What Has Caused My Lower Back Pain?

Lower Back Pain Causes

Lower back pain can have a range of different causes.

Sometimes the discs and nerves can become irritated which can lead to pain in the back and down the leg. Sometimes the tissues around the back will become extremely sensitive which can cause a lot of pain in the lower back. Sometimes the lower back muscles are simply overworking because something, somewhere else, isn’t doing it’s job very well.

No matter what tissues are becoming sensitive and painful, the cause is usually down to our movement habits and behaviours.

Our movement habits and behaviours are influenced by past learned behaviour. It’s often the case that, over the years, as we pick up the odd injury here and niggle there our body develops compensation strategies to protect itself. This is completely normal and it’s the reason you don’t need a physio every time you stub your toe!

Over time, however, this build up of compensation strategies can lead to certain areas of the body (e.g. your back) doing too much work. It’s often then at periods of high stress, or when your body is a bit tired, that you do the simplest thing such as pick a slipper up off the floor and you feel your back ‘go’.

Each person’s strategy is unique to them and there injury. That’s why there’s no ‘one size fits all’ approach. You need to find the true stressor unique to your body to achieve long lasting results.

Why Your Back Pain Keeps Coming Back

I’m going to talk about something that’s very important….

It’s actually on page 10 of my brand new book, “Beating Back Pain Without Pills, Injections or Surgery” and that is this common pitfall that I see people getting into with back pain.

What happens is when you have back pain, you take some painkillers, or maybe you go to the GP.

They tell you to rest…

They give you some tablets…

You rest, you get a little bit of short term relief, then you go back into everyday life, and then the pain returns again, and then people get trapped into that cycle.

Well the big thing that we need to understand about back pain is it’s very specific to YOU and your story.

So two people may come into the clinic here in Huddersfield with very similar symptoms, but what caused your back pain versus what caused someone else’s can be completely different.

And the big question that we ask in the clinic here, and that our therapists are always thinking about is what’s contributed to your back pain specific to your story. So you don’t just get cookbook cutter exercises. We have to put the pieces of the puzzle together for you.

Some clues that are going to help us with that is if you’ve had any previous injuries.

What we know from research is that when you’ve had a previous injury, what your brain does is a great job of protecting that injured site.

So for instance, if you rolled your ankle, you might find that you’re walking on the outside of your foot a little bit.

Now, what happens is that this makes you want to push your big toe into the floor because if you push your big toe into the floor, that engages all the muscles around the ligaments that you usually hurt when you roll your ankle.

So your brain has this inbuilt protective mechanism to protect the areas that it perceives a threat or a problem.

Now that’s a great short term. But long term, what research has shown is that when the pain’s gone that we still use some of these movement strategies that we used when we had that injury.

So that’s where your previous injuries are very important to solve your back pain.

So it’s not very uncommon here in the clinic for someone to come in with back pain and we’re looking at their ankle, we’re looking at their knee looking at the hip, we’re looking at the shoulder, we’re looking at their hand.

Because we have to piece the puzzles together and the big thing that we want to know here in the clinic is what’s not doing its job that’s causing your lower back to maybe do too much work.

 

Why Your Back Pain Keeps Coming Back

If there are any previous injuries that you have had that maybe you altered how you were moving slightly and then that will have put excessive pressure or getting your back to do a little bit more work.

The second thing that we need to be aware of with back pain is, if there are any nonphysical stressors as we call them, that’s maybe contributing to your back pain. So it’s not just physical, previous injuries, but also any emotion, any trauma can also have a big impact on your back pain.

Now on that one that for one second, I’m not saying that’s in your head.

Why that’s important is when we have trauma or when we have high periods of stress our breathing pattern tends to change.

Naturally what tends to happen is we go into a bit more fight or flight, we start to increase our breathing rate.

Now the big problem with that as I’ve spoken about below is that affects how our diaphragm works.

So our diaphragm, it sits here and it’s got two functions. It’s a spinal stabiliser, so it helps stabilise our core or it’s a part of the core stability muscles, but it also obviously has to keep us alive by breathing.

So when our breathing rate increases and we get a little bit stressed, we get a bit anxious, we might be starting to hyperventilate a little bit and might get a little bit of anxiety. Our diaphragm isn’t functioning as efficiently as it should be.

So what we tend to do then is we tend to lose that ability of that diaphragm to stabilise the spine. That becomes a little bit compromised and then our lower back may have to go, okay, that’s fine. I’m going to have to use maybe other muscles a little bit more.

