Disc Herniation Exercises To Avoid : Cobra And McKenzie Press Up

So you had back pain and you went to the doctor and they gave you an X ray and they came back and they showed a disc herniation. And the doctor goes, that's why you have pain. Okay? You go out and search for exercises for disc herniation issues and you see these two exercises that keep popping up everywhere. And Google and YouTube. One's from yoga called the Cobra. One's from physical therapy called the McKenzie Press Up. Ironically, kind of funny to me, the exact same posture from two different sources. But don't do it just yet. Don't do it because those two poses may work in basically one small situation. Every other situation, those two poses are going to make matters worse. So I want you to stay tuned to find out why it might not work for you and why it might work for you, why the discreation might not be your issue, and what you can do about it. If you haven't met me yet, my name is Akimba. So I'm the owner of Socore Fitness and I've been in this field for almost 30 years now. I'm a therapist and a trainer, and I specialize in holistic exercises that not only correct issues, but build you to your strongest self. The whole goal is you want to live your best life. That's our goal as well, too. If you want to hear more about this, then I encourage you to subscribe and then hit that bell. That way you'll be notified every single time I make a video about weekly, about different stretches, exercises and techniques that allow you to live your best life. So why am I making this video is because I went through this issue as well. Way back when I was lower to mid-30s. I don't know exactly when I developed a disc bulge at alpha L5. I had sciatic pain and among a bunch of other stuff that I tried that didn't work. I was given the McKenzie press up by PTS and I went to yoga classes and did Cobras. Both times each practitioner told me, yes, it will totally help. You'll feel great afterwards, all that stuff. Both times it was worse. At that time, I didn't have the knowledge I did now as to why it hurt. I just knew it hurt and not a good way. It hurt in a bad way and made things worse and that it wasn't a sustainable thing to do. So I wanted to make this video now that I have this information on why it was so unsuccessful, to let you know. So hopefully if you made the mistake, don't make it again. And if you're about to make the mistake, don't. Or at least check into it to see if it's appropriate for you. And the video will tell you all about that. So before we begin, I just want to go through some clarifications on the different disc pathologies. So you have a compression. One vertebrae and the other vertebrae are getting too close to each other because of different reasons why. And because of it, it's starting to put pressure down on the disc joint. In that disjoint, you have a nucleus pulposus, the little creamy center of your disc joint. Because the compression is pushing down, it's starting to move out through the analysis. Fibrosis. Say that three times fast, and it's going toward the edge, okay? So it's being pushed down and going towards the edge, and it's bulging a little bit and say disbulge. That's level one. Level two is a herniation. You still have the same compression, you still have the same movement of the nucleus pulposus through the annulus fibrosis. But now it's gone through, it's made its way through, and now it's peeking out. It's open. That's a herniation. That's level two. Level three is a prolapse. Now it's gone through, it's peeking out, and it's totally expunged out into the spinal canal and all the different areas they can go to. So those are three levels. In a disc joint, you have a combination of two vertebras, a joint, and a bunch of tendons and ligaments. It's called fsu, a functional spinal unit, because everything works together in your body, because that's the way it's designed. That's the way it's the best way to look at it. So in base, you can think about your spine as like a car. So you have the front part, the part facing you right now. That's the body, the big part. In between the body, you have the dist, the actual joint of your spine. Just right behind that, you have what's called your facet joints, which is kind of the steering wheel of the car, helps guide it to where you're going. And then a little further back, the pokey part that's poking behind me right now, you have your brakes, your spinous process that slows the movement of the spine down in different ways. So those three areas of your spine are important to know now within those three areas. So we'll go back to the body part. When the body that's front to you, you have a little open on the posterior, that's back and lateral area. It's the weakest point of that joint. You can say, I don't want to say typically, but there's a higher than likely average that when you have a disc bulge, at least part of it is going through that posture. Later part, but not all. And this is one of the issues with the Cobra McKenzie is they think it's just that area where the disc goes. It's likely that it's going there, but it could not only be going there, but could also go through different areas. Your herniation may be asymptomatic, which means it's not touching anything. If you're 35 or 40 and above, you got some sort of bulge, you got some sort of herniation prolapse. You would definitely feel for the most part, but you got, you got some sort of wear and tear in your spine. There's nothing to be scared of. It's just what happens with gravity and movement. And if you haven't done corrective exercises to stop that process, then you're obviously going to have it. There's things you can do which we'll talk about later, but most people have it, but it doesn't have