This week's topic was inspired by a student question in one of the lesson comments and its surrounding the concept of how much should we use our back when it's in pain? Should we be using it at all? Should we use it normally? And to answer these kinds of questions today, and I think this will be an interesting topic because my answer may not be what a lot of people think. So we'll get into that. Actually, I do want to use one question, because I want to bring up the question that actually prompted the topic for this week. So here we go. This was posted in the day five lesson of module one. So that's part of the free trial. And that lesson is a foundational concept. We have several foundational concepts that kind of their guiding concepts for throughout the entire program. So this is called the get fat concept. And Minami says this is interesting. When I have a back issue, I relax and not engage the back. You are telling me to go the other way. I feel more confident. Are you also saying I should keep doing this every day, even when I have a bit of back issue? So this question is more asking when I have an actual flare up, or maybe a strong, you know, stronger pain than normal. Because we are dealing with a population of people that have chronic back pain. So we can assume that most people in this program are starting out with regular pain. That kind of it would be the normal. At least that was my experience when I was going through my struggles with back pain. So that's who this program is serving. And so I think this question is asking if it's increased or flared up, should we still be using the back. And I want to bring up that. I think you probably already know my answer. And the answer is yes. We should keep using the back, but I recognize that this is counter intuitive. Or maybe just against our nature, to want to use a part of the body that feels injured. And so I'll have to do a bit of explaining to support this. But we can recognize that with most injuries, you can think of a broken bone or a sprained ankle or, you know, a torn ligament in your knee, a torn ACL, most injuries, you want to immobilize them. You put a brace on you maybe put a cast on. You get crutches so you don't walk on it. And so that's the natural instinct that we have. So we can allow that body part to heal. And so why would it be different with back pain? We want our spine to heal. So why would we want to use it? And my answer is we have to differentiate between that occurs from an injury and chronic pain painting that has been going on for let's say three months or more. And so with chronic back pain, which is what we're dealing with here, we don't have a mechanism of injury that occurred recently that we want to heal from. And if we were to stop using our back, all the muscles that surround it will become weaker. So we don't want that. That's actually part of the problem that's contributing to the cycle of back pain. And so what that requires us to do is to use this body part that hurts. And if it hurts a lot, we have to continue using it. That can feel wrong at times. And so I think my goal here today is to just provide a little bit of encouragement and affirmation to you as someone, myself, being someone who has dedicated their life not only personally but also professionally through education and professional experience, that yes, it's okay to and recommended to continue using your body. You know your back is right in the middle of your body. So basically not using your back means not using your body unless you're laying down doing some kind of arm exercises. But even leg exercises are going to involve the muscles of the hips, and those are those attached to the lower back. So, you know, and at the same time, I also recommend that this this is a disclaimer that you have to use your own judgment, because not all activities are good for the back. There are activities that are that would be harmful. And so it doesn't mean go do anything or go act crazy. It means reflect on your past experiences and determine what activities are you aware of that are helpful. And go do more of those that what makes your back feel better. Walking is a fantastic example that is helpful for most people. Not all people with back pain can walk. Or is it even helpful to walk? So you're going to have to use your own judgment and find an activity. But one thing that I can say for sure across the board is bed rest, or laying on the couch watching TV for more than you know, a day or two is going to lead to weakness in the muscles that support the spine, which is going to contribute to the prolonged nature of chronic lower back pain. It's going to potentially lead to worse pain in the long run and longer term pain. So that's my encouragement, is use your body and do an activity that in your experience is can be helpful. And another point I want to make about this topic is that, you know, for a lot of people with chronic back problems, the the underlying problem is muscle muscular imbalances in the body. So the joints are not congruent. The joints might be a little bit off and there might be friction happening at the joint level. And so any kind of movement