Back pain steals your freedom. Core connection and healthy movement, bring it back. So before we get started, I want you to strap your walking shoes on, or better yet, no shoes at all. Grab your headphones and get your body moving while you listen to the insights that helped me climb out of a decade long struggle of debilitating lower back pain. And led to the creation of Core Balance Training, which has helped thousands of people climb out of the back pain spiral for good.
Welcome to the Back Pain Podcast by Core Balance where we share practical insights to address back pain at its root. I'm your host, Dr. Ryan Peebles, DR of Physical Therapy, specializing in spine and core rehabilitation. Each episode brings you a recording of one of my live sessions with my students. We start with a focused topic on back pain, then move into a live q and a where I answered real questions in real time.
My hope is that these episodes get you on the path to climbing out of the back pain spiral for yourself so you can live life the way that you want to. Let's dive in. This week's topic is what are the best exercises for lower back pain? We're gonna be talking about a few different exercises that are my favorites, but I think what you'll find is that my overall answer is not gonna be what you expect. And then we'll get into a live q and a where I answer any questions you have.
I have spent the last 20 years of my life completely dedicated to. Understanding and reversing the root causes of chronic lower back pain. I have a personal history of back pain of about a decade in which I tried everything I could possibly find without success. Now I am. A physical therapist by profession, but my knowledge and experience is much more of a melting pot of different schools of thought and philosophies, and I've kind of.
Distilled it all down into the best of what I've learned over the last 20 years into this program I call Core Balance Training, and it's had incredible success. We've had what we are finding to be consistently over a 90% success rate with students who complete the program. So welcome whoever you are. Today's topic is. What are the best exercises for lower back pain?
And I do have an answer for those of you who are looking for specific exercises that you can apply to your life. I will cater to you. That's gonna be part two is the exercises, some of my favorites, but part one of this two part answer, the real answer is. It's not what you do, it's how you do it. And if you can grasp that, if you can come away from this session with one thing and you only took away one thing from this session, and you could grasp this idea that I'm about to go in depth into that, it's not about which exercise you do, it's about how you do it.
Really understand what I mean by that. It has the potential to have a life changing impact on your understanding of back pain and how to get out of the cycle even. An exercise like the squat could be good for you or it could be bad for you, and the exercise doesn't change. Even the form of the exercise may not change. And so it's about what's happening on the inside and how you're relating to your body and basically whether or not you're connected to your core, your stability, your source of.
Posture and central support in your body. The important thing is that your center of your power, your center of your body is active. It's turned on. We can look at any number of exercises, any movement that you wanna do with your body. Let's just say we're getting up and down from the ground.
Okay? Same thing. Throughout all of these movements, if you can maintain a center of power in your core, then that movement can become good for your body. And so what we want to go for is. Core based movement.
So the deep core is active, it is the source, it is the origination of your movement and is your center of power and stability. And so if you can reach this point where you can perform core based movement, you can have. A connected core, whether it's conscious and you're actively thinking about it in the beginning stages of this transition away from limb dominant movement and towards. Core dominant movement in the beginning. It takes a lot of conscious thought later.
It becomes integrated into your natural movement, so it doesn't take as much conscious thought, and we'll get a little bit into that as well. So whether or not it's conscious or unconscious, as long as you have that connection. It doesn't matter what movement you're doing, it's good for you. And so what you can achieve through core stability is to be able to do movements that exercise your body with your spine supported, and it doesn't really matter what you're doing. So that's the answer is it doesn't matter what exercise you're doing.
Even if I were to tell you my favorite exercises for lower back pain, which I'm going to tell you, and you were to do them. In a way that I would call it wrong, and that's just my personal bias, but without that core connection, then it wouldn't be good for you. Even my most favorite exercise for lower back pain wouldn't be good for you. We're gonna talk about that in a minute as well. I see a question here.
It says, have you heard of a butt wink at the end of a squat? Yes, I have. Kimberly and I'd like to know what position my pelvis is recommended to be in when bending down to pick something up, for example, posterior or anterior. That's a great question. Super applicable.
And let's talk about the butt wink. If I were to go farther down into a squat, what I call a deep squat, what might happen is my. But, and really what it is, is my pelvis would start to curl around underneath and kind of like a dog tucking its tail. And so imagine me squatting all the way down is very common sitting position in certain. Asian countries with my butt, like pretty much on my heels and my tailbone curls under that would be called a butt wink.
In our Western culture, we'd call it that. So yes, I've heard of it, and if you are asking if it's good or bad, you didn't ask that, but I'm imagining you might be asking my opinion about Wink. I think that is natural, and so to say that it's bad, my opinion is that it's wrong. I think that, mm-hmm. It's a resting position, and so for some people, depending on their muscular balance, it may happen too early.
