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Oh, My Aching Back
Your back works hard all day keeping you in an upright position. Without your back muscles, you’d flop over like a rag doll. But, you’ll have to pay attention to more than your back muscles to keep your back happy. Two other muscle groups, the hamstrings on the back of your thigh, and the abdominals, play an important roll in keeping a pain-free back.
Dreams of having six-pack abs and a flat stomach may be the motivation behind most abdominal exercise; but the true worth of strong abdominal muscles is what they do for your posture and the health of your back. Your abdominal muscles help stabilize your pelvic girdle and support all of your nifty internal organs. When they are weak, your center of gravity is skewed and your back has to overwork to keep you upright. Add extra weight to weak abdominal muscles, and it’s just a matter of time before your back is hollering UNCLE!
Your hamstrings hook onto your hip bones and onto your lower leg bones. The job of the hamstring muscles is to flex your leg at the knee so you can walk, run, and generally have that attractive curve on the back of your thigh. The hamstrings share a connection on the hip bones with the back muscles. So, when the hamstrings get too tight (because of long periods of sitting, or because their strength is out of balance with the quadriceps, and/or because someone forgot to stretch them), they pull on the hipbones and cause the back muscles to become tight.
The whole situation is a backache just waiting to happen. What to do? Strengthen those abdominal and back muscles. See weight training: abdominals and lower back; stretch your hamstrings, see flexibility training: hamstring stretches. Also see, weight training: core stability
(NOTE: If you have a history of back pain, see a physician. This information is not intended to take the place of medical care.)
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