The Quick Story on
How To Fix Your Own Back Pain

© Jolie Bookspan, MEd, PhD, FAWM
Director, Neck and Back Pain Sports Medicine
and the Academy of Functional Exercise Medicine


Dr. Jolie Bookspan's methods to fix back pain are so successful, that
Harvard School of Medicine clinicians have named her "The St. Jude of the Joints." 
Her method to solve chronic lower back pain, The Ab Revolution™ is used by military and top spine centers around the world.

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This information shows you how to quickly stop the source of upper body pain. Then you no longer will get the pain and your neck, shoulder, and upper back can heal. Not all exercise is medicine. Not all medicine is healthy. We change that.

Even though many news articles quote back doctors saying that no one knows what causes back pain and nothing seems to work to fix it, the good news it that back pain is not mysterious or difficult to fix, surgery and pills are almost never needed, you don't need bed rest or giving up favorite sports, and most of all, you don't need to "live with pain."

Chronic Bad Standing and Reaching Overhead
You know you're not supposed to stand slouched so that your low back arches, but you do it. Most people arch their back every time they reach overhead, or look up, or try to "stand straight" by pulling their shoulders back. Then they go to the gym and the trainers tell them to arch their back and stick their behind out when exercising. This makes the weight of your upper body rest on your low back instead of the muscles of your torso and "core." This arching back is a major source of back pain

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Overarching the low back by letting upper body weight sag onto the low back
is so common that people think it is normal posture.
Even worse, many people think it is attractive and stand in this weak, sloppy, painful way.
Allowing too much arch in the low back is a major source of back pain.

Test yourself now. Reach high and straight up overhead, biceps to ears. Does your back arch? What about when you pull your shoulders back to "fix" your posture - do you arch your back to do it? Instead tuck your hip without bending forward or leaning back, to take the large arch out of your back when you do other things like lift overhead, and even just to stand up straight. When you get your upper body weight off your low back by reducing the arch, you will immediately feel reduction in low back pain and pressure. Exercise magazines say "use neutral spine" but then they show exercises done with the low back arched to an unhealthy degree. It is not sexy, it is a sloppy posture. It is as bad a habit as smoking. More on this follows.

Chronic Bad Bending and Lifting
You know not to lift things by bending over at the waist. But you do it - all day -picking up socks, petting the dog, for laundry, trash, making the bed, looking in the refrigerator, and all the dozens of times you bend over things. Then you go to the gym and lift weights bent over, then stretch by bending forward, do yoga bending over, then lift and carry things bent forward. No wonder your back hurts.

All this forward bending (flexion) weakens back muscles, strains soft tissue, and pushes your discs to the back (posteriorly). Over years the disc moves back until it is sticking out (herniated, or "slipped"). The resulting herniation can press on nearby nerves. This is how you get a "pinched nerve," also called "impingement." It may hurt in your low back, give you pain or pressure in your buttock. Pain may wrap around to the front of your hip. If the disc presses on your sciatic nerve, you get sciatic pain down your leg. If you slouch your head forward all the time, you can push discs backward in your neck, sending pain down the nerves in your arm.

Tight muscles can also press on the same nerves mimicking sciatica. A degenerating disc is not a disease, but a simple, mechanical injury that can heal, if you just stop grinding it and physically pushing it out of place with terrible habits.

Picture yourself standing sideways facing right.
On the left above is a normal disc between two low back vertebrae.
On the right is a disc pushed out (herniated) from years of forward bending habits.
Forward bending gradually pushes discs out to the back. Lift and bend properly to avoid disc damage.

 

Sitting with your low back rounded is a bad habit. It eventually can degenerate, then herniate your low back discs.

An Injury, Not A Condition
The majority of back pain comes from bad standing, sitting, and bending habits. The strain and pressure of letting your body weight grind on your joints over years of bad mechanical habits causes pain, and leads to arthritis, curvatures, impingement, and bad discs. Just as smoking one cigarette at a time eventually can cause trouble, back pain almost always develops from years of simple bad habits. Back pain that comes on suddenly is like a heart attack that developed over years.

What To Do
Back pain often comes and goes. People desperate for relief during acute episodes try strange things. Don't fall for pills, gadgets, and potions. Most back pain is easily remedied if you change the constant, injurious process of bad body mechanics.