Squat and that shows a lack of core control and pelvic stability. It shows a lack of that, and so that is where it could be bad, but if it's happening at the end of the squat, I think that's natural. I don't think it should be avoided. It's a resting position, so not inherently bad. It just like everything, it's all very subjective and it matters when it happens.
So the next part of your question, Kimberly, is what position is recommended for your pelvis when you're bending down to pick something up? My recommendation is ideally it's neutral and that's the hardest position to be in. It's easy to be in a end range position 'cause you know where that is. It's like. Drawing in a coloring book with just filling in the lines, right?
It's that line. You can go right up to the edge of that line and you know that you shouldn't go any further. But if there are no lines, like in neutral, you have no guidance. You don't have any guardrails like in bowling, and so it's hard to know where that is, and that's the recommended position. There are situations.
Kimberly, where if someone had like a severe stenosis that I would recommend that specific person to be in a posterior tilt and try to maintain that kind of all the time to counterbalance the closing down of the vertebrae. And then there's the opposite end of the spectrum where some people might benefit from an anterior tilt. So without knowing your specific situation, I couldn't make a recommendation like that, but I know f. In general, best thing for everybody is neutral. One of the things that we do in the program, and I talked about this last week, is that we develop this frame, this foundation of we call the core anchors, which help you to find neutral.
It's a almost like a foundation that you can lean on. It's a real physical thing that when you connect to it that you. Know you're connected and you know you're there in the front and the back. And so if you are in the program, which I believe you are, Kimberly, we start tying all that together and form this anchor triad where we connect all three anchors in. I believe it's.
Phase two is when we start that, and that's module five. Okay? So we gotta build the back anchor first, we gotta build the front two anchors and then we gotta strengthen them and learn how to move with them connected. And then we join them all together and we form this anchor triad, which will help you to find neutral. So thank you for that.
And hello, good to see you again, Kimberly. So Patrizio. If you have very bad chronic pain, would you recommend to push yourself to do this or stay active? So the program itself starts off extremely gentle, and that's because it's designed for. Someone with severe issues.
I had severe issues. And by the way, I want to clarify to all of you, I was an athlete. I was generally pretty fit and I started getting back problems and I. I would consider myself a pretty hard worker, so if you could imagine, I did everything I could to try to get out of pain. I tried all the exercises.
I asked the question that I get asked all the time, what are the best exercises? I went to every expert I could find and did everything I could, and I still got worse, and I continue to get worse for 10 years while trying to do everything I could. And this is the kind of thing that can happen. That wasn't that I wasn't doing the right exercises. It wasn't that I didn't have good form because my form looked good.
It was that I was missing a link, a really important link. And so I dealt with all kinds of things sciatica by age 25. That's too young. Anytime I went to an expert or a medical doctor or a chiropractor or anything, they said, wow, you are too young for this. This doesn't usually happen, and to people in your age range, and this was just after working at a Christmas tree lot, and so obviously lifting the trees was hurting my back because I was doing them with no core.
But on the flip side, had I had. Good core connection, maybe naturally like most people have, or maybe I had found this program and did it and then I worked at the tree lot. Lifting those trees could then become good for me. That's the thing is that it's not what you're doing, it's how you do it. And so my answer is patricio is yes.
The program I recommend for severe chronic. Back pain, especially if it's lower back, because that's what it's designed for. It was designed for me initially. I used it on myself to get out of pain, and it was specific to someone that couldn't do anything. I couldn't do my activities and my passions like surfing.
Anymore. I couldn't rock climb. I couldn't play basketball. I was becoming immobile at a pretty young age. And so what I could do was some very simple light things, and that's how the program starts.
Patricio is very gentle. We learn core connection. We learn in the beginning. So I'm gonna jump ahead. I am gonna tell you some specific exercises I love.
For lower back pain in this stream. So if anybody who knows me knows I'm partial to the bridge, we take Patricio, we take a entire week. We week one of the program is pretty much completely dedicated exclusively to learning this movement, and we break it down to the most fundamental level. The very first lesson is breathing and then we learn how to connect. And then we add a tiny bit of movement to that.
And then by day four, I finally allow the students to come up into a full bridge. But it's not until we get down the fundamentals, we break it down so far, so. Simple that it would be hard to do it wrong. And so if that explains anything to you, Patricio, there's not a risk of hurting yourself in this. Program.
I do have an assessment that you will wanna take if you haven't already, to make sure you're a good fit, and the link would be below the live stream in the comments below or the description below. If you do wanna take that assessment, it just asks some basic questions. Are you able to, for example, get down on the floor and get back up off the floor safely? But if you can do those things and a couple other questions. Then yes, I strongly recommend the program because you are who this is for.
