Glenn Dawson walks you through a five-minute lower back routine using just a rolled towel and couch. You'll bridge with the towel under your back, do diaphragmatic breathing, reset your hips with light knee pressure, and finish with a prone glute squeeze to engage your core.
Lower back pain relief in 5 minutes may sound impossible, but if you have a towel and a living room and you follow this video all the way through, I'm going to show you how to relieve your lower back pain right now. Hi, I'm Glenn Dawson, owner of Reset U Fitness for the last 12 years. I'm going to show you the exact movements we give to our clients on our first call to get them out of pain. Follow along with each step. By the end of the video, you should feel better. Let's get started. All right. So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to set up with our legs on top of a chair or couch and roll up your towel as tightly as possible. We're going to use it to basically release the tissues in your lower back. So on your back, put your feet onto the couch, make a 90-degree angle, and then I want you to bridge. So you're going to lift up your hips, slide the towel underneath, right above your hips on your lower back. Now I want you to settle in. Now, for most people, lower back pain comes from the hips being out of alignment. Think of it as like the foundation for a skyscraper, and the spine is a skyscraper. So if we can reset your hips, a lot of the tension's going to go away. So the first thing I want you to do in this position is just breathe. Inhale for 5 seconds, fill up your diaphragm with air. Almost like a— think of it like a big trash bag in your stomach. You're just going to inhale and fill up that trash bag. Hold for like 5 seconds, then exhale for 8. And as you exhale, release every muscle in your lower back. Now, this is very important. I want you to do this for 90 seconds. You need to close your eyes and relax. Most people have what's called muscular guarding. When you're in a high level of pain, everything tightens up and stiffens up and it restricts your motion so you can't move as much. Now you gotta just listen to my voice and relax. I'm sorry I don't have a nice soothing voice like Barry White, but just listen to my voice. Close your eyes. Inhale for 5 seconds. Hold your air. Exhale for 8. Just repeat over and over again for 90 seconds, 2 minutes if you got the time. All right, now it's been 90 seconds. I want you to thrust your hips up again. Pull your towel out. We won't need that towel anymore. The next thing I want you to over, and I want you to do a hip reset. So what we're going to do, we're going to keep our legs flat. I'm going to put one hand behind my knee and the other hand in front. I'm going to apply light pressure for 2 to 3 seconds, and then I'm going to switch. Now, as you're doing this, you're activating one glute and one hip flexor. Now, for most lower back pain, this will help your pelvis go back into its, its alignment happy place. Basically, if your hips are out, it's going to feel like a twist on your lower spine. You're going to feel impingements, pinching pain. We want to do this 10 times. So you're going to go back and forth, push lightly, 2 to 3 seconds, and you're going to feel your hip muscles, pelvic muscles, Contract and release. Now, once you've done this 10 times, we're going to activate the inner thigh muscles. Next, we're going to do a reverse clamshell. So I'm going to take my arms, put them in between my thighs like so. Keep them about shoulder width apart and squeeze lightly for 2 seconds, 10 times. So you should feel that your groin muscles activate as you do this. And you want to do 10 times. Keep your pelvis flat on the ground and just strengthen. You may notice that these muscles are really weak and that's okay. Just do your best. 10 reps, 2 to 3 seconds. Last but not least, we're going to roll over to our stomach. And from here, I want you to come up to your elbows. Now, if this doesn't cause pain, what we're going to do is we're going to push our pelvis into the ground and squeeze our glutes. So it should feel like you're contracting your lower abs and your glutes at the same time. So I'm going to push my pelvis into the ground and squeeze my glutes. I want you to hold this 5 seconds and do it 5 times. It should feel like you're humping the ground. It should feel kind of like you're humping the ground. But if you're in lower back pain, hump the ground, get out of pain. You'll feel a lot better after. This is the last movement. So if all you got to do is hump the ground to feel better, just do it. Now, once you've done that 5 times or 5 seconds, last thing we want to do is get to all fours and then try to move around again. Reassess, see how your body feels. And if from here you can stand up, go ahead and walk around, see how your pelvis feels, how your hips feel. Reassess, see how your body feels. Now, this is going to provide you with relief. It did. If it did, let us know in the comments. Let us know how you feel. If it didn't, also let us know in the comments. For like 95% of people, it's gonna give you amazing relief if you follow and do all the steps like I asked you to. But I've never seen you move. I've never seen your body twist or move the way it's supposed to. So for an assessment and get somebody to work on you and figure out what exactly you need and then keep everything in alignment with some strength training, What I want you to do is go to resetyou.com and get some help there too as well. So hopefully you're feeling better. Let me know in the comments, and if this video gave you value, share it.
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