Lower Back Pain (Extension) Day 5: 17-Min Final Rehab Flow

So once again, I get the position first, I find that stretch and then I just take the back leg off the ground and I'm just going to hold that. And relax. That tends to be quite hard work. So we're going to give you a break with another exercise before we come back to that one.

Okay. So we're going to go back to our bird dog. So before we were just lifting the leg in this position. Now we're going to lift the leg and the opposite arm.

And the aim of the game is to still to keep my back as flat and as still as I can. So I could balance that glass of water on my hips without spilling it, or at least that's the idea. And rest there. We're going to go back to the static lunge.

And once again, just going to hold that at end range. And rest there. Switch sides. Take a second.

Again, it's always worth taking the time to get this one set up well. Finding that stretch before you start. And it's just slightly lift that back knee and head towards the ceiling. No forward lean.

And relax. Okay. One more set on the bird dog. And rest there.

Grab your band. Once again, pass it behind your back. Hands on the floor in front of you. And we're just arching the back into the band and back to neutral.

So what I'm doing is I feel like I'm tucking my tailbone underneath my legs. And rest there. So pop the band to one side. And we're going to go back to our dead bug again.

This time we're going to combine the arms and the legs. So if I grab my medicine ball or my light weight. This time, lift the legs up, lift the arms up. And we're going to take the arms back and one leg all the time, keeping that back pressed down into the floor.

So if you need a bit of a cue, you can wrap that tail up and put it under your lower back. But hopefully by this point you should be able to start feeling when that back's pressed down. So rest there. Put the ball to one side.

And if you remember our hip hinge, so we did this with a broomstick before. This time we're going to do one set without a broomstick. Just putting hands on the hips, keeping the back nice and straight. Just bending at the hips.

What I do is to keep the back in that neutral position and just take it as far as you can until you get that pull on back of the legs. So I don't want to be locking my back in extension. So I don't want to be here. Just neutral, not flexed, not extended.

Just that natural curve. So back onto the floor. And we can do the same as last time or if you're feeling adventurous, you can go both legs and both arms at the same time. Again, keeping the back pushed into the floor.

That's the crucial bit. Put the ball down and back to the hip hinge. Now this time, if you want to add a bit of weight to the hip hinge as well, you can do. So here I'm just going to use a light sandbag.

You can use an Olympic bar, you can use a kettlebell, you can even use a shopping bag for this. You don't need to add weight at this point, but if it's starting to feel easy and your back's at a position where you can do that, that's fine. So again, I'm concentrating on keeping the back flat. I want to get that whole back as close to neutral as I can.

Shoulder blades back. If I get any pain, I'm going to stop, I'm going to back off. A little bit of discomfort is all right, but it shouldn't be any more than that. And it's important to start with a very light weight at first.

Don't go throwing 60 kilos on a bar or anything like that. Start with something really light, almost too light, and then see how your body reacts to it the next day. If everything feels good, you can gradually increase the weight. It's important not to do too much too soon with this one.

And rest there. Weight off to one side. We're just going to do one more set on each of those. So once again, legs up, arms up.

Really make sure that back's pushed down. So rest there. Ball to one side. Grab your weight if you're using one.

Once again, I can't emphasise enough, this is all about getting that movement right. It's not about the amount of load you're putting on it. It's about developing those good movement patterns. And as I always tell people at this point, we're not saying that you shouldn't ever bend your back.

So obviously in a sport like jiu-jitsu, there are lots of times when you're going to need to, where your back's going to be in all kinds of different positions, and we need to be able to deal with that. But understanding what straight feels like, what that neutral position feels like, and being able to maintain that and get back there, that's an important first step. We've just gone through that dynamic sign Y axis. So you can just place that little bit, then do one more Y axis.

And put the weight down. And that's the end of our series. So well done for making it through to day five. Do feel free to go back over those days, that program as often as you need to.

You can take exercises from that program and bring them into your warmups. You can use these through the day. Several of those stretches are quite good for relieving tension and relieving pain when it starts to come on. So do use all of those exercises during your day-to-day training or your day-to-day life.

Thank you for following us and we'll see you for another program.