Enhance Your Lower Back Function with These 3 Essential Hip Exercises

According to the study, 80% of U.S. population will experience lower back pain at some point in life. Many of the issue that is causing the back problem is tightness of the hip. Reason for the tightness of the hip is long duration of sitting and in activity.

Most likely you have experienced lower back pain as you stand up from the chair and after walking for few seconds you feel better. Reason behind that is not because you don't have proper mechanics of standing up but muscle tightness in your hip area that is causing the immobility of the joints which causing the tension in your lower back. Then as you start walking, those muscles does loosen up and become mobile again.

Lower Back Anatomy

Lets look at this from anatomical perspective. Lower back region is consists of 3 major bones, pelvis, femur, and vertebrae. Pelvis is what commonly called hip bone. It is a bowl like structure and sandwiched by vertebrae and femur. Femur is the thigh bone and vertebrae is the spine bone specifically in lumbar region. These 3 bones are connected to each other in rather complex way with 40 muscles in lower back region.

For example, part of quadriceps muscles (rectus femoris) are originated from part of the pelvis insert to patella (knee cap) tendon.

Another muscle called psoas muscles originated from lumbar vertebrae region and insert to femur bone at the top portion and bottom portion of pelvis.

Then when you look act glutes (buttocks) region, there are muscle called piriformis and gluteus muscles that is originated from your sacrum portion of pelvis and insert at top of femur bone.

Causes of Lower Back Pain

There are 2 reasons why we are continuously having lower back issue. First reason is we are sitting too long. More you sit hip flexors gets tight and cause irritation as we stand up. Tighter the hip flexors, more stress you will cause in lower back region main adding more stress to the disc and nerves surrounding which often cause stiffness, tingling or numbness down the leg.

Second reason is because we stand upright with two legs and not on fours like other animals do. This is ironic but our spine must work against gravity constantly because we are consistently upright. It’s been said that over 60% of brain function is to work against the gravity. Therefore, depending on your posture and activity habits your lower back can be rounded dominant or arched dominant.

Lower Back Load Difference Between Sitting and Standing

There is a study compared lower back compression load between sitting and standing after 2 hours. Standing had lower back compression load of 242lb whereas sitting had lower back compression load of 381lb (1). Of course, way you sit and how much a person weigh does impact the amount of load, however, you can see the compression load difference between sitting and standing.

As we sit longer hours, we know that hip flexor muscles get shortened and tight. One of the hip flexor muscles called psoas muscle originate from T12-L4 in your vertebrae and insert to ball joint area of your femur or thigh bone. When this muscle gets tight and trying to stand up will pull on to your lower back causing irritation due to compression to the discs in those T12-L4 region. Another hip flexor example is rectus femoris, one of the quadriceps or thigh muscles. It is originated in front portion of iliac spine or hip bone, then insert at top of patella or knee cap. The primary movement for rectus femoris is lifting your knees up and straightening your knees. While sitting, top portion of rectus femoris get shortened and tight, therefore, causing difficult of standing tall after sitting for too long and can cause discomfort in the knee.

Sitting itself is not culprit to lower back pain but sitting long duration is. Every 2 hours, it is best practice to stand up and walk around so that muscles will be lengthened and loosened.

Rounding and Arching of the Lower Back

Let’s talk about the spine. Spinal structure is never straight. It has wave like curvature from cervical to coccyx. This is to distribute load. Between each vertebra, there is jell-like object called disc sandwiched by body of vertebrae and nerves comes out from rear portion of vertebrae and extend downwards like root of the plants.

The spine is mobile and can flex or extend as needed. Natural curvature of lumbar is arched, however, majority of time, the lumbar spine is round dominant where spine is created curvature in front. When this posture is maintained too long the muscles surrounding the spine also get shortened and tight.

Reason why our lumbar spine is round dominant rather than arched dominant is because of the nature of are activity. Whether you are driving, cooking, eating, working, exercising, most of the movements happen in front of us. This front movement does lead our spine to round. Often times, we are told not to arch back when lifting object but it is a big mistake. You do want to maintain natural curvature, which in lower back or lumbar region, in its natural form, is arched. Overarching is not good either because of the disc, however, it is important to maintain natural arch in the lower back.

Biggest issue is how the disc is compressed while the lumbar spine is rounded. Imagine you are eating hamburger. When you eat your burger from one side only, there is a chance that the patty may slide off from the other side of the sandwich or ketchup may drip off. Same thing will happen to our disc. When stress or load is more in front portion of vertebrae, disc will be pushed towards the back and may irritate the nerves by disc compressing on it, which is a condition known as pinched nerve. When the rounded lumbar spine becomes chronic, there will be a chance for the disc to be in the condition called herniated or bulged disc, which will also add pressure to the nerves. This is also a reason why nerve irritation occurs when arching the back after the back injury because of the disc irritation is in the rear side of vertebrae.