Remember that "doing back exercises," or yoga, or meditating, or getting a shot, but not changing the bad habits all the rest of the day that hurt in your back in the first place, is like eating cake and ice cream morning, noon, and night, then doing your "exercises." You are not balancing the harm.

Bad Habit 1- Arching When Standing and Carrying Things
Look in any fitness or health magazine and you will see people standing and exercising with their behind stuck out in back. Although trainers and aerobics instructors often tell people to stand this way, it is a major source of back pain.

Allowing your low back to sway, exaggerating the normal inward curve when standing, walking, and reaching allows the weight of your upper body to grind down on your low back. This is called "sway back" or lordosis. Lordosis is not a structural condition, but bad posture. It causes much low back pain, including facet pain. Facets are the joints of your vertebrae. Allowing your body position to sag in an arch pressures your facets and low back, causing pain.

Arching your back when you reach up or lift is a bad postural habit that causes much back pain. Arched back (lordosis) is easily stopped by using your muscles to tilt your hip so that you do not arch. This uses abdominal muscles. This is how abs help your back. Simply strengthening your abs does not stop the arching that causes pain. Using your abdominal muscles to reposition your spine away from arching under your body weight and the things you carry is the key. This concept is The Ab Revolution™.

Don't arch your back in order to look upward. Instead pull back with your upper back and shoulder muscles without letting your upper body weight rest downward on your low back. That is a healthier movement for both upper and lower back. Don't arch your back when you lift and carry things in front of you. If you arch your back by sticking out your behind, then reduce lordosis by tucking your hip, as if starting to do a crunch but without bending forward. This will straighten your body. Another kind of arching lets the upper body sag backward, but the hip is forward. To straighten this bad posture, tuck the upper body forward. Use this technique all the time, particularly when reaching and lifting overhead. Your packages can be a built-in abdominal muscle exercise, and in this way, your abs prevent your weight from crushing down on your low back causing pain. This does not happen automatically, just have having strong abs. This is where "ab" programs miss how to fix back pain. The pain comes from the bad arched posture. You use your abs to move your back out of this posture. Use of abs for healthy positioning is The Ab Revolution™. For more, read the article about using abs to help your back - The Ab Revolution™ on this web site, or better yet, get the book, The Ab Revolution™.

 

Bad Habit 2- Forward Head
Jutting your chin forward is a bad posture called a "forward head." It looks old, creates much neck and upper back pain, and is a prime contributor to herniated cervical discs. Are you sitting with your head forward right now reading this?

A forward head (left) is a major cause of neck, upper back, and shoulder pain. Healthy head and neck position (right) stops the pain. Many people are too tight to use this healthy posture. See the neck pain article, or the full back pain article for easy stretches and exercises that make good positioning possible.

Pull your chin in, gently, not stiffly. Don't tip your chin up or down. Use "chin-in" as daily posture, not an "exercise" you only do a few times daily. To practice, stand with your heels, hips, upper back, and the back of your head against a wall. If you can't do this comfortably, you are too tight to stand up straight. This is common. One helpful stretch is to hold both arms up, bent at the elbows, like "a stick up." Pull each arm behind you using a wall to help pull it back. Keep your thumb facing upward. Feel the stretch in the muscles of the chest, not the shoulder joint. Don't let your back arch. Do this nice chest stretch many times a day and you'll find it much easier to stand straight so that your upper back doesn't hurt.

Bad Habit 3- Round Back
Slouching when you stand, sit and bend so that your back curves, like an "old person," eventually overstretches the long ligament down the back of your spine, weakens your back muscles, and pushes discs outward. Disc herniation usually result from mechanically pushing them posteriorly with chronic flexion - that means sitting rounded and bending over wrong instead of bending your knees. Are you sitting rounded right now reading this?

Bad Bending and Lifting
People go to the gym and pay a trainer to make them do squats and lunges with an upright back and properly bent knees. Then, they bend over at the waist and pick up their gym bag to go home. Bend properly for everything, even the water fountain, to pick things up from the floor, to look in the refrigerator, or take things out of the dishwasher. Keep your torso upright and bend your knees. Keep your knees over your feet, not slumping forward, which is hard on the knees. Don't stretch by bending over at the waist without supporting your body weight on your hands. Many people are surprised to find that they injure their back doing forward yoga stretches. You wouldn't pick up a package that way. It is not really a surprise.

