3 Bad Habits You Need to Stop If You Want to Avoid Lower Back Pain

You probably know by now how significant and widespread lower back pain is throughout the United States. Millions of Americans suffer from lower back pain and it’s unlikely that the number will greatly decrease any time soon. With the rise posture programs, few are really discussing the actual bad habits that land people in the problem in the first place.

Surely it’s more complicated than just bad habits. Lower back pain can be so debilitating that people have to take medication, skip work days, or lay in bed until things start to feel remotely better. It seems medicating the problem away is the answer for many health related organizations. It’s either medication or some item that’s supposed to help relieve the back pain and bring comfort.

You could take this further; you can dig into the musculoskeletal reasons. You could mention the tight posterior chain muscles and discuss the muscles that are strained, lengthened, shortened, or are imbalanced. However, what about what’s causing them? What about the behaviors, those consistent habitual behaviors that have led to all the above? Why aren’t we discussing those enough?

Quite simply, most organizations and programs don’t understand the roots of the issue. It looks fancy to discuss the muscle related reasons only, it seems well meaning to apply some strange cream or wear an item that’s supposed to give relief, but they are missing the reason why this happened in the first place. It’s sad and it’s part of the reason why millions of Americans have back pain; it’s because they don’t know that they’re causing it and don’t know how to fix it.

Here are 3 habits that land you on the path to lower back pain. Keep in mind, it’s understood that at some point you’ll succumb to these, but as a rule of thumb you want to reduce the likelihood of engaging in these habits:

1.  Poor body alignment when performing activities of daily living

Think of all the activities you do regularly. From sitting to walking, bending to reaching, and eating to sleeping, you absolutely need to do these activities on a regular basis but you might just be doing them all wrong and you’ve never thought about it. You must pay attention to the way to perform these tasks. It’s because you need to do them daily that also makes it so dangerous to neglect. You may need to fix the way you do all these activities to ensure your body is in safe alignment.

2.  Improper form and misalignment when exercising

You’ve been to the gym, right? How many exercises do you suppose are being done in proper alignment? You’d be shocked to know the majority of people in there are performing the right exercises in poor alignment. You’d also be surprised if I told you there are exercises that people shouldn’t be doing at all, but many of them still creep their way into gyms all across the country. If you exercise or are active on a regular basis, you’ve got to develop the ability to determine what’s working and what’s hurting. If you don’t, you could land yourself on a hospital bed after doing a simple movement.

3.  Sitting too much and in poor alignment

It’s one thing to sit in poor alignment, but it becomes a whole new ball game when you add sitting for hours at a time. Sitting on its own isn’t a problem, but when you sit for prolonged time it puts pressure on the spine and can cause your hamstrings to tighten and possibly become shortened. If you’re sitting for eight plus hours a day, you’re more likely to have lower back problems. This all becomes worse, as stated before, if you’re doing it in poor alignment. Just turning in your chair could land you at home in bed.

Speak to your clients, friends, and family about these habits too, they’re probably engaging in them often and don’t realize it. They may not have any problems yet, but if they keep this up they’ll be laying in a bed holding their back in no time. This is serious stuff and if more people are to feel relief, we all need to educate ourselves and others about the habits that could lead to it.

If you’re a health and fitness professional, do your part to help change your community. If you’re unsure on how to do this, check out our NPI-Certified Resistance Training Professional™ program, it’ll teach you more about these bad habits and you’ll learn how to exercise correctly to avoid problems.

You can check out the program here >>