Spotting Back Pain During Running and Walking - What Do Abs Have To Do With It?

The post Innovation in Abdominal Muscles showed one of the most common, yet most overlooked cause of lower back pain during long standing walking, and running.

Readers sent excited letters stating they could finally see and feel why they had back pain, and could immediately feel the difference when they stopped standing with too much inward curve in the lower spine, and began standing and moving in neutral spine.

Readers asked for more photos so that they can see the difference between overarching (hyperlordosis) and neutral spine (normal lordosis) during running and walking. They wanted to see the overarch in action and what running in neutral spine looked like.

• In both photos, the hip tilts forward in front (and out in back) instead of holding vertical. The abdomen rounds outward.
• Note the red stripe on the runner's pants in the photo at left. The stripe tilts forward from the top of the leg to the middle of the hip. Compare to the red vertical line in the middle and right-hand drawing. The beltline tips downward in front. Compare to the red lines tilting downward in the drawings.
  
• The walker in the photo at right tilts the hip forward in front (and out in back), beltline tips downward. The upper body leans and sags backward.

The muscles that shorten to prevent the upper body tilting back and the hip tilting forward are your abdominal muscles. The abdominal muscles are too long when you allow overarching. Keep this in mind when you hear about exercise programs that claim to lengthen your abs.

Moving your spine to neutral spine for all daily life is how abdominal muscles help prevent back pain. It is not strengthening them that does this, and it is not tightening. Crunches and other forward bending exercises do not train you how to use your abs to hold neutral spine and they increase herniating pressure on your discs - click Good Life Works Better Than Bad Ab Exercise. Use your abdominal muscles, without tightening them, to position your lower spine during all you do, just like using any other muscles to move any other part the way you want. It is a free ab workout all day, and you will stop a major cause of back pain during standing, walking, and running.

• Click Overlooked Ab Muscles in Overhead Lifts to see more examples of overarching during lifting weights.
• Click Change Daily Reaching to Get Ab Exercise and Stop Back and Shoulder Pain to see an example when reaching and lifting arms overhead
• Click Prevent Back Surgery to see why overarching can be so damaging to the joints of the vertebrae.
• Click my web site books page www.DrBookspan.com/books to see the training manual The Ab Revolution™. It shows several techniques to learn neutral spine as a normal habit, and how to use it to stop back pain from hyperlordosis, even if you don't exercise (Part 1) and how to use it for better core training if you want to incorporate it into exercises (Part 2), from simple to the hardest you can get.
  
  

Labels: abdominal muscles, facet joints, fix pain, lordosis, neutral spine, posture, running, walking

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