I have had recurring back pain for many years and finally it got to the point I had to really fix it. No more constant visiting of Chiropracters. I happened to be in Brisbane and attended the Mater Back Clinic. They have been looking at how to retrain people to gain their 'core stability' which is the root cause of most back pain it seems. One of the important things I learnt was how important it is to get the Multifidus muscle group functioning again.
Unfortunately it is very difficult to get the feedback that you need to make the tiny muscle movements. But - Jim Johnson's exercises enable you to do this easily yourself and it works. The exercises are reproduced here and I thoroughly recommend his book. A large part of the book gives much valuable advice gained from analyzing actual clinical trial data - the advice in the book and these exercises are not based on hear-say, but CLINICAL EVIDENCE. That is why they work!
This is the first simple lesson that Jim Johnson describes in his book "The Multifidus Solution"
The video shows how you simply start on your hands and knees then lift one leg, holding for 1 second then lower. Repeat with the other leg. Work up to being able to do twenty of these consecutively.
Rules:
Any pain, stop.
Only do the exercise on alternate days and 3 days a week. Excessive repetition does not help.
When you can easily do the twenty sets, you stop doing this exercise and move on to exercise two.
Total time to do this exercise each week is less than 3 minutes (so you can find time).
The book that these exercises come from is given below. The advice in this great book is based on CLINICAL EVIDENCE and not hear-say, that is why these exercises work. If you have a back problem, no matter what you think is the cause or where it is painful, you must try these exercises. You can also get the book as a reference, it is far less than the cost of ONE visit to a chiropracter.
Following on from the first exercise, this one has a little variation. When lifting the left leg you also lift the right arm. When lifting the right leg, you lift the left arm. The Multifidus muscle is now getting a little bit more of a workout.
Again there are rules:
Any pain, stop.
Only do the exercise on alternate days and 3 days a week. Excessive repetition does not help.
When you can easily do the twenty sets, you stop doing this exercise and move on to exercise three.
Total time to do this exercise each week is less than 3 minutes (so you can find time).
The book that these exercises come from is given below. The advice in this great book is based on CLINICAL EVIDENCE and not hear-say, that is why these exercises work. If you have a back problem, no matter what you think is the cause or where it is painful, you must try these exercises. You can also get the book as a reference, it is far less than the cost of ONE visit to a chiropracter.
Again this is a variation on exercise two; this time you add some ankle weights. If you don't have ankle weights you can use heavy boots. If you wish to purchase ankle weights they are available at sports stores, and also at Amazon (c) (see the Amazon link at the bottom of the page).
The rules again:
Any pain, stop.
Only do the exercise on alternate days and 3 days a week. Excessive repetition does not help.
When you can easily do the twenty sets, you can add a little more weight if you wish.
Total time to do this exercise each week is less than 3 minutes (so you can find time).
After a few weeks of exercise number three at twenty sets, you can reduce to twice a week if you like. I have continued with three times usually, but occasionally only doing two days. But, you must keep the exercises up. You may suffer a recurrence of pain if you do something silly (as I did after about a year of no pain at all). In that case, take the cautious option and start again on the program. The key here is that a trauma can make the multifidus muscles group stop functioning properly again; so you need to keep the exercise routing going.
The book that these exercises come from is given below. The advice in this great book is based on CLINICAL EVIDENCE and not hear-say, that is why these exercises work. If you have a back problem, no matter what you think is the cause or where it is painful, you must try these exercises. You can also get the book as a reference, it is far less than the cost of ONE visit to a chiropracter. That said, it is a good idea to visit a chiropracter twice a year for a maintenance check-up probably.
