower back pain, such as:

• Endoscopic discectomy
• Endoscopic rhizotomy
• Lumbar radiofrequency ablation
• Kyphoplasty and vertebroplasty
• Spinal cord stimulator
• Regenerative medicine

Regardless of your back pain’s cause, medication and simple procedures can alleviate your suffering. If you’re experiencing chronic back pain and core workouts aren’t enough, you may need medical treatment.

Contact the Spine INA for Relief

Chronic back pain is a common ailment with dozens of possible causes, and it can be debilitating. Fortunately, core exercises for lower back pain can be an effective way to treat your ailment. If your back pain persists, you may need medical intervention. Here at the Spine INA, we focus on helping you heal and live the life you want — free of back pain. To learn how we can help you, contact us today.

Sources:

1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5648929/
2. https://spineina.com/blog/what-are-your-surgical-options-for-spinal-stenosis/
3. https://www.cdc.gov/falls/facts.html
4. https://spineina.com/conditions/back-pain/lower-back-pain/
5. https://spineina.com/contact/