ChiropracTIP – AVOID These Exercises with Back Pain in Inver Grove Heights!

ChiropracTIP - AVOID These Exercises with Back Pain in Inver Grove Heights!

Avoid These Exercises with Back Pain by Gonstead Chiropractor, Dr. Ryan Hetland

Hey there, Dr. Ryan Hetland here. Welcome to today's video. I've had a lot of questions lately about working out, exercising when your back is hurt. Should you work out? What exercises should you do when your back is injured, specifically, your lower back?

It's a really good question and one that actually isn't the easiest to answer, but I can answer with a big picture kind of answer to make it simpler for you. The most critical thing not to do when you have a back injury and you're trying to heal, you're going to a chiropractor, you're doing physical therapy, is the back, especially the disc between the spine, do not like it when you bend forward-especially the further forward you bend-and it doesn't like it when you twist when you're bending at the same time.

So a lot of times, you'll get injured when you're bending forward and twisting to pick something up or you're bending and twisting and golfing, or you're bending and twisting, especially if you add weight to the mix like you would when you're shovelling snow or raking leaves-functional things you want to be able to have strength to do.

However, using weight to do these things, sometimes even when your back hurt, it's hard to even vacuum because you're twisting and bent forward and using some resistance there, so bending forward, twisting, adding any weight is troublesome.

The other key thing not to do when you have back pain and you're injured is to compress the spine, so for example, putting weight on your spine like doing a squat with weight on your spine is compressing the spine, squeezing it more together.

And as sure as I say that, the patients or people are going to ask, "What if I do leg press where I lay on my back, push the weight up from that angle?" And, really, that's similarly the same thing. You're maybe having a little less, but the reality is you're putting weight into your legs and there's a bar, usually, holding you in on your shoulders so that way you don't slide up because the weight is going to push you that way and, eventually, you're going to compress the spine.

So, compressing the spine with weight, bending and twisting, especially with weight, but it doesn't have to be weight. Also, and the third thing are things that are repetitively causing a pounding effect on the spine, say for example, horseback riding or running would just be a compounding effect on the back. So when you're injured, it's really easy and far easier to answer what you shouldn't be doing when your back is hurt and injured, at least, for a period of time, I would say at least two weeks to four weeks depending on the injury.

So this is where a doctor's advice like a doctor-patient relationship would be more helpful. Physical therapists are good at it as well, kind of deciding what it is. I'd say the main difference for me is that I treat a lot more discs and see and review MRIs, X-rays, and treat disc-related issues-herniated discs, bulging discs-especially with chiropractic and spinal disc decompression, to be done on another video, but kind of a chiropractic tip of this week is really what not to do and what to avoid while your back is hurt.

So I hope this is valuable for you. Feel free to reply to me and reach out, and let me know if you have any questions. Have a great day.

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RH Health & Injury Specialists
5759 Blaine Avenue East
Inver Grove Heights, MN 55076
Phone: (651) 756-7941
Email:
drhetland@rhhealthinjury.com