to be the pain. But when Most doctors or PTs or whatever look at X ray, they're looking for, they're looking for that. So they're looking to see, okay, I see a bulge, that must be the issue. But they're not looking at other things or testing with their hands or movement tests on why it might not be from there. I see people who had back pain where they said from herniation that it wasn't from that at all. Because after some assessments, after some movements through different stretches, exercises and therapies, we found it was a different place because you can have different things that cause back pain. You can have an artery or nerve be pinched and causes back pain. You can have your facet joints, the steering wheels I talked about. They're a total joint. It's if they're compressed, that could cause back pain. You could have weak abs, you could have a too tight psoas or muscular structure around your lumbar pelvis area. You could have an SI joint issue which is causing your back pain. So there's a lot of different reasons. And so when you look at the COBRA or the McKenzie press up, it'll work. If you kind of don't have any of those other pathologies and they have a basic bulge that's going through the postural lateral part, that spine. The reason why that disc is starting to bulge or herniation or eventually prolapse is that the mechanics of your spine are not working for you. You don't have enough strength in your spine or surrounding musculature, like mainly your abs and your back muscles, to keep your spine in place. The spine is not. When they say spinal column, it's not a column. So there's no. It's not stacked upon each other like a column. It's a fluid position, right? So it's four distinct curves. And so the mechanics of your spine, you have some main mechanics, right? You have flexion going forward, you have extension going backwards, you have lateral flexion is going to the side, you have rotation, you have translation, which is sliding side to side. And then you have a bunch of engagements, the facet joints, which are more pathologies, but it changes the mechanics of your spine. The main thing you want to know is that whenever you move, and those ones I just mentioned, you have a little rotation, because there's nothing ever pure. I don't flex purely this way. I get a little rotation, I don't slide purely, or I get a little compression. When you turn your spine, you have compression. When you have compression, it's going to push that bulge, herniation, prolapse more. Now, you can do different things to warm yourself up to that and do activities that don't cause as much rotation. But that's basically what's happening, why it's causing a bulge. When you go into a Cobra or McKenzie press up, you're acting on the disc in your spine. It's being acted on by mechanics of your spine, gravity and a law called Pascal's Law. It's a very important law, which I can tell you why. It's going to give you some more information on why this might or might not work for you. So when you go into that position, check out that picture. When you go to that picture, you're taking your body upwards. When you go upwards, the front part of your spine, the part in this picture that's facing the floor, is opening, the back part is closing. And then you have gravity going down. So by that, when the front part opens, the back part closes. That disc, in theory, should start to go down, away from that posture lateral part, where it's quote, unquote, theoretically bulging, excuse me, and it starts to go down, back toward the ground. That's the whole idea. You go up, it moves back down. But Pascal's Law is not being taken consideration for here. Pascal's law is from a really smart person, scientist, and I believe is a fluid mechanic, fluid mechanics. The idea is that when I exert pressure on a spherical force, so think like a soccer ball, when I push on it or kick on it, the force that goes from inside the ball out is omnidirectional. That means it goes a bunch of different ways, right? Goes every single different way. And if I'm putting pressure on that disc and it's going omnidirectional, the force is going to go to the weakest area, right? So if I have a cylinder and I have a couple cracks in the back lateral part, that posture lateral part, it's going to move that way. But if I have cracks in the front or the side, it's also going to go that way. Now, my doing that position exerted force on the disc. And yes, it's going back down away from the posture later part of that spine, but it's also pushing to other weak areas in that joint. So it's important to know, do you have other tears or other weak areas within that joint that that disc be pushing out? Because you don't want to push yourself from one problem to another problem. So as well as Pascal's law not being taken into consideration with these two movements, specificity is also not being taken into consideration. So when you looked at the X ray, you had a disk bulge, let's say at L4, L5. Okay. As you go down goes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. L4, L5 is almost the lowest part of your mobile joint. L5 S1 would be just below it. You have a bulge or herniation. Excuse me, L4, L5. When you get into that posture and you push yourself up, how does your body know what joint you mainly need to work on and what joints you don't want to work on or need to work on less? It's a trick question. There's no possible way you're doing a global movement. You're pushing your whole body up and saying, okay, you're hoping L405 opens and doesn't cause any problems with the other areas. If you have a disc bulge or herniation at L4, L5, I guarantee you have a problem. Also at L5 S1 and at L3, L4 at a minimum. Because if that joint is compromised, the ones above and