Lower Back Pain: 20-Min Back Pain Program Part 1 for BJJ

Your body has compensated so much to avoid the pain that you have kind of a pain pattern in your body that's hard to let go of. I know for sure that was the case for me and it took me a full year to break this pattern and convince my body that the injury isn't there anymore, it's not going to hurt if I do this and that. So if you're not patient the injury will just stay or it will keep coming back. So do this twist on your back without provoking any pain.

Breathe in and out through your nose. The deeper the breath the better. If your arm is falling asleep then you can move the arm in a different angle so you're not pinching the nerves or stopping the blood flow. Three more breaths here.

And move back to the middle. Before you do the second side just lift your legs, shake them out a little bit and wag your tail from side to side. Switch so roll all the way over to the right side and then place your right hand on the thigh and let your left arm fall out to the side. Hand behind your head or arm straight out to the side.

So if we're going to redefine what back pain actually means let's just say that some positions hurt. You're trying to avoid some positions because you're not comfortable in that position. But the spine is movable in many directions side to side, back and forward and twists. So that's six dimensions that the spine can move.

And you have five, twelve and seven vertebrae. So you have over twenty vertebrae in your spine that can all move a little bit individually so you have many different positions that your spine can take. And our job through this program is to convince the spine that there are more than just a couple of positions where you can be safe, feel strong, breathe and not feel pain. If your arm is falling asleep then just move the arm to the other side.

Or not the other side but just a different angle. And breathe as deep as you can. Get back to the middle, straighten your legs up, bicycle the legs a little bit, check it out, lift your hips up and down a couple of times. So that was the twist on your back.

I remember when I did judo and I had a lot of back problems this was the first thing I did before training. Every single training this was the best release I could do for my lower back. Next one will take some time to learn. It's the cat and cow.

So it's basically just standing on all fours and doing this. But like I said you have a lot of vertebrae and you're overusing some and you're underusing some of them. So let's spread our fingers and arch our back, dome your back like this so your forehead is trying to push into your pelvis and try to stretch both your lower back, your upper back and your neck here. And the reason it's hard to control where the stretch is going is because some parts of your core muscles are very weak and others are overused.

So if we can teach the front of our body to work in synchronization and work in the same way, that way we're going to help our back the most. Relax your chest and your belly and make an arch here. So make a little back bend and the most underused part of the belly is from the navel and down. So imagine you're trying to put on a really really tight pair of jeans here.

You have to really suck your lower belly in to put the belt, to put the jeans on and then tighten the jeans and like put the belt on the thinnest possible hole. So suck your lower belly in here and move the shoulders back and push your chest forward. So go for maximum arch here. And then chin to chest, make a wave-like motion through your spine and push your head back.

Chin to chest and thrust your hips forward. And then slowly back to neutral, lower your chest and push it forward and stick your tail up. Make an inhale here, exhale round your spine. Inhale release, try to get your head away from your butt.

Exhale head between the thighs. Inhale. And if you encounter pain here, go twice as slow as I'm going. Go four times slow-mo and breathe like two or three times on one move.

But keep sucking your lower belly in to have contact with your pelvic floor because you know, at least for us guys, we're really used to using the chest and the arms and the upper body a lot, especially in martial arts. And we're not so used to using the bottom of our pelvis. It's easier to use big muscles that we can see and touch than to have control over the small muscles on the inside. But those small muscles that we're working when we're pulling our lower belly in, those are the helpers that keep our alignment and our posture good so that the big muscles can do their job correctly.

So by doing slow and for someone who hasn't experienced lower back pain, this might look like super boring stuff. But when you close your eyes and you start breathing, then you're present. And when you're present, there is no such thing as boring. So the cat and cow is a spinal maintenance and spinal mobility exercise.

And if you don't feel any pain here, you can start going a bit back and forward. You can turn your fingers and you can start flowing a little bit. But as soon as you feel pain, stop and go very slow again. Keep cutting and cowering for five more breaths.

Good stuff. Last pose. Find a wall, legs up the wall. So lay down with your butt as close to the wall as possible, legs up.

The weight of your legs is pushing straight down into your hips. The weight of your upper body is pushing into the floor, so gravity and the wall is doing all the work for you here. And if you have, this is a pose that you can do if you have acute back pain, because if this hurts, then you should not do yoga at all. Then you should go see someone and have them give you a shot of pain reliever because if you have back spasms and this even this hurts, then stop practicing, go see a specialist.

And when you're starting to get a little bit better, that's when you can start this program. So it's irresponsible of me to teach rehab through the internet. We can do prehab and prevent injuries, but if you have acute injury or surgery, then it's not fair to ask me for help when I haven't seen you and I'm not a specialist. All I can give is general advice, but this pose for me is one of the best lower back releases that exists.

Let's take five minutes here and relax. Let the weight push, weight of your legs push into your hips. If you had a heavy bag or something, one of these Bulgarian sandbags or something, I would for sure put that over the feet to get more pressure down. If your shoulders are stiff and you want to stretch the shoulders, you can move your arms overhead or bend your arms out to the side.

We call it practicing yoga, but it's not like we practice jitsu when we spar or drill, because that stuff is exhausting. We're not practicing skills when we're doing this pose. We are practicing non-practice. You are trying to not try.

You're relaxing instead of doing. It's the non-doing. It's the absence of doing. You know you have reached a higher level of yoga or a deep level of understanding when you can lay down here for five, ten minutes without anything happening, not around you, not inside, not anywhere.

Things are just still. That is truly a sign of self-mastery. You can't try and you can't work and you can't grind your way to it. The more you try, the longer it takes.

If you can find perfect patience, then I can promise you that your back pain will go away probably forever. The thing that keeps your back pain permanent is anxiousness and stress. The back pain you're feeling is probably nothing more than tension. If you can relax the tension in your head, in your mind, the body is going to respond immediately.

Take a deep breath. Take a deep breath. If it's late at night, keep doing this pose until you fall asleep and then you go to bed. If it's during the day or early morning, try to find some space for five extra minutes here.

I remember having a job a few years ago, many years ago actually, where I had to stand on a concrete floor all day. In the lunch breaks, I did this pose for ten, fifteen minutes and it got me through the rest of the day. It's so healthy for the spine to lay flat on a hard surface with the legs up. So, take five, ten, fifteen more minutes here or if you're ready, roll over to the side and sit back up.

Okay, guys, this was the first day out of five. Tomorrow, let's do three other poses. Thank you guys and good luck with your lower back pain or your back pain.