So thank you for asking them. Let me get back into some of these chat comments here. Kimberly, I see you're commenting that you're practicing the squat. You're practicing right now. Cool.
Yeah, it's awkward to try and be in neutral 'cause you don't have those end range guardrails to know. If you're there, and Ophelia, that was something I dealt with for a long time. Yes, I tried everything I could and I'll, one day when I get a little more comfortable on these streams, I'll do a live stream and tell my whole story. I'll probably cry on that stream because it was such a big part of my life. I tried everything I could for so many years.
And the only place I've landed is with this. So one solution, and it's learning how to move in a healthy way all day long, not just when you're doing your two hour workout or your 30 minute workout of the day. I mean, at certain points in my life, I was going to the gym for two hours plus every single day just to try and stay out of a pain for a little bit of hours. But what I learned is. It's about this 97%.
This is what's important. So we learn to move healthy. We learn to move connected. Mary, good to see you again. We got another alumni showing up this week.
It's okay that you fell off the wagon. That is common. And life, especially modern day life is distracting and we got all kinds of stuff going on, but what's important is getting back on the wagon and that's right. It's not what you do, it's how you do it. Timothy Hill, good to see you.
I've been seeing you in the comments in the program. I think you are in your first week, so I'm glad to have you in here doing the seven day trial of Core Balance Training, and I hope you have gotten a benefit or some benefits or learned something, at the very least. Thanks for posting in the chat and saying hello. So Patricio. Says, thank you so much for the detailed answer.
You have upper thoracic back pain. Yes. This program can help for it. It helps for all. Types of back pain 'cause it's postural.
This program helps you develop a stable foundation and those are the trunk muscles. Those are the muscles that are closest to your spine, all the way up and down. And so it is postural development and yeah, it helps neck pain too. It actually, I can't say this 'cause it'll make me sound. Like a crazy person, but it helps knee pain.
It helps hip pain. It just, it doesn't make sense to go out in the world and say, you know, I created this program and it helps all the pain and all the joints of the body. That's not really believable. But the truth is, it does. And that's like my little secret.
And I have a lot of people who go through the program and they say. Like I'll get a message from them that their back is better and they'll say, but I'm didn't expect this, but my knees are better too. And I love getting those, and I'm not surprised at all that the knees are better too. And that's just part of getting your body back into balance. We are just living a lifestyle these days that tends to bring us out of balance.
And so. If we can move towards balance and strive towards balance, then things get better. I'm going to get back a little bit into the lesson and then I'll get back to the chat. By the way, Yev, Jenny, good to see you third week in a row. My favorite alumni coming here from Michigan, one of the success stories he's featured on our testimonials page.
Love Having You. Here you have Jenny. Oh, and Tim, okay, this is a bridge question, so this is perfect. I'm gonna segue into the bridge right now because that's part of my answer for best exercises for lower back pain. And then I will answer your question, Timothy.
So this is my personal favorite exercise for lower back pain. If you don't include walking, walking is. The most natural human movement. It is amazing for lower back pain and everybody should do it no matter who you are. If you are able to walk, if you have working legs, then you should be walking, and so I, I don't think of it as an exercise for lower back pain.
Our human locomotion design, it's the way we were designed to get around. And if you're not getting around, then that's a problem in itself. Everybody should be walking every single day, and because of the way our lifestyle and society is. And we can sit in cars and sit on couches and sit at the desk and sit here and there. We need to manufacture our walking time.
We need to go for intentional walks. And so I'm gonna talk a little bit about walking after this, but the bridge is featured as my favorite exercise for lower back pain. And then I'll answer any other questions on any other exercises that you have too. But just, you probably already know that my answer's gonna be. Yeah, that exercise could be good for your back if you are connected to your core and specifically your deep core while doing it.
Or it could be bad for your back. Same exercise, same movement, same form. But if you're disconnected from your core, then the exercise, no matter what it is. Could cause damage. So let's talk about the bridge.
Why is the bridge my favorite exercise? Well, it's simple. You can do it anywhere. You can do it with no equipment. You can do it on the floor, you can even do it on your bed, but it's not ideal because you want a more firm surface.
More specifically, the reason it's my favorite exercise is because it's the only exercise I know of on the planet, and I've spent my life learning about exercises that simultaneously. Corrects two major muscle imbalances, the hardest ones to correct at the same time. So let's talk about the hip flexors, because Tim, you mentioned that you're really feeling the tug of war. So part of the muscle about imbalance that occurs is the hip flexors get. Overly tight.