or usage of the body could be irritating. And so we have to find a balance between what level of activity can I do that my body can tolerate a little bit and also will prevent my muscles from getting weaker. And so ideally, my strongest recommendation is to do activities that will restore muscular balance. And if you don't know what those are, I wouldn't expect most people to know what those are. That's really what I've laid out in the program. So if you're in the program, do some core balance training, get on the floor and connect. And even if it's just extremely gentle, low level activities, we need these muscles to stay active. And we can do targeted exercises that help bring those muscles back into balance, therefore bringing the joints back into balance. And this is the long term solution. So that's my soapbox for today. Yes. Keep using your body. I'm going to go back to this comment from Minami because she did bring up something else. She said, you know, she says normally I don't engage my back and I try to relax. You're telling me to go the other way? I feel more confident. So confidence was a major topic in last week's stream. This is the point I wanted to bring up to connect it back to last stream. If you missed it, last week. Stream was about how moving with confidence changes the neuromuscular firing patterns of the body to be more healthy, and so feeling confident in itself is good for getting out of back pain. The opposite of that would be fear avoidance behavior, where we move in fear and we avoid. We try to avoid pain, and that leads to abnormal movement patterns, which contributes to the cycle of back pain. So this is one gigantic interconnected monster that we're dealing with. And it all has to do with moving confidently and doing healthy activities. You know, that is a good recipe for for getting out of pain. And if you do the opposite of those things, that is, those are ingredients that will help keep you in the cycle of pain. And I. Also, I wanted to bring up that Minami is talking about engage the back. So I don't specifically I'm not trying to isolate the back muscles in this conversation. I'm. When I speak about using your back, I'm talking about using the entire three hundred and sixty degrees of the core that surrounds the lumbar spine. We unfortunately, we don't have a lot of bony support for the lumbar spine. The thoracic spine has our rib cage and then we have the pelvis below. But there's this gap between the rib cage and the pelvis that doesn't have any other bony support other than the lumbar spine. And the only other support is non-bony its muscles. And we want to use all three hundred and sixty degrees. Typically the pattern is that the lower back muscles are overused and the front and side muscles, the abdominals and the obliques and the deep core muscles are underused. So these are the ones that we want to engage and encourage to be, to participate more in our daily life and our daily movements. So I think my final point that I wanted to make on this topic, we do have a bunch of questions to get through today. We're going to start with actually our featured student for this week. This is kind of a new thing we're doing as we every week we have students that complete the program, and I ask questions at the end of the program, kind of like a, you know, how did you do type questions and also recommendations to improve the program. And so this week's featured student is, uh, David. David. Oh, and, uh, David, actually, I've kind of interacted with him since the beginning because he emailed me to let me know that he's also a surfer. I'm a surfer. It's my my life passion. Besides this and the surfing is actually what motivated me. Getting back to being able to surf again is what motivated me to do all of this, because it really was my the love of my life for many years. So David's a surfer. He actually lives down the coast about thirty, forty minutes down the coast, so we're not that far away. We haven't met up, but someday I think we might meet in the water and catch a wave together and celebrate. So David finished the program and he said he responded to our kind of like survey at the end of the program. He says, I just wanted to say thank you. My surfing is so much easier now, even driving long distance. Thanks to all of my new tools you have provided. These are the questions we ask overall. Have you experienced decrease a decrease in back pain? How significant were you able to stick with the program? Do you feel you've improved your body awareness and core connection? And do you believe the benefits you've experienced will have a lasting effect? David says yes, Doctor Ryan to the first four questions big time. And then we ask what concepts from the program did you find most valuable? And David says, as a surfer construction worker, all of these new tools are invaluable to me. Most valuable concept of the program for me was learning to tilt my hips to keep the arch out of my back, especially when paddling a surfboard, walking, lifting, and driving. Thanks again, David O. So thank you, David. I don't know if you're going to see this, but I'm proud of you. And as we've interacted