A three-step routine to ease lower back pain from sitting: foam roll above your glutes for 90 seconds with deep breathing, stretch your glutes and hip with a knee-to-chest hold for 90 seconds, then do a padded hip-flexor lunge for 30 seconds each side. You can do it at your desk, in an airport, or anywhere.
If you're dealing with pain at the desk in your lower back, I'm going to show you how to relieve it in this video in 3 easy steps you can do from anywhere. So whether it's your desk, the airport, or even just watching Sunday football, all you got to do is follow these 3 steps and it'll eliminate most of your lower back pain. Step 1, grab a foam roller. Any foam roller will do. If you're in serious pain, don't get the one that's ribbed like this. It's probably going to be way too intense for your tissues. Take it easy on your tissues and get an entry-level foam roller. Go to the ground. And then if you have a swivel chair like the one I'm using here, it's just going to make it a little bit more difficult. So pin it up against a wall so that it doesn't move. Then go to your back and make 90-degree angles with your legs. From here, I want you to bridge lightly and throw the foam roller underneath your back. You want to position the foam roller so that it's right above your butt and right, like, sitting on those lower back muscles. Now, the point of this— we're going to sit here for 90 seconds and breathe— the whole point is to relieve the muscles in your back. What happens when your muscles get really, really, really tight is this thing called muscular guarding, where everything just gets really stiff and tight and doesn't want to move. And if you try to move it, it lights you up and flares you up. I'm sure you've probably experienced it if you're in lower back pain right now. That sucks. We want to avoid that. So we're always going to do this one first. So for the rest of the 90 seconds, I want you to inhale, hold, and then exhale. And make sure your exhale is longer than your inhale. So if you can, inhale for 5 seconds using your diaphragm, hold, and then exhale for 8. I would even close my eyes and just relax and focus on your breath. You got 90 seconds. That has to be 90 seconds, otherwise your nervous system is going to not release. We're not going to make any progress. Once you've hit 90 seconds, go on to step 2. Okay, the next stretch we have to do is get this hip capsule and this glute to release. Now, your Back can be injured in many different ways. So this is a catch-all. This is a stretch to try to fix most all back pain, but it's very, very specific and you should probably get an assessment. If you're looking for assessment, click below. We have those. But for this, I want you to do a glute stretch. So if you can pull your knee to your chest, you're going to feel a stretch there. Now, this may be enough. You may feel a stretch here. And I want you to hold this for 90 seconds. We're going to get really repetitive with this 90-second thing. Now, if this isn't enough stretch for you, what I want you to do is take this ankle and twist it and put it behind your knee or in front of your knee like a figure 4 stretch. Now with this, you want to feel the stretch in the glute of the leg that is bent. And glutes, for you guys that don't understand, those— that's your butt cheek. So you should feel the stretch right in here. Again, 90 seconds. It's got to be 90 seconds. If you're in back pain, I would recommend doing both sides, but you definitely want to do the side of the affected limb. So the side that's causing you the pain. So the last stretch we're going to do is a hip flexor lunge stretch. So grab a household pillow or something to pad your knee. The only thing I had was this humongous pad, so I'm going to use this. Remember that guardian thing you don't want to have. So you don't want to have your knee on a hard surface. Make sure it's padded. If you're at the airport, take off your hoodie and stuff it under your knee so that way you don't have your knee on a solid surface. You want to have zero pain in this exercise. Now the next step you want to do is I want you to turn on your abs and keep your spine straight. Put your arms above your head, and we're going to go into this lunge position and start to push our hip forward and down. You should feel the stretch right here in the front of the hip flexor, and the hip flexor is basically a band that goes around your hip and goes straight down. Now you don't want to feel it in your lower back. If you're feeling that, turn your abs on more. If you feel it in your lower back, it means you're extending too much. So stay straight up and down and put the pressure here. After 30 seconds of holding this position, I want you to rotate over the front leg like so and hold it for another 30. Once you've done all of this, your back pain should be diminished. Say if it was a scale of 1 to 10, it was an 8 out of 10 and 10 is the highest. That should go down to a 4 after doing this. If it doesn't, I want you to seek professional help. If it does, we've just cut your back pain in half doing 3 simple moves that you can do anywhere. Let me know in the comments. And then if you haven't already done so, subscribe, because like, why wouldn't you? Don't you want content like this? What if your elbow hurts? You're going to need to know how to fix it. Thank you.
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