They're overworked. We overuse them well. The bridge lengthens those hip flexors. It not only gets lengthened when you open up the front of your hips as you come up in the bridge, you're opening the front of your hips, but it also gets lengthened over your knee as you bend your knee. And there's not really any.
Exercises on the planet other than the bridge where you're opening your hips and bending your knees at the same time. It's not a real common functional movement except unless you're. Scooting on the bed, scooting over or something. So it's lengthening this muscle to its full capacity and simultaneously it is strengthening the glutes. I call 'em the hip extensors.
Here, the ones that open up the front of the hips are the same ones that. Close down the back of the hips. And so these are the muscles we sit on and the muscles that tend to become underactive. We don't use them while we're sitting, so they're just getting smashed under our body weight. And then we get up and try to walk around and they don't really function quite as optimally as they should.
So it's doing two wonderful things at the same time. One of the things about the bridge and any exercise that you do that's good for you, that I love, is that you feel the benefits immediately. You can do the bridge for say, five minutes and then get up off the floor and your body feels better. It feels more in balance. I love that about the bridge and it's only five minutes of your day and immediate benefit.
You can correct problems with the bridge that. Somebody might go get surgery for, you can, and the bridge takes five minutes every day for a period of time. Surgery is a lot more than that, right? And so surgery is sometimes. Looked at by people as like the easier option.
Well, I don't have to do much. Well, you have to do a lot and it's risky and sometimes it's necessary, so sometimes you gotta go do it. But first, try this free organic. Thing that you can feel potentially immediate benefits. And so I can't go through this lesson talking about the bridge, talking it all up without tying it back into my part one and my answer.
And that is that you have to be doing the bridge, right? And my definition of right is that. You're connected to your abdominal core, specifically the deep core throughout the entire time, continuous breathing. And that would be maintaining the connection between your pubic bone and your rib cage in the front. And so that is what protects your back.
And if that connection is not there, and I go to do the bridge and open up the front of my hips. Arch, my lower back, I potentially could be causing damage and hurting my spine. And so that's for that reason that I don't ever just randomly recommend the bridge to people. And when I get ask the question, what exercise should I do from my lower back? I don't say go do the bridge and then stop there and full stop.
I either have to go through the lesson with them in person, I'll demonstrate and I'll be like, look, this is what has to be done. Or you could potentially hurt yourself with this exercise. Or now, you know, in recent years, I just say, just do the free trial of the program because we spend an entire week learning how to do this the right way. And if you can learn this in the week, that takes 15 minutes of your time for five days. Then you'll have this tool for the rest of your life and you'll know that you're doing it right.
And you may not be good at it yet, but you get the idea and you can continue to work at it. Some people are starting at a very low level, you know, there's all kinds of people coming through this program and some people can't even get their butt up off the floor yet. And so for those people it's gonna take longer, but. You understand the most important concepts and if you work towards it. This exercise alone, when done right, is very powerful and is my favorite one.
So that's my practical answer to the question, but the real answer, the part one answer my truth is that it doesn't matter what you do, it matters how you do it. And if you're doing something in the right way, it doesn't matter what it is, it could be anything. I take that back. There's certain things that may inherently be kind of bad for someone if they have serious spinal conditions, like I would imagine horseback riding wouldn't be very good, but you could learn how to horseback ride with a really strong core. So, I don't know.
I may not take it back. You get the point though. So Tim, let me answer. So you feel the tug of war when doing the bridge? I have a struggle maintaining the perfect bridge.
That's good, Tim. If you're still here, that struggle is good. Yes. Embrace the struggle. Live in the struggle because that struggle is where you're getting stronger.
That's how you get stronger. That's how the body gets stronger. The thing I'm most happy to hear you say is that. You're struggling to maintain the perfect bridge, and I know what you mean by that. You mean staying connected during the bridge and it is a struggle.
And if that is your focus, that's your top priority, then you're winning. If you're not sacrificing you core connection, so you can come up higher in the bridge and make it look prettier or feel like you're doing more. You maintain that priority of core connection and if you know that you can't maintain connection by going up further. So you stay where you're at and you struggle in that and you embrace that, that's how you win. And then you do that again the next day for five more minutes, and then you do that again the next day.
And that struggle gets pushed a tiny bit each time further to closer to. Full bridge or the bridge with ease where you can breathe, you can maintain connection, and you can exist, you can have control over your pelvis and your body and that day comes. I wouldn't use myself as an example for that because I'm probably the last person that you would imagine like. Trying to copy, but all the alumni of this program are living examples of that where you can get to that point of just embracing the struggle to give yourself progress. And so there are certain like fundamental concepts, like almost like philosophies that guide this program.