below are also compromised. And each joint has its own fsu. Again, functional spinal unit. That means when I go up into that Cobra or McKenzie press up, maybe I open that up or maybe I Can press the facet joints above. Maybe I, I pushed the SI joint too low on L5 S1. I don't know. Who knows, right? What happens to you is relative to your position, your body and what's going on. That's why I go back to again, if you have a basically balanced body and you have a herniation, only a herniation posture, lateral. Well, maybe this works for you. But if you have any other factors in your body, which 99.99% of people do, this may not work for you. Okay, so what do you do? Well, what you do is be dictated on you, your body position and what you can do. The first step, this is going to sound simplistic, is to get evaluation. You get an evaluation on when it hurts, your history, how you can move, your different positions of your body, your posture, like a full intake on your history and how you move and what's worked and what's not worked for you. That's the beginning point. So let's take an example. If somebody comes to me for treatment and they have that disc bulge, disc herniation, L4, L5, I go, okay, great, thank you. That's part of my information. They give me the X ray. That's part of my information. Then I have them come up and I have to do an SI joint test, which is a bunch of stepping tests to see how your SI joint is working to see if that's working. Then I go through some movement tests of some stretches and exercises which will tell me exactly what's tight, what's weak. Okay, now I have a little more information. Now I can start to formulate a program now. Maybe let's say their psoas is really tight, causing their butt to stick out constantly. Okay, well, it probably sounds like a good idea. I need to stretch and strengthen that psoas because the psoas has attachments to different muscles. Maybe I need to work those chains as well because muscles don't work in isolation. I need to work on the SI joint if it was out of place. Want to do some exercises and stretches to balance the pelvis and SI joint. And then it can also give you exercises for the L405 disc herniation. It's a comprehensive program that you need to do, not just a couple exercises you found on YouTube or Google. I know it's a little ironic that I'm on Google talking about this, but I hate that. I can't stand when they say these three exercises to cure all your ails. And this is what's gonna work. That's not how the body works. So you need to build out a program. And I'm assuming your goal is not just to correct L4 L5 disc herniation in this example, I'm assuming your goal is you can function fully to have a good life, to be strong, to do activities, to play with your kids or grandkids, whatever it is you want to do that needs to be your fuel for your program, not just correct this one issue. Because you can get an exercise to give you a little pain relief that you can do the rest of your life and you'll have no pain, but it doesn't function the way you want it, which means you can't live your life the way you want to live. So in my personal opinion, an osteopathic holistic fitness program is by far the best. Your body is built on this interdependent, interconnected holistic being. There's a whole bunch of great research out there on the different ways your body is supposed to be balanced with the SI joint and the spine and different strength ratios for your body. You take all that, you combine it into like a cake and then you bake it and you get your cake, which is going to let you live your best life. So if all that sounds interesting to you and you understand that you want to live your best life and you see that exercises, good exercises and stretches can lead to that. And I've got some resources for you. So I've got a free Facebook group. It's so called Fitness, Strength, Mobility and Fitness for active people. All you have to do is go to the link down below, answer some questions, agree to the terms and you're let in. It's a great place to be more engaged with your questions and not just taking information. It's a great place to engage with us, with me and the members inside there about different questions. It's a great place to get little mini trainings by me. It's a great place to do challenges, interactive challenges where we'll go from three to five days and do different topics and give information with stretches and exercises and also master classes. It's a place I want to interact with you. And so it's a great place if you want to do that. If you're looking just for some more information now, we've got a free resource. It's how to live your best life is to get out of pain, get mobile and live the life you want to do. It's an ebook. So again, that link will be down below that you just have to click put your information in and you get instant access. Or if you're ready to go, you want to find out how this might work for you, this holistic fitness, this working with your body the way it's designed, then schedule a consultation with me again. That link will also be in the comments. Just go on that link, find your time, book it, and we'll have a time to talk. If you don't see a time, you can email supportecorefitness.com and we'll help you find a time. But in this conversation, I just want to know what you're doing, what your goals are, what's worked, what hasn't worked. Because then I can give you valuable information on your situation and what I believe is the best way. And then only if I think you're a good fit will I offer you a chance to join our program. So I hope that helps. In the meantime, check out this video on the Eldoa method. It's fantastic for the joints of your body, especially the spine. And I'll see you next time.