Back Pain & Hip Mobility
Rule #1: Keep A Stable Spine And Mobile Hips
Back pain and stiff hips often go hand-in-hand and almost always the go-to for this is stretching. But muscle tension is more than just flexibility. Here we will break down the connection between back pain and hip mobility – how the muscles at the hip affect your spine. By the end you will understand how these two interact and how they may lead to pain if things are out of balance.
The Relationship Between Back Pain And Hip Mobility
Back pain can bring up a number of compensatory responses and often one of the first responses is hip stiffness. Since the spine is connected to the hips at the sacroiliac joint, any change at the hips will have a direct effect on the spine. A very common symptom is stiff hamstrings and although stretching may alleviate some discomfort temporarily, depending on the nature of your back pain and hip stiffness, excessive stretching may make things worse.
The problem often lies in the differing functional roles of the spine and the hips – stability vs mobility. Here we emphasize movement efficient and our first rule of weight training is:
Rule #1: Keep a Stable Spine and Mobile Hips.
An easy example of this is when you reach for something on the ground, you try to pick up a box from the ground and you strain your back. Often times when this happens it is because your spine rounded forwards too much (flexion moment ) as you went down or on the way up, and the load was too much for the stretched muscle, or their was too much compression on the disc leading a rupture or herniation that is now pressing against a nerve (many time the disc rupture is already present before the back pain is experienced). In this situation the spine was not stable, the instability was as you bent forward to pick up the box. In this case the movement should have come from the hips by producing a hinge.
With many weight bearing movements as a resistance load travels further away from the moving joint on the horizontal plane it increases the demand on the joint. The Romanian Deadlift (hinge) is a great example for this. As the upper body tips forward the hips (the joint performing the movement) is now further from the weight on the horizontal plane. This puts greater demand on the hips and lower back as they are the furthest away. This is referred to as Moment Arm – the horizontal distance between the joint and the line of force.
Pain Relief for Back Pain: As the body begins to fatigue, the hips and the lower back (the spots under the most stress) have a higher chance of injury relative to other joints. A natural response to this would be hip stiffness to limit the load on the spine. If you have a previous back injury, the hips will also stiffen up to prevent the spine from bending forward. The idea here is to keep the spine upright where it is most efficiently placed, does not require much muscular activity to maintain, and often is the least painful active position for those with back pain. With this lower level of stability and muscular recruitment, any forward bending will be done in a weaker and more relaxed state—more likely to lead to injury when the spine is loaded or stressed.
Solution: For effective pain relief for back pain, reintroduce spine stability and hip mobility movements. The latest research articles show that after the initial rest period post-back injury, the sooner you reintroduce regular activity, the quicker the healing time. Taking this into consideration, the sooner you are able to reintroduce spine stabilization and hip mobilization exercises, the better.
Spine Stabilization:
- Planks and Side Planks
- Pallof Press
- Bird Dogs
Hip Mobilization:
- 90/90
- Frog Squat
- Fire Hydrants
These are exercises you can use to reintroduce the correct function of the hip and the spine. At Fast-Twitch Kinesiology we help you perform these motions, show their correlation to your sport and provide adjustments and modifications specific to you. Book with us today!
PS; don’t wait for back pain to start these exercises, start now and reduce your risk of injury today.
Reuben Corpeno Gonzalez
Registered Kinesiologist
Fast-Twitch Kinesiology