outside of this stream. Yeah, just like you deserve it. You earned everything through the work you put in every student that has success in the program, they get the credit for their success because half of the solution is doing doing the Doing the work. And the other half is what's what are you doing? Are you doing the right things? So thanks again David. And that's our featured student for this week. So I'm going to get on to the questions because we do have a bunch. Here is a question from Adam in back anchor progression. This is day three of the program. It's in the free trial. So he says I had some slight dull lower back pain while doing this exercise. It went away as soon as I stopped the exercise. Is that normal or do I need to make adjustments? I did answer this in the lesson. I responded with a written response, but I wanted to address this on the stream as well because I believe that it's important we had kind of an entire stream about this topic. It's differentiating between good pain and bad pain, so I would refer anyone interested to get deeper into that topic, to go to the stream on how to progress while in back pain. I think it's how to progress with exercises or how to make progress while in back pain. And so we have to differentiate. And dull pain is not considered bad pain. It's not sharp. It's not excruciating. It's not. It's not like electric type nerve pain. And so often dull pain can result from muscle stiffness. There can be even dull joint pain that just can occur when you're doing a new thing. Or I compare it to if you've been sitting in a car for a long time, and then you get out of the car and you're stretching and moving your muscles again, which is good for you, but it's kind of a little bit painful at the same time. And so that kind of pain, while it's still pain, it's actually good to experience. And you should with judgment, with your own judgment, you should kind of push through it and get the blood flow back into those muscles. And so that's what I think might be happening with this back anchor progression. This is a movement that people often probably don't do, and it's engaging the core muscles and the joints in a kind of a new way. And so it may be related to just these muscles and joints not having done this in a long time. So I don't think you need to make any adjustments. Adam, I think if you do this a couple days in a row, you will probably not have that dull pain anymore and just feel a little bit stronger. Shane, in the chat you say I am signing up. Thank you. Hey thank you man. I am totally excited for you to experience the the trial. It's really cool and let me know. Just, you know, you can comment on the lessons or show up on next week's stream. And I'd love to hear about your progress. So let's do the next question. This is the one that determined the topic of the stream. So we're going to skip over that. We already talked about it. Uh, Minami, who asked that previous question, the topic of the stream did ask a few other questions. So I'm going to go through all of her questions now so that we can kind of just group them together so she or he or she finished module one and it says as I do this, it makes sense more and more. Then the question arises about the posture when you are standing or sitting. Should we engage the lower back? I'm not going to say yes to that. I'm going to say we're not really actively or consciously trying to engage the lower back muscles, but we do want to connect to the back anchor, which is a connection that we learn in day one. Day two. Actually, the back anchor progression is further strengthening that connection. And by doing that we get a natural healthy core muscle engagement. But it happens more on the front of the core of the abdominal muscles and the deep core muscles. So we're not trying to like flex and like make our abs, you know, turn into a six pack. It's not like that kind of flexing. It's a natural, healthy engagement that you can do with movement combined with movement. It's hard to answer that question, but I would say connect to your back anchor. And if you need to remember what that means, then go back to the back anchor lesson. Connect to the floor and that's your guide. That type of feeling of connection is what we are striving for. And then once you learn the front anchors and then we ultimately put the front and the back anchors together. Then it becomes one and we learn. We connect to our core through the anchor triad. And that's what I suggest. That's what we learn in the program. So, um, Minami says you naturally do that when you perform in martial arts, but at the same time, there's too much tension in my abdomen, and I feel like slouching too much. Yes. So I kind of already addressed this. We are not slouching or crunching down to flex the abdominals. We are actually the engagement that we learn in the program. Actually kind of a little bit does the opposite. It's not arching the back, but it's just a little bit of, I call it opening up. And so it's very hard to describe as one of the hardest things I've had to do in my entire, you know, six years of doing this is trying to describe what that connection is in