So what we find here in the clinic is a lot of people struggle to relax their lower back muscles. Now I’m going to talk about that in a separate blog, but that’s just one contribution of trauma or non-physical stressor that may be contributing to your back pain.

So how do we resolve this? Well, that’s where you’re going to find that we’ll do a lot of exercises that would be focused around restoring your ability to relax.

We’ll do a lot of exercises looking at breathing in conjunction with exercises that have to take into account your previous injuries also.

So it won’t be just the case.
You’re going to be given a lot of core stability exercises and a lot of glute exercises.

We have to put the pieces of the puzzle of your story together to find out what truly is contributing to causing your lower back area to maybe overwork or for your brain to go, “Actually, you know what, there’s a problem here”, which is ultimately why you have this real sensation of pain in your lower back so on a sheet of paper I want you to write down your physical previous injuries and maybe some nonphysical stressors.

In your life and in the lead up to having back pain where you’ve had an increased amount of stress for a prolonged period or maybe you’ve had um, an emotional or um, some kind of trauma in your life or a life changing event that may have caused your respiratory system to maybe increase a little bit.

Then there are two big clues for us that a lot of people want to come to us to say, you know what, no one’s ever actually asked me about these before. So we take these into account, we put the pieces of the puzzle together, and then we go about building you a bespoke treatment plan to get you back to where you want to get back to.

So if you’re interested, come in for one of our Discovery Sessions.

The Best Exercises For Back Pain

Now very interestingly a lot of people think when they come here to ProSport Physiotherapy in Huddersfield, that you’re gonna get a lot of strengthening exercises.

Now, we will give you exercises that you’re gonna feel muscles working very hard, but what we’re trying to do, by getting those muscles to work hard is we’re trying to get other muscles to relax. Because very often it’s a lot harder to relax than it is to tense.

So when you’ve got a lot of stress in your life you’ve got a lot of things going on, it’s very, very hard sometimes to be able to relax…

…That’s the same with a lot of people with back pain.

So what we do here and what we think a little bit differently at ProSport Physiotherapy, all the Physiotherapists, Sport Therapists we’re all trained in this same approach, is to look at the body as one system.

And what we wanna do at ProSport Physiotherapy, is we wanna help certain muscles to be able to relax again. So one big mistake that I see people make with back pain is they try to sit upright.

So if you sit straight upright the one thing that’s gonna happen when you sit really upright with back pain is your lower back muscles are gonna be constantly working and that’s very uncomfortable to try to sit upright.

And if you’ve ever tried to sit up with perfect posture before, what you’re gonna naturally notice after four or five minutes is you’re gonna start to relax and you’re gonna start to slouch. Now the keyword there is relax.

Exercises For Back Pain

Who looks more relaxed?
Someone who’s up like that or someone who’s just a little bit relaxed, without being excessively slouched So I’m not saying you wanna be in the worst possible range, slouched posture ever. But you also don’t wanna be bold upright.

Because when you’re bold upright if you feel the muscles in your lower back and you sit up straight you feel these muscles that are parallel to your spin, they’re actually working. Now if you take your fist and you go like that and tighten your fist, you’re gonna feel all those muscles working around your fist.

So if you have to sit throughout the day and your fist is working really hard like this.

And this is a clear analogy for the lower back. After a few minutes the fist is going to give you signals and all the muscles around my wrist, they’re sending messages to your brain going, hey, I’m working very hard here.
That’s gonna make it very uncomfortable.

This wrist might actually get a little bit painful if you keep holding it like this.
Again, that’s a signal to my brain to say, hey, I’m doing a lot of work here. I need to relax, okay? So a lot of people with back pain, they make the mistake of trying to sit upright even more,

So there again, if we’ve got a lot of load going through a certain area of the back and we sit up straight, then we’re contributing to that by making these muscles even work a lot harder. So what we do at ProSport Physio, essentially with the lower back is we allow it to relax. Now how do we allow it to relax?

Now, the key thing is we need to put the pieces of your story together. But we get the lower back muscles to relax by getting other areas of the body to do more work because the body’s ultimately like a see-saw.

What we wanna do is we don’t want your lower back to do loads of work, we don’t want it to do no work.

We just want it to do the right amount of work for any given task or situation but we also want your legs, we want you hands, we want your torso, want everything else to do its job so you lower back doesn’t have to do too much work, give your brain a signal going, “hey, I’m doing a lot of work here”, which ultimately from my experience results in a lot of people with a very real sensation of pain.

