Your lower back feels stiff when you get out of bed in the morning or after doing some

work in the yard. Weve all been there and we all joke that its, because were getting older! While there is some truth to that statement, the reality is that we can do something about it. With a little focus and dedication, you can get yourself up to speed on a few exercises and then maintain your stability by incorporating a couple of exercises into your normal, everyday activities. First, you need to know why your muscles become stiff and sore and how to protect against it.

Your lower back, pelvis and hips make up the core of the body. There is a tremendous amount of movement through this area and most power movements also begin here. The amount of movement is good as it allows us to achieve most positions and accomplish most tasks. The caveat is that we must CONTROL that motion to protect all the pieces and give ourselves a stable base, or core, to work from so that our movements are effective and efficient.

You have twenty-four vertebrae in your spine (7 cervical, 12 thoracic and 5 lumbar you also have 5 vertebrae that have fused together in a triangular shaped bone called your sacrum but we cover that in another article!). In between every two vertebrae is an intervertebral disc. You can think of these discs as being shaped like a jelly donut. The dough part is a thick, strong cartilage material and the inner jelly portion is more of a clear, soft gel. These discs allow the vertebrae to move on nearly all directions, mostly limited by bony projections from each vertebra that come together into facet joints. When you bend forward, the vertebrae pinch in the front and push the gel toward the back. Likewise, when you return to standing upright, the gel repositions itself in the middle of the disc.

Practice protection. The good news is that you have some very strong muscles in your back that can help support the back side of your spine and take the pressure off of the discs. When these muscles arent working correctly, the back portion of the disc becomes strained and stretched out, allowing the gel to push outward through the disc wall, creating a bulge. Because of the way we typically move, the discs become weakened in the back corners, precisely in the areas where the nerve roots exit the spinal cord, and can pinch off or compromise a nerve root. In addition to disc problems, the facet joints in the back can become stretched out and damaged when the muscles are not properly supporting the spine and controlling movement.

Practice stability. In addition to protecting important parts of your spine, developing stability to control movement has a very important purpose. Every movement you make must occur from a stable base or else it will be inefficient and ineffective. Since most movements in the body are made up of several components and sequences, the ineffectiveness becomes amplified, resulting in poor performance and, ultimately, injury.

Heres an illustration of what instability might feel like. Have you ever been for a walk on beach sand? While it might feel good to have the warm sun beating down on you with a cool ocean breeze and warm sand oozing up through your toes, it certainly is not an easy or efficient walk. As you push off to take your next step, the sand beneath your foot gives way and you have to work much harder and less efficiently to achieve your push-off. Then you make your way back to the parking lot and you realize how nice it is to have all your power back with every step. For you readers at a different altitude, think of walking in the 8 inches of powdery snow that just fell or walking across an icy parking lot. Lets say you generate 100 pounds of force during your push-off (just makes it easier to use a round number!) Its easy to see in these examples that you lose a significant amount of that forceboth inefficient and ineffective.

Properly strengthened AND conditioned muscles are key to being able to live a normal or even active lifestyle. If your muscles cannot support and stabilize your spine, they will be repeatedly overstretched and strained which will leave them stiff and sore. The exercises that work on spine stabilization are progressive from easy with your body supported (lying on your back) to hard while sitting on an unstable surface (such as an exercise ball) to difficult while standing and moving (performing a lunge or lifting a box.) Once you advance to the more difficult, controlled exercises, your muscles memory will carryover to your normal, everyday activities and the concentration required on your part will be less.

We are constantly updating our exercise videos and are now working on a progression routine that will significantly help you understand and work through appropriate exercises.