Back pain is one of the most common causes of pain in our country. It can make things like working, doing laundry, exercising, and tying your shoes difficult and painful.
Working long hours at the computer is one of the big culprits of back pain. Sitting for long periods of time shuts off your back extensor muscles, shoulder blade muscles, and glutes.
It also causes tightness in your pecs, quads and hip flexor muscles. When this happens often enough or long enough the end result is often back pain.
The good news is there are simple exercises you can do to strengthen the weak muscles, correct your posture and get back pain relief. At Solutions Physical Therapy & Sports Medicine, our highly trained Alexandria, VA physical therapists will design a treatment plan for your specific needs.
Tall Kneeling Trunk Rotation
This exercise reactivates your shoulder blade muscles, glutes and back extensor muscles while stretching your quads and pecs.
You don’t need to do this exercise in the kneeling position. You can do it standing and it will be just as effective. When you do it standing it will be more likely to create a stretch in your hip flexors instead of your quads.
Open your chest up as much as possible by driving your elbows as far back as as you can.
Push your hips forward without arching your low back. Don’t allow your hips to twist as you turn your shoulders. This really activates the glutes opposite the side you’re turning toward.
Do 10 reps of this every 1-2 hours to give your body a break from sitting. It will refresh your body and mind and help you prevent back pain.
Tall Sitting
A slumped forward posture is not the end of the world if it is a small part of your day. But if you spend a long time like that it can cause back pain and make any back pain you already have worse.
To do this correctly, just try to think about lengthening your spine. Your upper back will get straighter and your chin will come closer to your neck.
Tall sitting helps you to recover to a less stressful position and improves your body’s control of your spine.
It’s not important to try to hold this position all day long. Do a few reps every hour as a re-set every to keep yourself from staying slumped over all day and get back pain relief. Our trained physical therapists are dedicated toward helping you achieve a pain-free life.
Neither of the exercises above should make you hurt more. If you’ve tried these and you’re still hurting, we can help you!
At Solutions Physical Therapy & Sports Medicine, we’re experts at treating back pain and will develop a plan to help you beat it.
Call us at 703-810-7487, or click here and a member of our team will schedule an evaluation with one of our expert physical therapists.
Working to keep you living your best life,
The Solutions Physical Therapy & Sports Medicine Team