words. And it's much better just experienced. and you learn the feeling. And that's why we offer the free trial, because it's better just people experience it. And rather than me try to explain it, when you go to sleep, you don't do this, do you? No. Absolutely not. We have a stream on sleeping positions, so you can refer to that. But ultimately you're relaxed when you're sleeping and that's the best way to do it. Down here we're at after a week, I am more confident in the direction I am taking for sure. When you say core muscles, am I to understand this as strengthening muscles like the psoas major and iliopsoas? Uh, Minami? No, we are not. We do want these muscles to be strong. So I'm not saying don't strengthen these, but that's not what we're targeting in the program. We're actually one of our main goals early in the program, when we're restoring balance in the core, is to lengthen the psoas muscles and the iliacus together, called the Iliopsoas. So we want to lengthen those and what we're trying to strengthen more specifically. Well, I don't isolate muscles. I don't really use a lot of muscle names in the program because we are using our bodies synergistically. So many muscles working together. Some examples of muscles that we do want to strengthen are the rectus abdominus, internal and external obliques, transverse abdominus all the glutes, um, mead max. And these are the muscles that kind of support the. They tend to become more weak and lengthened in the predictable pattern of muscle imbalances. So they'll kind of help us reverse that pattern. And then the psoas and iliacus, the iliopsoas, the hip flexors, all that muscle group in the pattern, they tend to become overly tight and overused. And so those are muscles we want to lengthen. Minami through exercises like the Perfect Bridge and some others later in the program. Last question. I believe it says when I have a hard. When I have a hard time maintaining fat on the side and the high bridge for five minutes, does that mean my core muscles are weak? It does not mean they are weak. It means they are. Because you're able to do it. They have the strength to do it, but they may be lacking endurance. So that's actually the purpose for training in the each of these exercises for five minutes is to help develop endurance or stamina. Because posture ultimately what we're training is all day long. And so all day long means lots of endurance. And that's what we need to train for. Specificity of training. We want these muscles to have great endurance. And just having strength does not mean you can maintain. And so that's a great question. Minami, all your questions are great. Thank you for sharing and I hope that helps. We'll move on to the next one. This is from Merrill in the lesson, walking with core anchors. She says, do you get the same benefits from walking on a treadmill as you do from walking on the street or on a trail? Is there anything else I should be thinking of from a body position when walking on a treadmill? Thanks for this program. You're welcome. Merrill and I did also respond to this one in writing because it happened. I think like at the end of last week, I didn't want her to wait too long, but I wanted to also address it here because I think it's important. My answer was that there there are differences between walking on a treadmill and walking outdoors or walking, you know, on the ground. Uh, besides the benefit you get from being in nature and experiencing the, you know, just the peace and the just the all the benefits of being outdoors. That's not my focus. But yes, I recognize those are great benefits mentally and probably also physically for just grounding yourself, you know, electronegativity and stuff like that. But my focus in this answer is that when you're walking on a treadmill, even though you can set the pace, you are still having to match the pace of the machine. And I believe in natural walking. We may have slight adjustments in our pace depending on where we are and how we're feeling and different times of the walk. You might go one point one miles per hour to, you know, I think we actually walk more around three miles an hour. And so you might go from two point eight miles per hour to to three point one miles per hour. And those pace changes we probably don't sense, but they do happen. And with the treadmill, we're having to match a consistent pace, and we're kind of at the mercy of an external source to for how fast we walk. And I believe that takes a little bit away from our ability to relax our neuromuscular system, to operate smoothly and in a state of flow. And, uh, that's important. It's important to be able to flow naturally. So I say that walking outside, or even if it's indoors but just on the ground, is preferable. And that said, if walking on a treadmill gets you to walk and that's it's either walking on a treadmill or you're not going to walk, then it's infinitely better. It's a million times better to walk on a treadmill than to not walk at all. So do what you got to do to walk. And maybe it's weather. Or maybe it's just the fact that the treadmill is right there as a reminder. Getting on a treadmill is still