Lower Back Mobility: 14-Min Back Pain Program Part 3

Use your arms, tense up your arms and let your arms do the work for the core. So instead of tensing your core and getting into that part of your spine which hurts, use the arms instead. Five more. Lay down on your back, legs up.

Do a couple of bicycles. Just circle your legs up and down. And then let's do one more round. Grab and roll all the way up to sit.

And on the way back, easy, easy, nice and gently roll down. Use your legs, roll up. And I have no back pain now so I can do this easily. For you it might be 10 times harder.

So don't see and copy. Close your eyes and do this 10, 15, 20 times. The slower the better. The way down is the most important.

Let's do a few more. And walk all the way up to sit. Move your spine around. So that was the rock and roll.

Remember the rock and roll because it's going to make a huge difference for you. The next one is the low plank. Next up. But we're going to do it from the knees.

Interlace your fingers and place your knees down in the ground, toes in the ground. So I see a lot of hanging here and I see a lot of butt sticking. What I want you to do is look at your hips, make sure they're not covering your knees so you should be able to see your thighs here. But you should not see a crease in the hips.

So you should be flat with your hips. And now breathe and move from side to side. Because again you're overusing and tilting one extremely more to one side. So what I want you to do is to rock from side to side to find the middle ground.

You're probably tired already but that's because you are super, super weak. Which is not an accusation, it's just a true fact. If you can't hold this for 10 seconds without feeling like you want to lay down, then this is the thing you should do every day for weeks and months. Because the world record here is five and a half hours.

So the potential is like 50,000% more than what we have done already. And lower down and relax. And strengthening the front of your body. And in plank you're not just working your six pack.

If you stay for long enough in plank, then you're going to work every part of your core. So the longer you stay, let's go back with the knees down in the low plank. Rock a bit back and forth. The longer you stay, the deeper levels you will access.

Because when one part of your core is fatiguing, another one takes over. And it's just time that will teach you technique here. The more tired you are, the more technique you will use. And the most overlooked part of the low plank is the inner thighs.

So squeeze your thighs together and tilt your tailbone back. Because if you're arching your spine here, you're probably just getting more hurt. Take three more breaths. Of course it hurts the elbows and you fatigue your chest, but that's because your mind is weak.

Strengthen your mind, strengthen your body. Lower down and relax. If you want to add an extra pose in between, I would go back to the one we did yesterday. Lifting the knees and lifting the arms.

Straightening and engaging our back. This is called the locust. The locust together with the low plank is an insanely good combination. Let's do one more low plank exercise.

Lift your knees off the ground and place them down. Inhale with the knees in the ground. Exhale lift the knees. Inhale knees down, look forward.

Exhale look back, lift the knees. Inhale knees down. Exhale look back. Keep going.

Inhale and exhale. Two more inhale and exhale. Last one, inhale and exhale. Place your knees down.

Do a cat and cow. And then into the turtle position we did yesterday as well. Take a couple of deep breaths into your kidneys. Sit down, spread your legs, grab your belt.

Last pose. Grab your belt, wrap your belt around the foot and grab the belt and side stretch like this. You're leaning back into your hand so you're not trying to go towards the foot. You're just using the foot as an anchor point and you're leaning back and stretching your side here.

So don't back bend too much or forward fold too much because you're probably going to get hurt. What I want you to do is stretch and walk the hand a bit closer to the foot. So you're trying to stretch again like we did before, stretch your side body but now it's a bit more extreme because you're also stretching the legs. But like I said the first day it's about teaching your spine that more and more poses are actually okay to do.

It's not going to hurt, it's not going to kill you if you find the pose and breathe there for 10-15 repetitions. If you're fatiguing that's great. We're doing this to avoid pain, we're not doing this to pretend that we're strong. So if you're fatiguing it means you're weak, just smile because that's okay.

As long as you don't feel direct acute pain in your spine. So every time you feel like oh this pose is hard, just think this thought, it could be a lot worse. It could be so much worse. You should be grateful for the fatiguing and the shaking you feel because it could be so much worse.

That's one of the things I'm really grateful for with my history of back pain is that god damn it feels good not to have back pain. Life is full of flowers and rainbows and unicorns when your spine is healthy. Switch sides. Don't switch immediately, move the spine first.

So you're not trying to get close to the foot, you're leaning into your back hand. You can use your head to push the arm but what you're trying to do is side stretch. So you can move away from the foot like this or you can walk the hand closer to the foot, whatever it takes to stretch your lat, your ribs and your waist. Nice and steady breath.

And of course if this one is just too tricky or if it hurts, just do the one we did yesterday, sitting with crossed legs and doing that side stretch. This is the same pose, just more extreme variation. But if you get this one right, it feels so relaxing even though it's intense. And release.

And that's it. We rocked and rolled up and down to massage the spine and convince the spine that it doesn't hurt to bend forward. We did the low plank, which you should do forever and ever because it's a great pose, and we did a more intense version of the side stretch. We're already three through, so tomorrow let's do three new poses.

Hoos.