Five warm-up and mobility exercises to help reduce back pain

When we talk about discomfort and / or injuries , one of the most frequently mentioned areas is usually the back, and specifically the lower back . Much of the blame for these discomforts are due to poor posture during the day, excess weight on the back (especially in the case of children and adolescents of school age ) or even some bad posture when sleeping.

However, in many cases these pains are also caused by an ineffective heating before starting our exercise routine or after doing it to relax the area. Therefore, we will see a series of exercises that can serve us both before and after our routine to warm up and relax our lower back .

Five warm-up exercises to help prevent low back pain

Pain and discomfort of the back are one of the great physical limitations that can affect us (and that in fact affect the vast majority of the population at some point in their lives), so it is essential to do a good job of prevention , if we do not suffer these discomforts, or treatments, in case of having begun to suffer them. For this, the work of previous mobility and stretching is a great alternative, since in addition to preventing or treating these discomforts , it can help us improve our performance in sports .

Rolled on foam roller

With care and with the help of a foam roller , this exercise is aimed at providing flexibility to our posterior area , and we can do it from the upper part of our back to the lower back. The key to effective this previous work is to go making the movement of rolling on the foam roller in a smooth and progressive way, lowering little by little and centering the movement for a few seconds in each area.

Stretching “cat-cow”

These stretches are made with the goal, worth the redundancy, to stretch the entire area of ​​the back (in fact they are an exercise widely used in the discipline of yoga). For this, we must maintain at all times a quadruped position and pace the stretches with our breathing. Movements should not be made abruptly , but slowly and gradually and never reach the point of feeling pain or discomfort .

Mobility work

It is also very important to perform a work of mobility and not only stretching and releasing the stiffness of our back, for which we are going to perform this exercise that prioritizes the mobility of our hips through a rotation movement. As in the previous exercises, it is very important to do it in a controlled way to avoid jerks and injuries .

For those who can not maintain the position seen in the video, you can also perform the exercise with the knee of the back leg on the floor, and this way we can relieve the tension of the psoas and the adductor .

Stretching of the lower back

This stretching exercise is also known as ” the stretching of the cobra ” or the “greeting to the sun” , because of the similarity between this animal when it is available in attack position and our position in the final part of the movement. The purpose is to stretch the area of ​​our lower back , but also directly affects our abdominal area, so it is a fairly complete exercise at the level of previous work in the core area.

Balasana: yoga also helps us warm up

The Balasana posture or “prayer posture” (because of its similarity to the position adopted by certain religions when praying) is a characteristic posture of the discipline of yoga that will help us to stretch our entire back, but which, like the rest of exercises, we must perform in a controlled manner and without sudden movements.