And one of those things is. If you're doing the right thing, then the only two elements that matter are repetition over time. If you just stick with it, stay committed and follow the recipe that's laid out for you in the program and continue to live in that challenge moment. Then repetition over time are the two ingredients that will take you and carry your progress. So stick with it.
You have Jenny, what is the minimum and maximum time to stay on the bridge. I love your questions. You have Jenny. You always have such great practical questions. The minimum time is one second or less, so it depends who you are.
You have Jenny for you specifically. You're probably not gonna get a whole lot of benefit from one second bridge 'cause I know your fitness level, so you're gonna wanna do more. But doing a one minute bridge is better than doing no bridge at all. And for that person that's doesn't have a fitness level like you, than doing a one second bridge, it could potentially offer them maximum benefit. And so that might be at the point where they fatigue and then they take a rest and do another one second bridge, and then the next day they do a 1.5 second bridge and they just increase their progress by 50% and day after day.
That is very powerful. The maximum bridge is as long as you can. I would say that. My longest bridge. I've never like set out to do the longest bridge and timed myself, but I think that I've done a 15 minute bridge a few times in my life, and that would only be beneficial if you're maintaining connection and breathing throughout.
So it's like trying to meditate for 15 minutes. That's hard without losing focus. And the cool thing about meditation is if you lose focus, there's not a lot of downside. Maybe a slight bit of frustration, which is. The opposite purpose of meditation.
So I think the secret to meditation is to not get frustrated when you lose focus and then just bring your attention back and recenter your focus. I learned that from a book called 10% Happier. That changed my entire perception of meditation is, yeah, we lose focus. And that's part of it, and that's okay. Expect it, and then just bring your attention back.
Well, with the bridge, you don't wanna really lose focus, because if you lose focus, that might mean you lost connection. And if you lose connection, then it's game over. You want to s. Reset, come back down to the floor, reconnect, come back up into the bridge. 'cause we're trying to train our body to move naturally with connection.
And so if you are doing it without the connection, then we're training. The wrong neural pathways. We're training those old neural pathways where you move and you don't even think about it, and the connection is not there, and the electricity is firing through your body and these old default firing patterns. In order to regroup new patterns, it takes the focus, and so the maximum bridge is as long as you can stay focused, maintain connection to your core, and continuously breathe throughout. And you'll get more benefits the longer you can go.
So hope that answers your question, Tim. Yeah, the breathing is the hardest part and also the most rewarding part. I'm still learning how to breathe. The breathing is the hardest part. It's the most rewarding.
It offers the most benefit, and I think I will just like meditation, I will continue to practice and get better for the rest of my life. And there is no maximum, there are no ceiling of, I finished the amount of improvement that I could possibly ever get with breathing. It's just a constant journey. There's no destination, so, yeah. It's just a really good sign, Timothy, that you are aware of these things and it means you're on the right track.
You're a good candidate to have success because surprisingly, some people can go through this first week and not be asking the questions and have the body awareness that you have and say, I'm struggling with. This part about it. You are the type of people that I love having in the program because these are the awarenesses and the questions that we should be asking. Periodically, check in, stay fat, and don't be afraid to reset. If you're like, I don't even know if I'm connected right now, which is probably often the case in the beginning.
Come back down, reset and come back up and see how many breaths you can take. I don't count in seconds anymore. I count in breaths of maintaining focus and trying to breathe into your lower back. Man. I still remember the feeling of how hard it is in the beginning to do all those things.
There's a lot going on with this one exercise in the program because we break it down so far. There's a lot going on in here, and that's what movement is. You have Jenny. Are you doing the butt buster machine? I don't know the machine, but I do know the one from the program with the band.
Um, that's my favorite, just like workout version of the bridge and just, it's like what I call it, the butt buster. It really works for glutes. So you have Jenny, you might be talking to Tim here where you say playing tug of war at the top. Really beneficial. Yeah, I don't think Tim's there yet with the butt buster bridge.
I think that comes in week two or three. But yeah, we do lots of bridge progressions in the program and each one has a different benefit. And the butt busters, I struggle between that one and the single leg bridge, which is the very last. Or second to last maybe, I don't know, one of the later bridge progressions. I don't recommend trying it until you feel really strong, but once you get there, for me, I think it offers some of the most benefit.
If you ever look at an infant, you never see the rib flare on a baby. They have an extremely strong core and it's always connected just naturally. That's the way we were born. We lose connection over lifetime of stress and aging and all these other things. Arms and legs are not that strong yet, but this center is very strong and so you can.
Always look at any baby and they can lift their legs up off the ground. This is what from week four, module four of the program, they've always maintaining connection here, a 4-year-old child, a healthy 4-year-old child, has perfect posture. And then after that it's all downhill from there. No, not really, but. You know, we go through life, the twenties, the thirties, the forties, and things happen to us and stress happens.
