Lower Back Pain

I am beginning to get a lot of back pain with certain exercises. For example, the bent hollow body rock. I was doing 5x36r and was fine, this week its jumped to 4x48r and I can't finish it due to back pain. I assume this is my tuck strength? Given that I haven't tried mini-cycles yet, is this a situation where its appropriate? 

The back pain is also related to the increase I have had in sitting due to lectures picking up this semester.

It's really starting to affect my daily life, and I am beginning to have trouble sitting comfortably for longer than 20minutes. The pain is also creeping into other exercises like straddle planche. 

Recommendations? Should I drop back to bent hollow body hold?

Edit: I have been to the physio and there is some pelvic tilt going on. I'll be stretching my hip flexors more.

Shnordle said:

(...) I haven't tried mini-cycles yet (...)

eh?

How?

Why?

foam rolling

hip flexor stretches

foam rolling alleviates so much for me, i just finished a session a while ago and i think i might be sore tomorrow but my muscles feel much looser and mobile now.

do it periodically, the tightness has a way of creeping up on ya

Sitting blows! 

I can't be in a chair for too many hours without my lower back getting angry.

However, at least for my body, there are a couple of exercises that do me well after long bouts of sitting.

First and foremost is just moving, walking, hips circles etc to 'un-freeze' the back so it moves like normal again.

Then pike lean variations are magic, adding some pelvic tilts while in the position. This should be done from a position that does not feel like a max hamstring stretch.

I also like to use an old trick from yoga, supported downward facing dog. I'm fortunate and have a 'pelvic swing' (which I whole heatedly recommend to anyone with lower back aggravation) and this and pike leans are two of the big tools I use to help it.

Once the pain gets better, the arch up series of iM in foundations is the next location to mine for gold. (and the pelvic swing also doubles as an excellent platform for doing arch ups.)

Fantastic info guys, i'll give it all a go. Need to suss it out now considering I have a couple years left of study.

Fred: I haven't hit a roadblock yet where I have had to backtrack. Unless I am misunderstanding what mini-cycles are for?

Yes, maybe it is a misunderstanding of the terms: As long as you are following the deloads, you should be fine

Yes, your pelvic tilt is almost certainly the cause, or at least a major contributor, of the lower back pain. Learn to sit with a neutral spine and the pain should go away. 

http://www.drbookspan.com/SittingHealthy.html

Fixing the pelvic tilt is key and not just while sitting. My lower back pain gets better with sitting and worse with standing, but my pelvic tilt is pronounced when I am standing, yet while seated I can remain in neutral. Many others are the exact opposite, but it is still the same problem.

The foundation program is heavy on hamstring flexibility, which if not counteracted with stretching of the tight anterior structures, can just make the problem worse. The hip flexor stretches mentioned earlier should be done, but I just found recently that my tight quads and weak glutes were a more limiting factor in my APT correction process. So, explore around as each of our structures has adapted differently.

- Chris

FredInChina said:

Yes, maybe it is a misunderstanding of the terms: As long as you are following the deloads, you should be fine

I think a few exercises of mine could be off sequence. I just need to reassess and get them all synced.

Chris: Thanks mate, exactly what I am looking for. My glutes are significantly tighter than the rest of the muscles around my pelvis. This is partly due to hip (FAI impingement) surgery I had a couple of years ago. I'll look into sussing out a proper stretching regime.

Shnordle said:

 

I think a few exercises of mine could be off sequence. I just need to reassess and get them all synced.

Yes - this is important to keep all deloads in synch.

Do not add "extra work" during deload week.

These are the two events that would nullify your efforts at proper deloading.

Roger that Fred! 

I have made some of the adjustments that you guys suggested. I know it will take a little time to make real progress but I am still concerned about my technique potentially being poor. Although I had some back discomfort before I started the Foundation series it was never like this. Should I upload some pics/videos of what my body shape looks like while doing some of the exercises?

I don't want to continue like this. My back kills me during the bent hollow body rocks. Is your back supposed to be straight during this? Or curved because of the tuck? I am beginning to feel my hips may be tilted wrong while doing the exercise putting unnecessary stress on my lower back.

Edit: I just had a play with the rock and I think I am maybe rocking too far up onto my butt which is putting stress on my lower back? FL/PE1 mastery is no problem for me.

post a video of this:

1. lay down and put your hands overhead. touch the floor with your arms and do the same with your legs. this will give us an idea of how your tilt influences you laying.

let's start from there

Shnordle said:

FL/PE1 mastery is no problem for me.

 

I would drop back to this level until you can get things sorted out as it doesn't cause you pain. Work weeks 9-12 and really cement that lower back to the ground and strive for scapula as far off the ground as you can manage. 

It couldn't hurt to post a pic/vid of your ROM during this movement as well. The more data people have to work with the easier it will be to get the proper advice.

- Chris

Thanks guys, I'll get a video up over the next couple of days. Anything else you guys think might be helpful let me know and I'll get it recorded.Today I reverted back to PE1 doing 5x60s and felt much better after the whole workout. However there were periods where I was feeling a lot of stress on my lower back during the static hold. I'll drop back to 9 weeks and see how that goes.

I do want to mention that I used to computer game a lot as a teenager (almost 24 now), which developed some bad posture however I've never had back pain until I started the Foundation series. After doing some research I feel I might have an anterior pelvic tilt.

Thanks again!

chobbs said:

... The foundation program is heavy on hamstring flexibility, which if not counteracted with stretching of the tight anterior structures, can just make the problem worse ...

Which is why F1 is designed to be trained simultaneously with H1.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Coach Sommer said:

Which is why F1 is designed to be trained simultaneously with H1.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

I can see that Coach - at least if we have progressed far enough into H1 to hit the relevant sections. But for us zombies stuck on the first few PE movements there isn't much there to help and I think those of us in anterior tilt really need to spend some dedicated time on it when pursuing F1 (even if doing H1 as well).

- Chris

I'm sure doing 5 sets of them as mobility for a cooldown or a warm up won't hinder your progress, Chris

I've been doing them to check my mobility progress, while i get my foam rolling technique down and it hasn't hindered me in any way

Of course. I guess my comment was to point out that it was a conscious thing to add in, not just something we were getting as a by product when at the early levels.

- Chris

chobbs said:

Of course. I guess my comment was to point out that it was a conscious thing to add in, not just something we were getting as a by product when at the early levels.

- Chris

oh, i see what you're saying now    my favorite so far is HS/PE12>iM. feels great to do it. 

I'll have the videos up over the next couple of days. Moving house and assignments have held me up. 

So from those last posts is it safe to assume that an anterior pelvic tilt is addressed in the H1 series? 

Coach, unless I have missed the information regarding this, the vibe I got was that you could progress through the F1 series separately from the H1 series with no problems. However, it seems that they should be trained "simultaneously"?

Coach Sommer said:

Which is why F1 is designed to be trained simultaneously with H1.

Yours in Fitness,
Coach Sommer

 

 

Hey guys, I'll still get those videos up but I gave it some more thought today and started to look at what I had changed in my workout. After reading this thread, I think I may have jumped up too quickly in weight with jefferson curls. Thoughts?

how much are you doing right now and how has it strained you?