Friday, May 02, 2008

Fast Fitness - How to Feel Change to Neutral Spine

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - Use a wall to learn neutral spine while standing, to know how to stop a major source lower back pain during standing, walking, and running.

Many people learn pelvic tilts lying on their back in physical therapy or fitness classes. What does that do? Little. The purpose of learning the pelvic tilt is to know how to do it during real daily life so that you do not slouch and overarch your lower spine in to a swayback posture (hyperlordosis) which creates back pain. The tilts do not make your muscles prevent the slouch automatically, you use it to know how to do it yourself. My student Dennis, Olympic medalist in wrestling, demonstrates learning a functional pelvic tilt (he is holding his shirt away with hand so you can see better - you can relax your arms at your sides):

  1. Stand with your back against a wall. Touch heels, hips, shoulders, and the back of your head.
  2. If you allow a large arch in the lower spine there will be a large space between lower back and the wall. Press your lower back toward the wall.
  3. Don't touch or force your lower back to the wall. Just learn how to tilt the hip so that the lower spine comes closer to it and reduces in arch.


Use a wall often to practice, then the idea is to hold neutral spine without the wall during the rest of your day.

Reducing a large arch back to neutral stops the painful lower spine compression on soft tissue and facet joints during standing activities (and bad pushups and handstands).
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