What Are The Best and Worst Exercises For Back Pain?

Dealing with back pain can have a profound impact on your lifestyle. You have to watch the things you eat, your daily habits, and the type and amount of exercise you get. While some exercises will give you great benefits as far as back health goes, some may make matters worse. Here are some of the best exercises for back pain and some you should avoid at all costs:

Avoid – Toe Touches

While toe touches can be a great stretching exercise for most and a great pre-workout, they can be disastrous for people dealing with back pain. Toe touches have the disadvantage of putting a lot of stress on your spine’s ligaments and disks, which will translate to even more pain. Toe touches can also overstretch your hamstrings and lower back muscles as well.

Do – Partial Crunches

Partial crunches are a great exercise for a wide variety of reasons. First, they work your core and abdominal tissue, which are essential for back support and to alleviate back pain. However, you have to keep proper form to reap the benefits of this exercise.

Make sure to never lead with your elbows and cheat by using your arms them to lift your neck up. This could only lead to more tension around the neck area. You should also make sure that your tailbone, feet and lower back are flat on the floor at all times.

Avoid – Sit Ups

While you might think that sit-ups might be a great exercise for back pain due to the fact that they work the abdominal area, it’s actually the opposite. While they are great for the abs, they aren’t so great for your back. We use a lot of our hip muscles when doing sit-ups and they can also put a lot of stress on your lower back discs as well.

Do – Wall Sits

Wall sits are not only great for endurance, but for back strength as well. What’s better is that they can be performed virtually anywhere, even in the comfort of your own room. All you have to do is to sit on a wall with your knees at a 45-degree angle. You then have to keep this position for a 10 count then slide back up. Repeat this exercise eight to ten times to get the benefits.

Avoid – Leg Lifts

Leg lifts are another exercise that you should scratch off your list if you’re dealing with back pain. While they can be great for building lower ab muscles, they rely primarily on your lower back, which can cause an excessive amount of stress in that area. According to echiropractor.org, many athletes have undergone orthogonal chiropractic therapy to relieve some of their issues, and the leg lifts they regularly perform are one of the reasons why this is so.

If you manage to squeeze some of these exercises into your routine and avoid those that could be detrimental to back health, you should be able to reduce your episodes of back pain in no time.