Exercises for Low Back Pain

Exercises for acute low back pain

Acute pain is your body’s way of saying that something is or might become damaging to you.  Acute pain is generally sudden in onset, and lasts a relatively short time.  The knee hug and pelvic tilt stretches below are good for most types of acute low back pain.  You may feel tightness whilst performing the exercises but don’t perform them if they cause any pain whilst performing the exercise.

Knee hug Stretch

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.Pelvic Tilt

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Exercises to help maintain a healthy back

The Bridge

The bridge exercise is a good exercise for maintaining mobility and and developing strength in the gluteals / lower back muscles and is a good exercise to help prevent low back pain.  Don’t do this exercise until you have been at least pain free for two weeks and stop immediately if you get any pain during the exercise.

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More Advanced Pilates Exercises

The previous exercises are all Pilates exercises.  The video below is quite a good introduction to some slightly more demanding pilates exercises.  I wouldn’t recommend that anybody with acute back pain try these.  Rather, you should wait until you have been pain free for at least two weeks before trying these.  If you like the exercises I also recommend that you find a good Pilates teacher who runs small classes so that they can keep and eye on you and make sure you are using the correct technique.

More advanced functional exercises for a healthy back

These exercises are focus on fundamental everyday movements that we should all be able to do.  However, sometimes due to our lifestyles, such as long periods sitting at a desk, we lose the ability to perform these basic movements and this in turn can increase the stress and strain on the back when performing simple everyday tasks.  Because these exercises are more advanced, don’t do this exercise until you have been at least pain free for two weeks and stop immediately if you get any pain during the exercise.