Balance Between Abdominal and Back Muscles

I confused a client yesterday by saying that her core muscles were stronger than most peoples, but then also telling her that her core was weak. Say what?

She was quite athletic with strong muscles throughout her body. The problem was that her core muscles weren’t as strong as her abdominal muscles. This imbalance was a source of her low back pain.

Core muscles stabilize the skeleton and give leverage to other muscles. Using superficial muscles like the rectus abdominus, pectoralis major, latissimus dorsi, quadriceps, and gluteus maximus without participation from the core will pull the skeleton out of alignment and create injury to ligaments and spinal discs.

“Is Your Ab Workout Hurting Your Back” by Tami Parker-Pope, published in the New York Times June 17, 2009 gives a great explanation and a video with some good exercises.

I agree that the exercises in the video are good for the core, but what is the core? I wrote about that previously in the article entitled “Core Exercise” with an easy exercise called Engage Your Core Through Your Feet to help you find those illusive core muscles: the pelvic floor, transverse abdominus, and multifidi. Finding the correct muscles is after all the first step in using them.

Here is another very simple (that doesn’t mean easy) exercise where you use the core to stabilize your low back, which is its real function, as you lift your legs. It also engages the core hip flexors, the psoas and iliacus muscles, but that's a different article.

Easy Core Exercise
1. Lie on your back with your knees bent and your arms at your sides.
2. Tilt your pubic bone up toward your chin and then your tailbone back. Go back and forth a few times and find the middle. Is your sacrum on the floor? If so, you have equal range of hip flexion and extension.
3. Adjust if necessary so that your sacrum is firmly on the floor.
4. Do not let your sacrum or hips move off the floor (this is the key) and lift your left leg so that your knee comes toward your chin, only as far as you can without moving your sacrum.
5. Press the opposite foot into the floor (use what you learned from the Engage Your Feet by Using Your Core exercise) if needed to stabilize.
6. Repeat with the right leg.

Undulations Complement Chiropractic Care

Undulation exercises were recently noted in an article co-written by Kimberly Kohr, DC and yours truly as useful adjunct to chiropractic adjustments. It was published in Dynamic Chiropractic.

Motion through each segment of the spine is good for your spinal discs and nervous system. Undulations are good for the structure and they also increase body awareness and functional movement patterns. “An exercise that first and foremost increases awareness will start a cascade of positive change.”

Three exercises are given as examples: Feel Your Spine, Easy Sway and the even-popular Tailbone Penmanship.

The article coincides with the introduction of new exercise handout sheets for chiropractors to give patients between adjustments. Three sheets are available, for the:
 Sacrum and Low Back,
 Neck and Upper Back, and
 General Spine Health.

Samples handout sheets are available upon request.

Get a Grip on Tension

Tension doesn’t only come from big, stressful situations like a pile of unpaid bills, pending deadlines, or an argument with your spouse. Tension can creep in through your hands when you least expect it and covertly lodge itself right between your shoulder blades.

How can you get a grip on your stress and stop tension in its tracks? The secret is to loosen your grip.

Is your hand on the computer mouse? Notice how much pressure you are using and its effect into your shoulder and neck. Relax your fingers, palm and wrist. Use a feather touch to move the mouse. Every time you loosen your grip, you turn tension into comfort and take pressure off your carpal tunnel.

A common stressful environment is the car. Release tension there by loosing your grip on the steering wheel. Turn the wheel with relaxed palms and flexible fingers. The fluid motion will translate up your arms and relieve the tightness in your shoulders.

Anything you put your hands on—-a pen, the telephone, your toothbrush-—can increase your tension or release it. Turn your iron grip into a liquid caress and feel some of your stress melt away.

Angels of Relief for Demons of Hand Pain

Seeing the Angels & Demons movie trailer motivated me to read the book for a second time. The 569 page paperback is hard to put down as I couldn’t stop running along with the labyrinth plot through the streets and cathedrals of Rome. In the first reading, I stayed up all night and read almost the whole book. This time, I’ve spread it out over four nights—a great read. However, I’ve noticed that my hands are very sore from holding a book open for three hours every night.



As a structural integrator and massage therapist, hand pain isn’t new to me. I have a solution, the Octopus Undulation, which I do every night after work. It works like this:

Start by slowly moving the tips of your fingers of just one hand in a wave-like motion. Use the movement to explore and wash away the stiffness in the first knuckles. Let the movement creep up your fingers, massaging each knuckle in turn with the movement. Then continue into the web of the hand. See if you can move your palm so it is as fluid as an octopus. Gradually incorporate your wrist, forearm, elbow, upper arm, and shoulder into the movement—as though you don’t have any bones.

Now feel the difference between your two hands. You’ve just given yourself a massage!

Normally I can wash away my hand stiffness with just one minute of this undulation. However, after holding a paperback for several hours, I need about three minutes on each hand. This exercise is useful after knitting, pruning or computer mousing—anything that requires repetitive motion of the hands.

You can view additional Undulation Exercises here.

I’m looking forward to watching the Angels & Demons movie. I hope it lives up to the majesty of Rome and thought-provoking ideas in the novel.

Inversion Therapy for Low Back Pain

A good friend of mine has an inversion table. When I visit her, she offers its use like others would offer a glass of freshly-squeezed orange juice. “Would you like to lie on the inversion table? It’s good for you,” she says.

Yoga practitioners have touted the benefits of being upside down for millennia. Poses such as Downward Facing Dog, Handstand, Headstand, Shoulder Stand, and Legs Up the Wall Pose put the body in a position where the effect of gravity is reversed, giving the lymphatic system a boost, aiding digestion, and reducing the spine’s weight-bearing responsibilities. There’s the added advantage of learning to see the world from a new angle.

Headstand, handstand and shoulder stand all come with risks, however. Without building strength and dedicated, regular practice, you can easily hurt your neck with these poses. In addition, inversions should be used cautiously for those with high blood pressure, according to a study published in Physical Therapy and are also not advised for people with glaucoma.

You can read more about the benefits and risks of yoga inversions in this Yoga Journal article.

Inversion tables offer many of the same benefits without the potential damage to the spine. Simply hop on, rotate yourself to the desired upside down angle and rest or read. I even saw one advertised on TV recently.

The most promised benefit is to take pressure off the spinal joints, decompress nerve roots and rehydrate the discs between the vertebrae. A study published in the Archives of Physical and Rehabilitative Medicine in 1978 concluded that short periods of inversion increased spinal length and decreased nervous activity of the low back muscles. Being inverted is a type of gentle traction. The angle of the table determines the rate of traction.

There are many brands of inversion tables including Teeter Hang Ups ®, Body Flex, Body Max, FitForm, Paradigm, and Ironman Relax. You can even use a well-built inversion table to do exercises such as curl ups, but be sure you have an extra sturdy model. It’s also important to follow all safety precautions for these products. Just like being in a handstand, you run the risk of falling down if not properly secured.