And like I said, it's just also just part of natural aging and, and we lose that perfection that we started out with. But we can work towards getting it back and we can learn from this. And that's what a lot of the program is modeled after is. The research of brilliant geniuses that are way smarter than me kind of just distilled down into normal people conversation and normal people language. Let's see.
Ste, any tips on remembering to breathe? Yeah. Triggers would be anytime you're waiting for something, if you're in a car at a stoplight. That could be a trigger. You have to set the trigger and you have to establish the trigger in your head and go, okay, anytime I'm waiting for something, I will change.
I'll switch my focus back to my breath. And so that could be stoplight, waiting in line at the store, waiting for your computer or something like to load or whatever we do waiting a lot still, that can be the trigger. That can remind you. Oh yeah. Focus to breath.
I'm not doing anything else. Right. I might as well send my focus into my breath. And what should we all do it together? What do we do with breath ed?
Hey Ed. Good to see you. I think you made a comment. Maybe this morning in the program, so I'll be responding to that later today. If you're still here, great to see you, and I totally remember our phone call from like two or three years ago, and glad to have you here.
So was your pain constant? Mine goes up and down, but never goes away. Fortunately, most nights I can sleep. Yes, my pain was constant. When I was really struggling.
It never fully went away, except like very rare moments if I either forgot about it or did something like get a massage or I don't know. Just got out of my physical therapy session or just got, and I got a lot of PT by the way. I was going to PT three times a week, uh, to a other pt, right? For many years, three times a week. It was like my dependency drug or just got out the gym like a two and a half hour, like stretching session and jacuzzi or whatever.
That would be the only time it went away. Otherwise, it was always there and mostly went up when I was sitting. And lower when I was moving my body. So the thing with that is that it's hard to learn what the right thing to do is if it never goes away. And so you gotta really tune in and pay attention to when it goes up and when it goes down and when it goes up.
And you. Can connect it with something that you did earlier or that you're currently doing, then the lesson is to do less of that. And then when the pain goes down and you can connect that or relate that to something you did or are currently doing, then the takeaway is to do more of that. And that's just the general life, you know. Guidance, but the program should help that constantness just drop down.
And so that's the goal. The program tends to do that. Um, speaking from just experience of feedback from students, most students. And that the timeline for that can be as early as the first week, but sometimes it's up to two to three weeks for some people. It depends where your starting point is.
Your fitness level or your level of dysfunction is gonna be unique, and so if that is. A little further back than somebody who has less muscle imbalances or just a general higher level of fitness. It would take longer for the person that's farther, starting out, farther back, and that general constant level of pain should be going down. Over the two to three week period. And if it's not, then we need to have a conversation.
Something needs to change, but this stuff, connecting with your core helps everyone and learning how to move and get more in tune with the muscles that support your spine should help everyone. And I don't know how things are going for you as far as progress. Lemme know if you have, if you've had any progress, but the generally to answer. Yeah, the constantness level will drop. It may stay constant, but, and it may dip out into pain-free, but if you want to keep pushing that down, Tim.
Yeah, thanks for being here. I'm always glad to have people showing up. That's what it's all about. I show up and I'm hoping other people show up too. All right, we're going another 15 minutes 'cause Thank you for reminding me, Adam.
We're gonna be talking about walking. I. So a question from a brand new student, little background. When I walk and throughout the day, I have what I believe to be sciatic pain that is most intense, deep in my left glute. Okay.
Left butt most intense in that spot. It worsens by bringing my left leg forward or lifting the left leg. Flexing my left ankle lifting up, like lifting up my left foot or toes and bowing my head down. So it's just, uh, those three movements are what kind of like stretch the sciatic nerve from head to toe covering the head down. Toes up, you're kind of stretching that and you're gonna exacerbate any existing condition along the track of the sciatic nerve.
It tracks through the whole body, right? It connects into the spinal cord, goes up the spine into the brain where every nerve connects into ultimately. And from there, that's where it originates, right? Down the spinal cord exits the spinal cord as spinal nerves. They join together as the sciatic nerve and go all the way down into the tips of the toes.
And so every motion you describe there is to kind of like stretch it and it's gonna really exacerbate whatever might be going on. Walking makes it worse, so walking makes the sciatic pain worse, and I'm wondering what other things I need to address. So this is a tough one because it's nerve pain and it's hard to know exactly where the SAG nerve can get caught, but since you're having most intense pain deep in the left glute, I would imagine that's where it's getting caught, and that's right where the piriformis is, which is an extremely common for the sciatic nerve to get impinged as it. Penetrates through the piriformis. It's a tiny little muscle deep in your hip.
