Stretching for your back: analgesic without side effects!
Incorrect posture, inactivity, overweight, stress, and long trips by car are all elements that cause problems to our back. Although we aren’t conscious of our uncorrected habits, the arches and pains along the whole spine, above all in the morning, make us aware that there’s something wrong…
Let’s begin with some good sense.
Before you begin training, you should consult a doctor and do a back check-up, especially if you feel extremely tight and you’re suspicious you have a hernia or problems with your vertebral discs, working with a personal trainer is definitely the best way to exercise without running into risks.
Is it really possible to relieve back pain?
Yes, absolutely! If you train constantly, it is possible to prevent and alleviate pain. Occidental culture is based on the distinction between health and body and it isn’t careful about this fundamental relation. It’s evident in the inattention and the indifference we demonstrate to all the signals that our body sends us: we take care of aesthetics, if we are sick we easily take medicines, but we don’t think of prevention. Physical exercise should become part of the family’s daily routine: the education to prevention should be taught at an early age.
Do your stretches!
At the end of the training set in the gym, you usually do a sequence of stretching exercises. These ending exercises are more important than what they seem, they are fundamental to maintaining muscle flexibility and to ease tensions of muscle contractions.
We suggest these 5 exercises:
- Exercise 1: seated, with your back and head straight, bend forward slowly until you touch the floor with your fingers. Breathing deeply, keep the position for about 20 seconds.
- Exercise 2: on bended knees, with your hands on your hips. Push out your butt and arch your back, extending the lumbar region. Maintain this posture for 3 seconds, then arch the pelvis forward, contracting the gluteus and the abdominals, then return. Breath in when you move your pelvis forward and breathe out when you take it backwards. The bust must stay straight and stable during the entire sequence.
- Exercise 3: on all fours with your hands on the ground, push your pelvis backward, extending at most the vertebral column extending your arms. Keep the position for about 20 seconds, breathing in and out.
- Exercise 4: stretch out in cat posture: on all fours, arch the back and lift up your head, pushing. Keep the posture for 5 seconds, then close yourself with the shape of a C, extending the column in the opposite direction and bend your head forward. Keep this position for about 5 seconds. Breath in arching your back, and breath out when you extend it.
- Exercise 5: Cobra posture: prone, the elbows fixed to the floor. Lift up your bust and maintain your position. Don’t lift up your abdomen from the floor, this way you avoid arching the back too much.
The best execution:
If you want to focus your training for the day in particular on tension in your back, the ideal way would be to start with a short aerobic warming up. As you would have noticed, Yoga and stretching purpose the same exercises, obviously contextualized in a different way. They have in fact a common goal: to reach the total wellness of people, alleviate pain in the back and equilibrate the unbalance in our body. Don’t forget the importance of correct breathing: inhale when the muscles are in tension and exhale, slowly, when you relax them.
Now that you have more instruments in your hands, what are you waiting for?
We have the best machines to help you to reach your goals, and professional trainers ready to give you the right suggestions.