good for you, and you should do it. If you have the option to go outside, then I believe it's just a little bit better to get out of the protective pattern. We want muscle relaxation in our movement. We want our muscles to feel safe and natural and be able to flow. The next part of this question was, is there anything I should be thinking from a body position on a treadmill? So yes, you ideally want to set the treadmill to have a very slight incline. And so I believe the recommendation is about one percent incline. And that's to help more mimic walking outdoors, because when you walk outdoors you do have a subtle level of wind resistance that you don't get on a treadmill. And so that one percent incline will help to create that resistance. That and it's basically it's friction that you don't really get on a treadmill because you're not actually moving anywhere. So yeah, just a slight incline, maybe one or two percent. And try adjusting. You know, repetition can lead to repetitive trauma. So you can try adjusting the incline and the speed at different times during your walk. Go up a couple points, go down a couple points. And just try to allow yourself to have variety in what you're doing. And that, I believe would be a great recommendation for a lot of things. Is sitting, standing, walking all activities? If you can add variety, your body will be happier. Hopefully that helps. Merrell. We'll go to the next question. This is from the actually this is a phase three lesson. So I don't know what module it is, but somewhere around like module nine or ten hip rotation motor control. So we're really diving deep into learning how to control rotation into your hips so that it doesn't go into your spine. Linda says this one is hard for me, like the hip hinge I can do when I'm looking in mirror and can definitely feel it in my back. When done incorrectly, I'll need lots of practice. It's not really a question, but I just wanted to feature this because I. I kind of just admire that, she shared. Thank you for sharing, Linda. And that's just to let other people know, too, that they're not alone if they're having trouble with some of these lessons. This is in the advanced stage of core balance training is one of the last lessons in the program. And we do get into some, you know, kind of technical movements. So it's okay. Linda. Lots of practice is good. Using a mirror for visual cues is excellent. And just want to kind of like reiterate. The most important thing throughout the program is your priority is to stay connected to your anchors. So don't sacrifice anchor connection core connection to get more rotation out of your hips. Only go to the point where you can maintain connection and try and rotate in your hips while maintaining that connection. So that's the rule. And if you can feel it in your back when done incorrectly, that's probably what's happening is the loss of connection. And that rotation is probably going into your spine. So keep it up. This one actually is a long one from Nathan, and I wouldn't want to share kind of a more negative comment on the the outcome of the program, but I believe it's important. So here we are. Nathan says, I noticed you said by the end of module three. So the still phase one, it's week three. I should feel significant reduction in back pain. I'm not feeling that, but can tell improvement in my core muscles. So you know, I love sharing positive, uh, comments and reviews. But I think it's important that I also share the when people are needing help. And so I'd like to help, uh, Nathan, you know, give him some advice. A little background on our interaction in the past, um, he has shared that he has more of a one sided pain and imbalance on that he can really feel on one side has has trouble, you know, kind of activating the muscles on one side left or versus right kind of imbalance. And I remember that my answer was keep going through the program and we will address left versus right imbalances. But we can't do that quite yet. And the reason is because we have to develop front to back stability before we can address left to right imbalances. Or what happens is a twisting happens. And so you've got to have that stability front to back first. Anyway, he says I posted comment on previous exercises. I discovered my pelvis alignment was off. My right leg was three quarters shorter than my left. It's been resolved by going to an upper cervical chiropractor. That's awesome Nathan. You wouldn't imagine that an upper cervical chiropractor could fix a leg length discrepancy, but some miraculous things can happen. So. But still feel a strong weakness in the lower right back in doing anything from waking to lifting. I'm assuming the QL muscle on my right side has been asleep since the start of my back pain in twenty eighteen. I recall in your reply of my comment that module eight is when side to side muscles will get targeted in your therapy routine. Is that when exercises will target the QL? Uh, Nathan? Yes, I believe actually, maybe even before that. I think module seven might have the core balance training version of the side plank. And I do give some advice when someone is experiencing