Don't worry about it. And so there's this thing called piriformis syndrome, which can be associated with sciatic pain. That muscle, the piriformis tends to tighten up in response. To when it's protecting. Just like all the, what I teach, all the other muscles that are part of the protection mechanism, the hip flexors, the upper traps, we are protecting our body.
Ultimately, all the protector muscles are the ones that bring us towards the fetal position, and so it tends to tighten up and it can entrap this sciatic nerve and cause pain. What some people try to do is kinda attack that. P pair of pharmas and loosen it up. But what. You need to realize is that just getting it to loosen up is not the solution.
It's never the solution because it's tightening up for a reason. Why is that muscle wanting to be tight? It wants to be tight. It's protecting. Why is it protecting?
Well, it's compensating for something that is lacking. Uh, what is lacking, what I generally find to be lacking is stability for the spine. And when there's lack of local stability, proximal stability, close around the spine, deep core, then the distal muscles, the muscles farther away from the spine, try to compensate for that lack of stability and they tighten up. And so things can happen, nerves can get trapped, nerves can get trapped. In different ways and in multiple ways.
There's something called Double Crush where this satic nerve gets trapped in two different spots. And so it's all a result of generally, typically a similar thing. And there are things that you can do for this. So one of the things that I may. Recommend, it's possible that it could help.
And the only way you can know is if you test it on yourself is to do flossing, nerve flossing, or nerve glides. You can look it up on YouTube, I'm sure there's videos on nerve glides, but for the sciatic nerve, you want to glide that nerve through its groove. So if this is the groove, you want it to go through the groove and then, and just make sure it's moving. 'cause if it's entrapped and it's not moving, that's always gonna cause a problem. Motion is lotion, movement is healing.
Whatever you wanna say. Everything needs to be able to move. And so a brief explanation of nerve flossing. By the way, Adam, do you know what nerve flossing is or nerve glides? 'cause if you already know, I won't go deep into it.
I'll give you that in a minute if you answer. So that would be one thing. And then the other thing would be, uh. To, I honestly, what you're doing in the program right now is the long way to get out of this and it's gonna work for you. And I'll tell the story of the recent student.
It's to develop that proximal stability, that local stability in your core, and support and protect the spine. Okay? So you know what nerve glides are and or nerve flossing and you're having pt. So that is a thing. It's a tool you can use to make sure the nerve is moving.
It's not the. Solution to the root cause of the problem. Because if that were, that would mean that the root cause of the problem is not flossing your nerves, right? If flossing your nerves is the solution, then that means that you had a problem because you weren't flossing your nerves or gliding your nerves. Well, that wasn't the problem.
'cause most people don't have to do nerve flossing, so there's another problem. But what that is, is it's a tool. To help speed up the process of healing. It can get you maybe even a jump ahead that something that might take a week to break through could happen in one session or it may not be right for you, if you don't mind sharing. Have you tried it and how did it affect you to do that?
To do the nerve glides for your sciatic nerve? So. To get back to the root of this problem, we're talking about muscles tightening up, protecting nerves, getting impinged. We want to give the muscle that is impinging on this nerve, what potentially could be the piriformis muscle, a reason to relax and let go and not feel like it needs to tighten to protect. That would potentially let off the nerve and remove the impingement that's causing the pain.
So if it is the piriformis, and so what that would be to develop more proximal stability, more core. S stability, more spinal support. And even if the sciatic nerve is not being impinged at the piriformis, but it's being impinged more close to your spine, what would be called radiculopathy, it's where the spinal nerves exiting the spine are getting compressed by the vertebrae themselves. And that's what I had. And that's from something like stenosis or degenerative disc disease or even potentially, uh, a bulging or a herniated disc pressing on the nerve.
All of those are, the answer is the same. It's not get surgery to remove the disc from pressing on the nerve, although that may be. A tool that could be even necessary or could be extremely helpful. It's not the solution, it's not the reason why it happened in the first place. We're not addressing the root cause by cutting something out or if it were to be stenosis.
Well, there's not really any other surgery for stenosis other than a spinal fusion, which I hope nobody has to get. That may address it, but it's not the solution. It's not the reason why it happened. And so all of these effects, these degenerations of some form in the spine are related to a lack of stability and support for the spine, and so we develop that. It takes time.
There's not a shortcut to this, but over time, bringing our focus and our attention into our deep core through movement and developing those muscles and developing more support for the spine, more postural muscle support can. Really make a magnificent change. And like I said in the email, Adam, you're doing the right thing by doing the program. There are little tricks and things that you can help along the way, and so one of them is the flossing and the floss. You said the flossing was difficult to do because it was painful.
