Choosing The Perfect Exercise For Low Back Pain

[EricS]

A person suffering from low back pain can keep fit with any exercise. There is no single best exercise for low back pain. Your exercise regimen would depend on your age, fitness level and particular medical condition.

Swimming, weight training, Pilates, walking, running, aerobics, yoga -- all of these may work for you. But the condition of your lower back must be stable for you to take these up. If you have an inflamed back, the inflammation must be treated first with medicine or chiropractic care. You may start exercising only when the inflammation is gone.

Exercises should be person specific, i.e. customized for each individual. But there are some common sense rules of thumb too. For example, any exercise should help relieve pain, not aggravate it. So if it hurts even after you reduce repetitions, speed or degree of motions, stop doing it.

Contrarily, if an exercise makes you feel relief from pain, do it as many times as you like, slowing down if the pain recurs.

To sum up, do the exercises that relieve low back pain and avoid the ones that aggravate it.

[VideoBackCoach]

In my experience I have found that doing a specific set of exercises even with general back pain soreness is perfectly fine. In fact, I believe this soreness is a signal from my own body that it is time to exercise. Now, there's two types of back pain--general soreness and sharp pain. I believe the sharp pain is a signal that something more serious is going on. You should always seek a doctor if you experience sharp pain. Many times though, I have gone to the gym while experiencing general soreness and walked out feeling great. The exercises I do mainly consist of light impact cardio like using an elliptical machine or recumbent bike; and a light set of squats on a smith machine.

[admin]

PACE YOUR SELF

If you have days when you are feeling good and have less pain you can always try to do a little more. But do be careful and don't over do it.

Spread your workload out and don't feel you have to fit everything into that good day.