Thread: Help me protect my mom's back!

After all these years, my mom has finally decided to take one of my classes, and she likes it!! Believe me, this is a miracle.

But, she has serious back issues. Most of her back issues stem from the fact that she is extremely out of shape, not overweight, just out of shape. There are no muscles in her body to support her back, and so she is constantly in pain. She has two herniated disks, which in the past led her to believe it was better if she just treated her symptomsat doctors and chiropractors, rather than treating herself. She was never an active person, but her back issues gave her an excuse to be even less active, and which have basically made the back issues worse because of the lack of muscle in her core to support her back.

So....I need to be very careful that she doesn't hurt herself in class in the slightest, because all she needs is one little ache to send her packing, never to return to class (or any physical activity) ever.,f:: I am extremely happy that she has finally found some sort of physical activity that she enjoys, and I don't want to mess it up!

I have obviously been stressing proper posture with her, and using the correct muscle groups (ie: abs instead of back for chest isolations, etc.), but what else can I do for her? Do any of you have back problems? Is there something that you do in class that goes beyond basic correct posture?

She also broke 4 ribs about 10 years ago, and has had knee surgeries in both knees. .w.: If you have any advice for dealing with those problems, too, that would be most helpful.

TIA!

I have a bad knee. I cannot shimmy on my right leg very well. What I do to compensate is basically try not to over compensate.

Things I avoid for my bad knee or back:

Drilling to long on one side - have her switch to the other side as soon as she feels any discomfort.

Omis. Omis are death on my lower back when I'm not in shape.

Things that help: keeping my alignment and using my core to power moves rather than my legs.

I'd say the most important thing is knowing when to stop something because it might be compounding your injuries.

Drills can cause muscles to tighten up. For example, if people have weak lower back muscles, drilling figure 8's can cause the lower back muscles to tighten up.

Therefore, I would suggest periodically interrupting drills to do something to relax the muscles used by those drills. For example, in the figure 8 example above, I take a break from drilling to do a standing lower back stretch. And then we drill some more!

I have 2 herniated discs, so I (literally!) can feel your mother's pain. It doesn't help that doctor's prescribe bed rest for back pain, as do chiropracters. After being treated unsuccessfully for 2 years for this, to where I was told my only hope to relieve the pain was surgery, I've come up with the following, ymmv

Ab work. Lower back strengthening exercises, 2 - 3 times per week minimally. If I don't do them, and spend more time in bed than sleep warrants, my back goes into spasm. If I do them regularly, I'm fine. I can do any dance movements, including back bends.

Your mother should do these when she's not in class. I know you said she doesn't like to exercise and fear of pain keeps her still, but what if you do them with her?

Another (rather expensive) alternative is gyrotonic (sp?) I've started taking a tower class once a week for strengthening and flexibility and it's been doing wonders for my body. It's the first time I've not had knee pain in quite some time.

If you can find a book called "Callanetics for a Bad Back" the exercises are really great - gentle but very effective without a lot of leaping around or sweating.

Thank you for the advice ladies. Kina, I'm not familiar with "gyrotonic" (or however you spell it!). Can you please explain what that is?

Well, it's a system developed by Julio Horvath, a professional gymnast I believe. It's not dissimilar to Pilates, although the movements are designed to be more circular, while Pilates is designed more vertically.

here's a link to a web page that can describe it any number of time better than I can gyrotonic home

it really has been very helpful to me, my back is stronger, my knees don't hurt as much, I had bad shoulder pain for about 2 weeks that was really concerning me, worked on it on Monday night. It was slightly sore yesterday (Tuesday) and today the pain is gone.

These are all good suggestions, especially working on strengthening the abs so that she does not overue the lower back muscles.

I also have herniated disks--C 5/C6--and cannot do any overhead wearbearing exercise. When I took ATS classes it just killed me because keeping my arms up over my head for an entire class became weight bearing.

You might emphasize gentle warmups and when doing undulations or 8s or omis, take a short stretch break to take the tension out of the lower back. One that helps me a lot is simply to roll down and let my arms hang so that my fingers are sweeping the floor (rag doll) and gently move my arms in a circular motion or do shoulder shimmies while in the rag doll position, then slowly roll back up.

Hope that all these ideas help your mom and other students who may also have some back issues.

Souzan

Best to avoid moves that extend the back (true for most beginners) - so no omis, pelvic/African circles, pelvic undulations. Vertical eights can also be stressful.

She will need to build up her ab posture muscles - those deep down that wrap the abdomen like a corset. Trouble is they are hard to find. My mother had bad back pain and was given what I know as a "bridge" (lie supline, knees bent, lift your butt off the ground to get a straight line from shoulders to knees) When I had back problems it helped heaps - problem was she was doing it wrong! Her TAs were weak and she had used her legs for years - so she was getting the right "shape" but lifting with her legs (I only found out when she complained her legs were shaking and palpating showed no TA activity). Not sure if the fancy machinery stops this (I suspect not) - but I'd agree - light, frequent, correct work at home (10 lifts x 10 seconds repeated a couple of times a day to start with)

Good luck.