Great Tip For Back Health, Part 1

Below is one of the best analogies I’ve ever heard about back pain and injuries.  Because oddly enough, for a topic and issue that is so widespread, people rarely seem to “get it” when it comes to the topic of back health – and more specifically, preventing problems.

You need to look at your back as a credit card being held in your hands.  When you bend it, the same thing happens to your back that happens to a credit card – not much.  It basically goes back into its original shape.

Unless you do it repeatedly.  Multiple times.  Over and over.  Day after day.  Week after week.  Year after year.

Eventually a little white stress line will appear.  Then maybe a small tear.  Then eventually, after repeated stress – it will tear significantly.  It’s the same way with both your credit card and your back.

And like bending a credit card, if you continually bend your back, you may get away with it for awhile – but eventually it will tear.  So that last time you tweaked it doing something relatively innocuous, it wasn’t that one move.  It just happened to be the culmination of thousands of bends.

This is EXTREMELY important if you exercise.  If you move incorrectly while exercising, you’re not only speeding up the injury process, but often you’re doing it with a load because you’re holding weights.  This obviously increases the risk exponentially.  So that lunge or squat that you’re doing that isn’t very good – you know the one with not too much hip movement but a lot of spinal movement? 

Real bad. 

It was that which set up your back for an injury, not the seemingly harmless playing with your kid, picking up a box, etc. that did it.  That was only the final straw.

More on part 2 next week, but for now:

View your back as a credit card:  You’ll be able to bend it a few times without incident – but keeping it up over time – especially through improper exercise – is a good way to get hurt.

Thanks to Mike Boyle for the analogy.