Any position maintained for long periods of time is a stress on your muscles (sitting, squatting, ...).
People tend to think that sitting is "not doing anything" but your muscles ARE working to keep you upright. The wonkier you're sitting, the worse the effects will be.
I struggled with lower back pain for over 5 years, visited lots of doctors / physios / chiropractors and nobody could give any decent advice. "You're too old" (at 38!), "it's the electromagnetic rays from your computer screen!".
In the end what helped me was a routine of body strength exercises that I developed myself from online research and with the help of a young physio who finally knew what he was doing.
I'm now basically pain free, as long as I do my routine 2 or ideally 3x per week.
I highly recommend anyone struggling with lower back pain to build up a simple routing of core strengthening exercises.
> I highly recommend anyone struggling with lower back pain to build up a simple routing of core strengthening exercises.
As someone who tried this, I'd recommend seeing a medical professional to ensure it's actually going to help first. I made things far far worse before getting help and making them better.
Can you go into more detail? What made things worse? What made them better? Obviously what worked for you might not work for others, but concrete X's and Y's could inspire someone to follow the advice of talking to a medical professional.
My knee jerk reaction is that I don't trust the family doctor to really know much bio-mechanical stuff and will trust a well-referred fitness coach. Maybe you meant you saw a physical therapist?
Sure - but caveating this with "Don't take medical advice from strangers on the internet" (Which was kind of my point).
I've had lower back pain on and off my entire adult life. When I started investigating how to fix it, I came to the (same) conclusion that strengthening my core muscles would help - as someone who trained quite heavily I was confident in my ability to perform basic core exercises without injuring myself [0]. These only exacerbated the problem, and after 2 weeks of doing them I was bed ridden, and in agony.
I had been to a GP who referred me to a neurosurgeon that I was able to get temporary relief from by multiple epidurals, and some severe pain relief medication. Got better again after a few weeks, and I ignored it for 18 months until it came back. Took an experimental procedure that bought me another 18 months. I then saw a physiotherapist who walked me through some of the basic exercises that they give to people who are recovering from spinal fusion (which I had been referred for but held off on). I still get waves of lower back pain every few months, but I'm aware of the early symptoms, and can begin with the PT exercises for a few weeks at a time, until they subside (which they have done every time so far).
Overall, it was about finding what worked for me, as you said, but I definitely wouldn't recommend making that journey on your own.
Just want to clarify that, while I never worked with a fitness coach, I started off following Stronglifts which is touted as the best thing since sliced bread, but it's way too aggressive and down right dangerous if you don't have perfect form. It really made things worse for me.
The physical therapist that eventually helped (even cured) me showed me basic routines of much less "aggressive" exercises (basically the same as what the other person replied to you).
I then used those routines a base for further research and now always try to switch up the exercises I do, it gets boring otherwise. /r/bodyweightfitness has a good suggested routine.
One more thing to note. A friend of mine is recovering from a knee injury right now, and saw a fitness coach who came well reviewed. Unfortunately for my friend, the fitness coach didn't really understand the extent of ligament damage, and worked her way to hard, causing her incredible pain. The trainer had her doing things like squats, and she followed their advice (based on them being a professional). Again she saw a Physical therapist (different to mine) who gave her some actual recovery exercises and a training plan and she's coping much better.
People tend to think that sitting is "not doing anything" but your muscles ARE working to keep you upright. The wonkier you're sitting, the worse the effects will be.
I struggled with lower back pain for over 5 years, visited lots of doctors / physios / chiropractors and nobody could give any decent advice. "You're too old" (at 38!), "it's the electromagnetic rays from your computer screen!".
In the end what helped me was a routine of body strength exercises that I developed myself from online research and with the help of a young physio who finally knew what he was doing.
I'm now basically pain free, as long as I do my routine 2 or ideally 3x per week.
I highly recommend anyone struggling with lower back pain to build up a simple routing of core strengthening exercises.