major left to right imbalance. So, um, but in general, you know, this is this advice applies to all exercises, not just planks or side planks. It's if you notice a difference in the left versus the right of your body in doing anything, spend more time doing the more difficult side. So if it's more difficult to do any exercise on one side versus the other, don't your strengths strengthen your weaknesses? Because we are trying to achieve balance and you probably already know that. But it's always good to have reminders. You go on to say I'm assuming a very weak right QL muscle is my problem. I say that based off how I feel weakness in along with where I have strength for another glute exercise, I will start from seated position and stand up holding one leg off the ground. Single leg sit to stand. So that's awesome. Nathan, I hope that you're doing it on the side. That is harder. So if you can do five of those on the right leg and only two on the left, you should be just working the left until you can get to five, and then you can develop both equally, but get to balance first and then the single that's a single leg stand is a great starting point to eventually learn single leg squats. I can easily stand up using my right leg only to get out of the chair. Yeah, so. Okay, so so work on the left, Nathan. For sure. And until it becomes easy, just like the right, with all that said, is modulate. I'll start feeling relief in my pain. Pain is more so strong. Sciatica in the right leg. But feel it also on the left, but not as bad. I can't say where you're going to start feeling relief, so I hope you're feeling it by module eight. And all the factors that go into it just kind of makes it hard for me to be able to predict a timeline like that. And I do believe you will feel relief as soon as we can start targeting the The problem. If it is your QL, then I would say to and I'm assuming you've been doing well. Module three is the one where I was recommending you get to where you're doing the front anchors challenge. I am assuming you're doing that more on the side that's weaker. So if you're not doing that and if you are, then keep doing that until you can get feel a sense of balance in the front anchors challenge. And and then there will be in module four another opportunity to spend more time doing the side in the back anchors challenge that you might be weaker. And all of these things are going to improve your core muscle function and balance. And I would think that eventually, you know, it seems like your pain has been going on for about four years. So when it goes on for a long time. It can take longer to go away. I think eventually if you stick with it, you your persistence will win out. And you can also start doing the side plank now because you don't need you know, the side plank is a common exercise. It's not one of the ones in this program where it's you can't just look it up on YouTube. So you could start now. If it's a QL, the side plank is a good exercise to strengthen the QL, and you definitely don't want to strengthen the side that's already too strong. So only just focus on the side that you feel is shut off. If if that's the case, and you might find out that's not the case by doing this. But exercises can also be diagnostic tools as well. And so yeah, but those single side or unilateral exercises like the side plank or any single leg exercise like your sit stand squat are great opportunities to discover weaknesses in one side versus the other and also address them at the same time. So I'm glad you're doing that. Keep it up and I think you'll get there. It's just hard to know the timeline and keep reaching out. I'm happy to keep, you know, going back and forth and supporting you until we get there. All right. We'll move on to the next one. This one is Guillermo. It says you're working on the front anchor. Still in the chat. Awesome. Support that. And I know that you are have been going at your own pace. And that I just want to remind you and reaffirm to you that I fully support that because of the situation that you've had. Uh, and everybody should go at their own pace. But for you, you know, I don't want you to feel like you are should be going faster. You know you're doing the right thing and making sure you're nailing down these foundational concepts before moving on. And, and I just I support you in that. So keep it up. So this next question from flow is in the hip hinge lesson I believe that's module four. Yeah. Module four it says good morning. Is there glute activation returning to upright. Let me think about that. Yeah absolutely absolutely. I actually I wouldn't say activation I would say glute involvement glute you know force. But the activation would be even occurring on the lowering to flow. So the glutes will help lower you down in the hip hinge. And they will not shut off at any point during the low, the, you know, the lowest amplitude of the movement, they should stay engaged and then they will bring you back up and they will they will engage more to bring you back up, probably, but we will want them to be activated from the beginning. Also, correct me if I'm doing this wrong. I push away, breathe