That means don't do it. Or if maybe you're doing it wrong. Like with the flossing, if you're doing your head down and your ankle up, you want to alternate those. So the head goes down when the ankle goes down, the foot goes down, and the head goes back. When the ankle lifts up, so you're not stretching the nerve, you're not pulling on both ends, separating them.
If you're doing head down, ankle up, you're stretching the nerve, and if say you're doing the opposite, you're approximating it, that would put it on slack. That's not really gonna do anything. So the flossing. You've gotta synchronize head down, ankle down, head up, ankle up. And so that gets it moving in the groove.
So try it like that. If you hadn't already, if you already tried that, and that would all be in the sitting position on the floor. So like in the L sitting position, you're sitting on your butt legs extended out in front of you, and so your hips are flexed. You could do it in sitting in a chair too if you can't tolerate sitting on the floor. So try it that way if it.
Doesn't help forget about it. It's not the solution. I can give you another trick, but this would only be if the impingement, Adam, if the impingement was happening at your spinal nerves, like from a disc or from the vertebrae pressing on your spine. So that would be called radiculopathy. It's commonly called sciatica, but that's.
Not actually accurate. Same idea though. Nerves getting impinged is just happening way right up in the spine and that can cause the same pain that you're feeling in the glute. So if it were to be the impingement were there in the spine, then I would recommend the Cobra, which I asked you in the email, the CO doing repetitive spinal extension. So you tried it once.
You said it did not make any change. Try it 10 times in a row. Okay, so you're laying on the floor on your belly, doing the yoga position Cobra, and you do that 10 times and then get up off the floor and see how it feels. And this is just another trick to help things along. It may move the disc out of the way from pressing on the nerve, and if you get up and it feels way better.
You're like, whoa, that's awesome. Then you learn from that and you can do more of it. But if you get up and it's worse, then your radiculopathy is probably from. Stenosis if you get up and it's worse after doing 10 cobras, uh, then don't do anymore. Right?
And we just listen to our body, we learn from it, and then we make life decisions from what we've learned moving forward. So yeah, if the COBRA helps, it's probably a disc. And you're pushing it out of the way with the Cobra, if the Cobra hurts or makes it worse, doing it 10 times or even 20 times, then it's probably stenosis and you don't want to do back bends right now. After the program, you bring your body back into balance. You can start doing back bends.
I'm back to surfing again after not being able to surf. You know, when I was in my twenties. I'm gonna be getting close to 40 now and I can surf. How weird. But that's because I've brought my body back into balance.
I had stenosis, I had radiculopathy, I had nerve symptoms in my legs, and so you're gonna wanna avoid back bending for a little bit. But I don't think that's the case for you. 'cause you said. Adam, you said that the CO trying the Cobra once didn't make it worse, so try it more anyway. And if it's no change, then I don't know.
There's not a whole lot of information that we can gather from that. But if the good news is no change means you can back bend and it doesn't make it worse. Be aware though, that nerves can react in a delayed fashion, so it may be five minutes. Before you get your reaction to the 10 Cobras or the 20 Cobras. So don't expect it to happen instantly.
You might have to wait, give your body a few minutes to react and then you can tune in, like, how am I feeling compared to how I was feeling before I did the Cobra? Okay, so Cobra, or it's called Repetitive extension or Mackenzie extension. Ironically, 'cause my sister's daughter is named Mackenzie, but we're talking about a treatment of back pain called Mackenzie Extension, repetitive extension in yoga. It's the COBRA pose or flossing and do the program. Tim, you said you have radiculopathy.
The program was designed for originally me who had radiculopathy from stenosis, and so you're in the right place. I'm happy to have someone that is potentially gonna take the same path that I took by doing this and get the same benefits. So there's a lot of people like us. There's a lot of people on our situation. It's amazing.
So I'm gonna wrap it up everybody. It has been a pleasure. Thank you all for being here. I'm so grateful for your presence. I'm so grateful for those of you who showed up and who have taken the big step towards.
Getting out of the cycle of back pain. And if you've joined the trial or joined the program or even just watched the masterclass, then I honor you for doing that and taking a step towards you taking responsibility for your body. And as we end this session, this coaching session, I'd just like to remind all of you to. Take care of your body. That does so much for us.
We ask it to do so much. And so wherever you are, wherever you're going after this session, do something for your body. Get down on the floor and give your body some love. And if you need to know what to do. Take the free trial, the link's down below, and if you're not ready yet, that's fine too.
But do something as we walk away from this. Everybody, just have it in your minds that you're gonna do something for your body today. Alright, thank you so much. I appreciate all of you and I'm grateful for all of you being here and we'll see you on the next one. Take care.
