- Improve Your Range of Motion: The first thing you need to do is just get mobility back into the lower back, so that’s going to be into the joints, at the spine, and then into the tissue. Some ways you can do that, obviously the best way, is going to your provider who specializes in joint or soft tissue treatment, so a chiropractor would be a great place to start. Once you restore regenerative tissues with full range of motion, then you can shift to the next phase.
- Stabilize the Lower Back: The next phase is all about stabilizing. You’ve got to stabilize not just the muscles in your lower back, but all the muscles that are essentially designed to keep you upright and moving, so that would be your pelvic floor and your core. It is super important to be really stable, because when you have good hip stability your lower back doesn’t work too hard. Then there are muscles that kind of make up or kind of enter into the pelvis, so your glutes and then your hamstring. We call that your posterior chain. And that’s really important to be very active and stable.
- Strengthen the Lower Back: And then the last phase is obviously strength. You have got to have strength in the joint, in the tissue so you can handle the day to day stress and wear and tear that you’re going to put the spine or the back through.
I would say goal one is to improve your range of motion. Goal two is to stabilize the lower back. Goal three would be to strengthen it. And if you do those three things with the help of a provider, you’re going to be in really good shape.
