Does Your Back Hurt When You Sit?

As far as I can tell that is the best kind of back pain to have.  Lucky you!

In very broad terms, I see two

All our happy hours at our computers can be the worst thing for back pain

Many happy hours sitting at the computer can make for a very sad spine.

types of back pain clients:  The first has increased pain when they are still, especially sitting, and the second group has increased pain when they are moving.  In both scenarios great improvement can be made to pain levels but, generally, the first responds most quickly to therapeutic exercise or pilates exercise.

If you feel pain when you are sitting but feel relief when you get up and walk around the fix is pretty obvious: Move more.   As a rule, even painful joints have pain-free ranges of motion.  Maybe your back hurts when you do ‘X’ but you can still do ‘Y’ and ‘Z’.  That’s very common, so be sure to continue to do ‘Y’ and ‘Z’. The importance of moving, moving, moving is in this short little note. Take a peek if you haven’t seen it already.

I had a frustrated client today. He said: ‘Exercise isn’t going to change the fact that I have a bone spur or how the bone spur pushes on the nerve and hurts like heck.’  I agree on Part I: Your bone spur will not be affected by exercise except that it may not get larger if your alignment is corrected.  I don’t agree with Part II: That exercise won’t change the pain you feel from the bone spur pressing on a nerve.  When did your pain get bad?  Six months or 2 years ago?  And when did you develop that bone spur? Probably long before that.  If we age inactively then the muscles supporting the area around the injury (the bone spur, in this example) become weak and offer less support in a position of great compression (sitting).

Get exercising. Get stronger. Lose the pain. If you can walk without limping, take short walks that don’t flare up your back muscles and then find a few toning exercises to take care of your weak spine muscles and butt muscles.

Use the navigating tabs to the left to go to find free exercises for back pain: Look up Back Pain Series 1-8.  Also, our DVD for exactly the issue of weak spines can be found under the store tab on this site.  Please let me know if you have any questions!

Does Your Back Hurt When You Sit?

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