TSTM JUNE CHALLENGE - SPINE HEALTH
‘If you would seek health, look first to the spine’ - Socrates
Spinal health has been a growing topic for many years and may well be for many to come.
“80% of people at some point in their life will experience significant back pain”. This has been a growing statistic and with our sedentary lifestyles, this should come as no surprise. Pinpointing the cause of the problem is difficult because there are many contributing factors. Common factors include tightness of the hips, sitting for prolonged periods, stress, poor breathing mechanics, high volumes of repetitive movement patterns, physical activities such as running, CrossFit or yoga. It's scary to say, but being more physically active can be detrimental to your spine health. The quality of your movement patterns and your ability to move loads safely is often overlooked in the pursuit of fitness, but at what cost to your spinal health?
For many, the solution is chiropractic adjustment, massage, acupuncture, medical intervention such as pain killers, cortisol injections or surgery. You may have even been recommended to strengthen your core and back muscles with pilates or yoga. Unfortunately, most people find that these solutions never seem to last, you're left with the option to either accept this discomfort as part of life or spend more money on treatments to be pain-free? This is a very common scenario and you are not alone on this.
The physical/ medical providers often aim to treat the symptoms (the pain), but they fail to investigate the cause of the problem. After weeks or even months of treatment, you might be lucky to rehabilitate your spine back to "normal." But normal is the state that got you injured in the first place. This is not a sustainable solution when it comes to health and longevity.
Both physical pain and injuries can often be tied to a movement problem, and TSTM is a firm believer that providing a movement-based solution is more effective in the long run to addressing the root cause of the problem.
How do we address this from a movement perspective?
First, it's helpful to understand the function of the spine. We would like to share some of these functions and the common problems associated with them.
Active movement of the trunk: four primary motions being flexion (forward bending), extension (back bending), side bending and rotation. Throughout the day we use our spine in a vast range of activities such as standing, walking, running, squatting, sitting, hanging, dancing and breathing.
Problem: for many of us our lifestyles very rarely give us the opportunity to keep the spine regularly moving the way it should. For example, a simple resting position such as a deep squat can be very helpful for stretching the muscles and joints of the spine as it is brought into flexion (lengthened through forward bending) during a deep squat. Our ancestors use the deep squat as an opportunity to eat, rest, work, play. If you accumulate the time spent doing all these activities in a day it would amount to a lot of time, especially if performed in a deep squat. However, today we do many of these activities with 90° of hip flexion sitting in a chair which contributes to degenerative adaptations of our spine. As a consequence very few people are able to comfortably sit in a deep squat with their feet flat on the floor and the hips below 90°. We have become more sedentary and so has our spine.
Support for the body: Your spine has 33 vertebrae. They are individual bones that join to form the spinal column. The top 24 bones are capable of independently moving (cervical, thoracic & lumbar region) with the primary motion of the spine being flexion & extension. The structure of the spine is able to withstand a great deal of pressure yet also serves as a shock-absorbing system. The discs between the vertebrae of the spine help cushion the effect of shock and stress along the spine from activities such as walking, running, jumping and bending/ twisting.
Problem: A lack of spinal segmentation (independent control of joints) can decrease the ability to absorb shock and transmit force efficiently and safely. The majority of people struggle to demonstrate spinal awareness and control of the segmentation. Many people end up with a spine that only moves from a few vertebrae and not the whole spine. An immobile spine can not safely handle external force/ loads such as barbell squatting, deadlifting, jumping, running, walking or just daily activities. In this scenario the spine is unable to dissipate force across the full spinal column, which can lead to back pain and injury. Greater levels of stress are placed on the articulating joints of the spine resulting in an increased risk of a spinal injury. As previously mentioned, “being more physically active can also be detrimental to your spine health IF the quality of your movement does not meet the demands of your activity”. This is a simplified example of how.
So back to the question, how do we address spinal health from a movement perspective?
In the video below we introduce the first step to self-managing and regaining control of your spine:
The cat/ cow segmentation is an exercise taken from Functional Range Systems (FRS). The goal is to develop control of the spine through segmentation. Segmentation will allow you to self-assess how well your spine moves and what areas need to be addressed.
The next step is hinge point training in order to unblock areas of the spine that need better segmentation.
Here are the steps most people should start with before considering more demanding movement tasks.
Set yourself a goal of performing 5-10mins each day of spinal segmentation over a period of 30 days. You can incorporate it into your morning routine, or as your warm-up before training. Consistency is essential to progress in all aspects of training, performing an exercise once or twice a week is not going to deliver the same results as performing the exercise daily.
Record yourself; what we feel is happening to our spine may not be what is actually happening. By filming yourself you have the ability to see what is actually happening, you may be VERY surprised to see the contrast between what you are feeling and what you're doing on video.
Monitor how your spine feels after segmentation practice. As you go about the rest of your day, do you notice any difference?
It can be hard to build new habits within our busy schedules, a practice like this can be frustrating at first as the benefits and rewards tend to be delayed. If you can associate small improvements on a daily basis it may help keep you motivated with your spinal practice.
Over the course of June, TSTM will be sharing more exercises that will allow you to develop and progress this practice. Some of these exercises will include more specific/ localised movement patterns to help particular areas of the spine. We will also troubleshoot popular yoga poses, and demonstrate how you can make better use of them. We also want to start applying breathing techniques to build awareness and increase intraabdominal pressure to protect your spine during heavy lifts such as squats and deadlifts.
We look forward to hearing how you get on with this challenge!