For people who has weaker arching muscles (such as erector spinae and quadratus lumborum) will have more challenge restoring the spinal curvature balance. This is also a reason why some people need to rely on wearing belt when lifting an object. Imagine you are lifting 2-300lb object and all of the load including your body weight is all on front portion of disc only. Sounds painful right?

The disc itself actually is very strong when load is even throughout the disc instead of portion of the disc. Therefore, all we need to do to solve this issue is by exercising the tight and weaker muscles.

Move!!

From how the muscles and bones are connected, we can see that we are not designed to sit around but move around. It is difficult to avoid sitting, however, we can always improve the muscles mobility and strength through exercise so that you can minimize or even eliminate lower back pain even after long duration of sitting.

Although I mentioned it is difficult to avoid sitting because of our work, commute and so on, however, we can always create a time to move. Remember the example I shared earlier about standing up and walking? Even when you have lower back pain or muscle tightness, when you start walking there is a high chance that muscles start loosening up and ease the lower back tension. Therefore, first thing you want to do is move as much as possible. Try to walk with normal to longer stride to force the muscles to move even when the muscles feel tight. What this will do is help increase the blood flow to those muscles.

When you stop by at the grocery to buy something, try walking with longer stride or faster. What this will do is allow your hip to move more and get your blood flow increased. If you are worried about your balance from increasing the walking pace then use shopping cart, even if you do not need it for your shopping. Majority of times poor balance is due to tight and weak muscles not because of the age. If you do have pain when walking faster then slow down until you feel like you can move faster or with longer stride.

3 Exercises to Improve Lower Back Functions

Here are 3 exercises to improve your lower back functions. If you already have an exercise routine that is working for you keep on doing what you are doing. You can use this as another option in case you get bored with what you are currently doing.

Basic concept of these exercises are to lengthen the muscles that has been shorten, use those muscles to send more blood flow and strengthen the muscles that are typically weak.

These exercises along with what exercises you are currently doing will work better when you are moving more, sleeping 7-8hours, and eating whole natural food. Always remember, basics never change.

Couch Stretch (60 seconds each)

One of the issues that I see in people with lower back issue is their hip flexors are tight. So first thing you will need to work on is to lengthen those tight muscles. Now you see hip flexors is plural, which means there are more than one muscle. As mentioned in anatomy section, there are multiple muscles that connects femur, pelvis, and lumbar vertebrae. Couch stretch can cover most of those muscles. Find yourself a couch and cushion. Place the cushion under your knee and place the foot against the couch. Depending on your flexibility how you place your knee (closer to couch or away from couch) may vary. Ideally, your foot and knee should be vertical. It probably will be very uncomfortable at first but lean back and push your hip forward.

Psoas Curl (20-40 reps each)

Now that your hip flexors are loosened, we need to strengthen some of the weaker muscles. Whether you squat or deadlift heavy, it is possible that the hip flexors to be weak. Why? What is the primary function of hip flexors? Flex the hip or raise the knee towards the torso. So majority of the popular exercises cannot hit the muscles unless you add the exercises that requires knee raise.

Most important part of psoas curl is to take each rep seriously. You can go through 20-40 reps easily but that will not effectively train the hip flexors. Start from the knee at hip high or above. Touch the floor then quickly pull the knee back up and pause. While this motion is going on opposite leg and hip should be straight without any movement.

Jefferson's Curl (5-10 reps)

Psoas curl is what I refer to as lower back on lower extremity side. Lower back also has a function of flexion and extension of the spine or upper body. Many fitness enthusiast focus so much on stiffening and stabilizing the "Core" muscles but your "Core" muscles also should be able to move. Why? If you are just lifting heavy object at the gym, stiffening or stabilizing the "Core" to keep the spine neutral may be fine. In real life, that doesn't always happen. When the object size or shape is different our spine may need to flex or extend as we lift those objects. Always keep in mind of why you are going to the gym for.

There are various back extension exercises. In this article, I will be sharing exercises that anybody can do at home without any equipment. It is a Jefferson's Curl.

Key to this exercise is straight legs and reach the floor with rounded back. Once you come back make sure to extend the spine and hip straight. You should start with no weight until you can comfortably touch the floor then start adding resistance by holding on the the dumbbells or barbell.

Please keep in mind that these exercises should not be done as fast as you can. Make sure you can feel the exercises. Controlled paced reps are very important. If you need to take a break in between that is ok. These are not ego exercises.

Kota Shimada