Lower Back Issues – Intro

November 17, 2008 on 1:41 pm | In Strength Training | 2 Comments

Lower back pain has caused more worker compensation cases than anything other medical issue.  To qoute Harley Goldberg, D.O. Director, Spine Care Services Chief, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Kaiser Permanente San Jose Medical Center:  “Four in five people will have intermittent recurrent back pain, and more than 90 percent of back pain is uncomplicated.”

Unfortunately back pain will occur in most adults at some point during their lives.  Also, there are many causes of lower back pain.  With athletes, however, the pain usually occurs due to a muscular imbalance or tightness. 

Common culprits are tight glutes or hip flexors.  Also, tight hamstrings, often a side effect of lots of running without proper warm-up or warm down stretching, can cause a pulling effect on the lower back.  I have had athletes that fall into all of the above categories for one reason or another.  Over the last 3 months, I have taken an active role in applying A.R.T techniques, dynamic and static stretching, and flexibility work to tackle the problem of lower back pain in athletes.   Most cases can be alleviated using those techniques, but as a disclaimer, persistant, sharp back pain should be checked out by a PT or DR.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting ideas that you can work on yourself or with your athletes to help them with their tightness.  If you have any techniques that have been successful for you, please send them along, I enjoy the exchange of ideas. 

     – J. HASHEY, CSCS -