Common Causes of Lower Back Pain

How to prevent and avoid it?

As a personal trainer who specializes in posture and muscle imbalances, I have many clients with lower back issues. And I'm not even mentioning people with injuries, as I'm only referring to postural and lifestyle causes that are so popular that we have a lower back pandemic these days. Let's dive into the issues I've seen and dealt with on the gym floor that can be easily fixed or avoided by regular exercise. 

Our backs consist of numerous muscles, I'm just going to name a few: Quadratus Lumborum, Erector Spinae, Multifidus, Latissimus Dorsai, and Obliques. I did try to make it easy, but unfortunately, it doesn't work that way with our bodies. We cannot dissect it into parts; we must look at it as a whole. Even if the back muscles are strong, but other nearby muscles are weak, the back muscles will have to compensate for the weaker muscles and take too much work upon themselves, which will create muscle imbalance and cause pain.

 That is where the concept of prime mover applies. Every movement has a prime mover (or agonist), the muscle that generates it. Also, it's never only one muscle that creates the motion others are involved and called helpers or synergists. When the prime mover is weak, the helpers take over and initiate synergistic dominance. 

That means that lower back pain might be caused by weak muscles such as the core and abdominals or weak leg muscles such as the glutes, hamstring, and quads. 

The other main back pain reason is bad posture. Good posture means more than proper alignment when standing or sitting. Good posture also includes the correct muscle tension we are supposed to have by design. When one of our muscles or a group of muscles is constantly overstretched, the other ones will be too short or tight. That will create pain on both sides. Read more about muscle tightness and stretches in our article 'How do we stretch?'. 

Now that we know all this, it's easy to conclude how to avoid or fix back pain. We only need to do two things: stretch tight muscles (that will return overstretched muscles to their natural position) and strengthen weak muscles (that will ease the daily work of others that work way too hard now). Simply saying, we need to retune your muscle-skeletal machine back to where it's supposed to be.  

So the last question is, how are you supposed to know which muscles are tight and which are weak in your case? The answer is just the way I identify that for my clients. You can imagine it's even a more complicated task for me than for you, as you are the one who lives in your body, not me. I do it by asking my clients where they feel pain exactly. It can be multiple places. Then I ask them to perform the basic exercises such as squats, lunges, leg raises, and glute bridges. Then I ask them to do all kinds of basic stretches, which they love to perform because it makes them feel so good.

When you start executing the exercises, the place that hurts the most or even shakes will be the main issue you will need to fix. Sometimes you won't be able to continue the routine because the muscle will fail you. In that case, you will need to regress the exercise or switch it to the other that you can perform using the same muscle group. The general rule is to find your weakness and make it your strength. 

This article helped you understand muscle imbalances concerning back pain caused by improper posture and a sedentary lifestyle.