into my back, push away, breathe into my back, lift my pelvis. I've been trying to get a little fat in standing to the get fat concept right. I also palpate sides and rectus to make sure they are turned on, then led up to ten percent. I love that I love the make sure they're on and then return to ten percent. Uh, that can make it easier to find that ten percent. Then rather than going from zero to ten, go to zero to one hundred or zero to fifty and then let down. So I love that strategy flow. The only thing I would want to comment on is that when we're standing and doing kind of relaxed activities like standing or walking or low level activity, the rectus abdominis shouldn't really be a big participant. So ideally, you know, that might be just really subtle, but we do want to make sure that the deeper the postural muscles are participating and they would be more involved with things like breathing and just posture. And and so that's really the get fat concept, is checking the muscles that live beneath the rectus. And if we are focusing on engaging the rectus throughout the day, we're trying to turn a muscle that is designed for power into a postural muscle, and that's not really what we want to do. We want to keep the postural muscles, postural, the deep core and the rectus as the muscle that would initiate movement. So, you know, if you were going to sit up from bed or reach or something, do something that takes a little more intensity, that's when the rectus will engage and perform its job, which is to move the body. But we can we can point to muscles that aren't really designed to move the body, but they're just designed to provide support like those deeper muscles underneath it that get fat muscles. And those are the ones we want to kind of focus on having slightly active throughout the day or waking throughout our waking hours. So let's go back and say, I want to just read over again. It says, I push away, breathe into my back. I'm. I wanted to kind of ask what you mean by push away, breathe in what position are you doing that? Because if you're in the back anchor position, that makes perfect sense. Pushing away from your back anchor and breathe into your back sitting. That kind of makes sense. Standing. I would be curious to know how what you're pushing away from are you pushing away from your anchors in standing and like the anchor triad? Then yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And just a reminder to keep it subtle. You know, we want that to find a balance between, you know, developing stability and also keeping the muscles relaxed. And that's more of an art than a science. And also the lift my pelvis. So yeah, it sounds like overall it says sometimes pursed lip breathing helps engage those muscles for sure. So just a little bit of resistance on the exhale can cause those muscles to have to turn on a little more to force the exhale out. So yeah, the ujjayi breath would be one name of that type of breathing. So it sounds like overall flow. I know you're a physical therapist, so you really understand this stuff and it sounds like you're doing really well. And that said there is going to be a future lesson, a future stream topic on how this stuff can be more difficult for people that are super athletic, and also for people who are super educated and know the anatomy too well, because what we're learning is modeled after infant development. And so actually, some of the people that do best are the ones that, uh, come in with a blank slate of knowledge and even fitness. So it's harder to unlearn what you already know than to learn new things. So. Yeah. So recognizing that flow, it sounds like your overall you're doing really well. That's it. That was the last question. And so we'll do a quick conclusion on the topic today. That was should you avoid using your back when you're having back pain. And the overall answer is no. You should continue moving your body. You listen to your body. If it's severe, it's a, you know, an acute flare up. You might need to take a day and lay down. But in general, motion is lotion and you want to keep moving and keep those muscles active because the muscles are the only thing that support the lumbar spine, the rest of the spine, you know, the thoracic spine and the pelvis has a lot more bony support, but the lumbar spine is relying on those muscles. And if you're not moving, those muscles are ultimately going to get weaker. So bed rest is not recommended. It's not the solution to chronic lower back pain. You want to keep using those muscles, keep them active. And ideally you want to do activities that help bring them back into balance. So you can also be getting to the root of the problem. So that's my encouragement to you. Thanks again for being here. And as we walk away from this live stream, at least I will be sitting at a computer for a couple hours. Go do something that's good for your body. Your body does so much for you, so go pay back your tissue debt. And if that means getting down on the floor and doing some core balance training, then go do that and connect to your core. Until next time, thank you again and I'll see you next week. Take care.
