Recurring lower back pain usually stems from pelvic misalignment. This routine uses two hip stretches (Spider-Man and elevated pigeon, each 90 seconds per side) plus two exercises (reverse lunges and assisted hip-airplanes) to build stability and prevent it from returning.
Lower back pain can be the worst, literally stop you from doing anything. You can't stand, you can't walk, you can't even lay down comfortably. This video is for someone who just got out of lower back pain. We have a video if you are in lower back pain, see the comments below. That video, if you are currently in lower back pain, is best for you. This video is how to prevent it. How to have a bulletproof back so that it never has to come back. What we're gonna do is we're gonna go over 2 key stretches that I want you to do every single day to make sure that it doesn't come back, just so you have proper hip health, and then 2 exercises to activate the muscles around your pelvis and stabilize your lower back. Now, most lower back pain happens because the pelvis is out of alignment. It's either tilted down and forward or it's completely shifted out of alignment, and that creates the lower vertebrae sliding and gliding the wrong way, and then you slip a disc, or one hip gets out of alignment and causes guarding in one side of the muscles. It's very complex, but the biggest thing I want you to know is your hips are your center of gravity. As you move, they move with you. So what we want to do is make sure that they're moving, gliding, and sliding the way they're supposed to, they're stable, and that your glutes and hamstrings, these big muscles here, do the work instead of your lower back. So follow along. We've got the 2 stretches I want you to do every day and then 2 exercises to stabilize your spine. So the first stretch we're going to do is a Spider-Man stretch. Now, or it's called the ultimate stretch sometimes too. Got a lot of different names. You want to get into a lunge. Now in this lunge, make sure that your knees are padded. If there's any kind of pain in the back knee, it's going to tighten up and you're going to guard muscularly. I want to create a diagonal line from this ankle to this back knee here. Try to keep this leg perpendicular to the ground. If it's back like this, you're not going to get a good stretch. Now, from here, I'm going to stick my opposite arm down and I'll give you other angles of this too. And I want to push my knee away from my center line and look away. You're going to do this 5 times just to warm up your hip capsule, and you should feel it bind leaning back into the hip capsule. Then take your elbow and set it down right next to your ankle. So like I said, I've got this hand here placed into the ground. I'm pushing away from my body and then press the elbow down right next to the ankle. Now hold this stretch for 90 seconds. It takes 90 seconds for tissue change, and then go ahead and switch. The next stretch we want to do is an elevated pigeon stretch. Now the best place to do this is your couch. Leave a pillow on the ground or something padded because that one of these knees is going to go on the ground. Now I'm going to leave my leg on top of— for you it's the couch, for me it's this bench here— and I'm going to slowly lower myself using my arms until I have my leg perfectly at a 90-degree angle. And you should feel a stretch in this backside hip. I'll show you the other side in a second. Now, this right here is a stretch for most people. You don't have to do anything else than this. This is perfectly fine for 90 seconds. Now, if you want to improve this stretch and make it more, I guess, effective, inhale from your diaphragm and then exhale, folding your body over. Now, just like the other stretch, you're going to want to hold this for 90 seconds. I'll show you the other side. But these two stretches, the Spider-Man stretch and the pigeon stretch, done 90 seconds per day, will drastically improve your pelvic health and the ability to not put any strain on your lower back. Now let's jump into the exercises. So what we're going to do is a reverse lunge or back lunge to activate your glutes and hamstrings and open up the hips. So most people that have a problem stabilizing their hips, because their glutes aren't firing correctly. So a simple back lunge where you can use a wall to stabilize, step back, create a 90-degree angle with the front leg, and then make sure you're pulling yourself straight up through this bottom leg like you're standing straight up in the air. You should feel it in this glute and hamstring on the front leg. Now, if this is too easy for you and you've progressed past this and you feel very strong and stable in this exercise, I want to do it elevated, and you can add weights. This will increase the stretch in the hip and activate the glutes more. The glutes are kind of like your safeguard against using your back. You have these big muscles that hold your pelvis in place so your lower back doesn't have to. Now with the weights, you're going to hold them at your side, step back, creating a nice lunge, and then pull yourself straight up from that front leg. I'd recommend doing at least sets of 5 each side and make sure you pause at the bottom. Pausing at the bottom allows you to activate your glute instead of using all the front of your leg and your quad, and then you can get a lot of stability just from that glute activating. Our next exercise is called an assisted hip airplane. What we're going to do is we're going to use the wall to create stability for ourselves so we can actually stabilize our hips. The first move you want to do is put your hands on the wall, and then facing the wall, you're going to go into kind of like a single leg deadlift. Put your weight on one leg and press and hold your glute up. Pause, and then flip, moving your arms around the wall, your leg up and hold and pause here as well. Next, lower yourself slowly into that position you were just in. Pause again. Don't you dare fall down yet and then stand up. Make sure you pause each time. Most people, they do this and then fall back down. This is a stability exercise. We're trying to get rid of your back pain. Don't create more by not being stable. So again, you're going to push back, hold, rotate, hold, rotate back down. Hold, and then stand up. Now when you've got that completely down pat and it's easy for you, you can do an unassisted hip airplane. So just put your arms out, go down, hold, twist and rotate, hold, rotate back down, hold, and then stand. Now guys, if that video brought you value, let me know in the comments how you feel, how your body is feeling stable, and how you don't have to worry about back pain. Give me any kind of other video ideas in the comments. And then guys, if you haven't already subscribed, I don't know what's wrong with you. You got all this amazing content coming to you and you're going to miss out if you don't subscribe. Literally, you won't know. So subscribe and continue to reset your body.
Touch Your Toes in 6 Minutes | Release Muscular Guarding for Better Flexibility