So to get the lower back muscles to relax what we do is we figure out in your story, in your previous injuries, what’s contributing maybe to your lower back doing a little bit more work. What’s contributing to your back tightening a little bit.

Putting a little bit pressure maybe on your discs, on your nerves, you know, whatever your diagnosis. But if you’ve been told you have a bulging disc, you’ve had sciatica, you’ve a nerve root issue, whatever it is the pathology is the pathology.

What we wanna find out is what’s causing this area to have excessive pressure, excessive load,
we take that excessive load away by getting other areas of the body to do its job.

So that’s where in ProSport Physio, you’re gonna see a lot of exercises that are designed to give you a lot of relaxation around your lower back.

While we get other areas of the body working very hard we get that see-saw balance. So finally your lower back muscles can relax. We take excessive load off your disc. We take excessive load off the nerve.

We take excessive load off wherever the painful area is, and we get everything to do its job. And that’s the main approach here that all my therapists at ProSport Physiotherapy are trained in.

It’s the approach I use with England Rugby. It’s the approach I use with professional golfers.

And you too can access this treatment approach that ProSport and world class athletes have access to. Right here in Huddersfield.

Why The Way You Breathe Can Affect Your Back Pain

What I want to talk about in today’s blog is something that I cover in depth in my new book “Beating Back Pain “Without Pills, Injections And Surgery” and that is how your respiratory system that is how you breathe can influence your back pain.

Now, I know that might sound a little bit strange but if you were to walk into an England Rugby Union physio room, or in a hotel by the Six Nations or in Japan, you would’ve seen a lot of players doing a lot of breathing exercises and blowing up a lot of balloons.

Now, that might sound very strange, but actually why it’s really important is because your diaphragm and your pelvic floor are the two muscles that set the top and bottom of your torso.

So a lot of people try to strengthen their transverse abdominals and their obliques. They do lots of core exercises, they do Pilates to try eliminate their back pain, but what we forget a lot about is the two muscles that close the cylinder so to speak, which is the diaphragm and the pelvic floor.

Now, if you want your transverse abdominis to work well and you might’ve tried pulling your belly button in before, well, in order for your transverse abdominis to contract to the best of its ability, your diaphragm has to be out to lengthen.

Now, what I find with a lot of patients that come here with lower back pain, is that they’re often out of breath, they’re talking very quickly, they’re in a lot of pain.
When they go to move, what’s the first thing they do?..

They hold their breath and then they go to move. If they wanna pick something up they hold their breaths.

Now, the problem when we hold our breath is that we’re shortening and tightening, so to speak, our diaphragm.

So if you want your obliques, you want your transverse abdominis, you want all these core muscles to be able to contract effectively, we need your diaphragm to lengthen.

But most people do the complete opposite which is when we take a breath in we try to tighten everything because again, the anticipation of pain et cetera, but in actual fact this is the complete opposite to what we need to do.

So in my book “Beating Back Pain “Without Pills, Injections And Surgeries” I talk a lot about the importance of getting a full exhalation as we want that diaphragm to lengthen to give our abdominal muscles, our glute muscles the best chance to contract the way they were designed to contract.

Now, of course for physiotherapy, all of our therapists here, our physios or sports therapists, whoever you see here at the clinic, they are trained in exactly this approach, they are trained in the exact approach that I use with the England rugby team that I’ve used in Japan, that I’ve used in the Six Nations, that I’ve used in Australia, with the England Rugby League, and with some of the trickiest cases that we’ve had.

So again, with professional sport athletes, a lot of these guys they will have disc bulges, they will have issues with their nerve roots they will have sciatica, but what we can do very quickly and safely, is we can find out what’s driving this problem for them, get the whole body to work as one and then we can get them back out there and get them back into contact sports.

Now, for a lot of people that aren’t professional athletes you can still access the high level of care that these guys get right here in the clinic at ProSport Physiotherapy.

My mission at ProSport Physiotherapy, is to give the general public of Huddersfield and surrounding areas, an opportunity to access the World class treatment that professional athletes get on a daily basis.

If you’ve got back pain, that’s failed traditional approaches, if you’ve tried Pilates, If you’ve tried yoga, if you’ve tried sucking your belly button in, if you’ve tried the core exercises and you still have back pain, then click on the button below and come in and have a chat for a discovery session, absolutely no obligation

This is so that you can come in and have a chat. If you’re a bit sceptical that we can help you because you’ve been around the houses that’s absolutely and completely normal.