Don’t baby your back! The cries of “I feel it in my back” or “my back is sore!” can sometimes be heard around The Studio. And unless there is a sharp, sudden pain, or one that lingers for a long time – we say…that’s okay! Your back muscles, just like any other muscle group will get sore if you use them, especially if they’re weak. Sometimes we leave class and feel it in our abs or feel it in our shoulders, but it doesn’t seem to elicit the same response as when we feel it in our backs.
It’s been shown time and time again in research, that if you want to help reduce any back pain you may experience, you need to strengthen your lower back (lumbar) and core muscles. You may not know it, but many of the exercise sets in HIIT classes or poses in yoga are aimed to do just that. Strengthening your back muscles will take time, and may cause some muscle soreness and fatigue in the process – but it’s important not to baby your back! But strengthen it! Long term it will help prevent future injuries, improve your spine stability and improve your range of motion, and in the short term you might feel some muscle soreness.
Over the years our bodies learn to compensate in order to continue to move throughout the day (bodies are amazing!) We want to help give you the tools to learn how to uncouple your joints and help them to work the way they were designed to work. This way when you want to press the heavy weights overhead you can use your shoulder and not your back!
An acute back injury might require some rest, massage or other therapies, but you want to eventually work towards strengthening your spine’s capacity to absorb and produce force and move freely. You cannot train where you cannot move – if you can’t move your spine freely you can’t strengthen where it is weak.