Don't hunch forward under the weight of the things you carry. It is not the pack on your back making you slouch. It is not using your muscles to counter the pull, that is the problem. Check your posture against a wall, described above, each chance you get: in the elevator, against a wall or door jam. When you walk away, keep your great new posture.

Strengthening And Stretching Is Crucial But Not The Whole Answer
Tight, weak muscles cannot do their job and easily cry out in fatigue and stress during motions that in-shape muscles easily support. Strengthening is needed, but will not automatically "give" you good posture or make you bend and move properly. Plenty of slightly people stand properly with no back pain. Plenty of muscular people have terrible posture, gait, and lifting habits, and the back pain that comes with it. You just need to retrain bad habits. Take our fun classes No More Back Pain, Stretch and Feel Better, The Ab Revolution, Lower Body Revolution, and others.

There are several important back exercises that retrain bad postural habits at the same time as relieving back pain and strengthening muscles. See the full-length back pain article for fun, effective exercises.

Fix Your Own Pain
Is it natural to slouch? As natural as wetting your pants, but you learn to hold it even when you don't feel like it.

Back pain is not a normal result of carrying heavy things or getting older. It's not because we walk upright on two legs. Bed rest and inactivity make back pain worse.

The average person does so many mechanical things every day to damage their back and neck, it is amazing they don't hurt more. Use your muscles to keep posture when standing and carrying things, and don't lean back when you pick things up or reach overhead. You'll burn calories, get great exercise without going to a gym, and fix your own back pain.

Fun Things That Help
- Watch other people’s posture, gait, and movement habits.
- Notice injurious postures doing "fitness and health" moves in fitness magazines
- Notice your own habits.
- Use principles learned to identify and eliminate the cause of your own pain.
- Send me photos showing the principles in action. Prizes for best candid.
- Send me your success stories about using these principles.

You Don’t Have To Live With Pain

What To Try Next:

Click DONATE to support this site or send thanks for fixing pain. This is a free web site - no ads, just real information to show you how to stop pain and get your life back.

Look what you saved on years of pills, gadgets, and treatments that don't work :-) Thank you !

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More Fun Things:

Take Fun Classes. Learn and Get Certified in Breakthrough techniques.

Read a Helpful Back Pain Story - Inspiring Patient Stories, real people tell, in their own words, how they used the information in these articles and classes to stop pain and fix their injuries.

See Dr. Bookspan's Research on This Web Site

Certification. Fellow Advancement. Awards. Better Earth. The Academy.

Want Fun Reminders? Learn and promote functional health with UNcommon sense gifts from the Academy.

More Free Articles

Back Pain
- Why crunches don't help back pain and how to retrain your abs to help your back- read about The Ab Revolution™
- For an in-depth understanding of how to fix your back pain, plus learn effective exercises, read the full back pain article.
- Lean how a disc herniates, what is sciatica, and how to fix them yourself.
- Secrets of Fixing Your Back Pain When Lifting and Carrying - some surprises. For everything you lift and carry, from groceries, to babies, to backpacks, to yourself.
- Long Sitting - Easy ways to stop back pain on planes, trains, from computers, and TV

Neck and Shoulder Pain
- Learn how to fix neck pain, bad cervical discs, and upper back and shoulder pain.

Knee Pain
- To understand why knees hurt and what to do, read How To Fix Your Own Knee Pain.

Safer, Saner Exercise That's More Fun
- Work your abs with no crunches! and learn to exercise your abs the way you need for real life- The Ab Revolution™
- To avoid ineffective habits that work against your health, read this article on "Why Fitness Isn't Working"
- To learn how to tell how to move in healthier ways, read about "Bad Exercises and Ones To Do Instead."
- Learn how to stretch the way you need for real life, and learn which stretches help, and which stretches harm.

Books

The Ab Revolution™ No More Crunches No More Back Pain Completely revised third edition.
Revolutionary core training method - No crunches. Combines sports medicine with fun exercise to get a workout at the same time that you retrain your muscles for healthy movement for ordinary daily activities. Burn more calories and get incredible abs. Used by military, law enforcement, and the nation's top spine doctors

Health & Fitness in Plain English
Previously sold out and unavailable, now bigger and improved in a bigger, better THIRD edition. 31 chapters on health, nutrition, exercise, and pain prevention. 363p.

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