Move your way out of back pain

I felt compelled to “dust down” my blog after reading an article recently in The Guardian about back pain. In particular, the statistic from the ONS stating that 62,000 people have left the workplace since 2019 due to back pain. That’s quite a staggering figure

Perhaps I was moved to write because 20 years ago this month I bent down to tie my son’s shoelaces while walking to school and couldn’t get up. An ambulance was called and I had to be given gas and air to get me on the stretcher. 

That day will be etched on my memory forever, it changed me, it would turn out to be a gift. My Mum had suffered from chronic back pain for years and I was going to do everything in my power that that was not going to be my story. Besides, I had 3 children 5 and under and my youngest was only 5 weeks old. I had no family support nearby and I just had to get on with it.

Although the advice then was to move as much as you can, the fear around movement for me was huge. There was nothing linear about my journey over the next 20 years. I took up pilates at the suggestion of a friend thinking that what was missing was a “strong core”. I felt confident enough to start running. I loved it but a few months in, I was plagued with injuries particularly foot issues and plantar fasciitis in particular, occasionally my back would complain and I would worry that I would find myself back in that scary debilitating place. I was referred to a podiatrist who told me I would never be able to run “I didn’t have the morphology for it”, I mean really!  I was referred to a physio who prescribed orthotics which I hated and just made everything worse.

Despite my injuries, my love for running had grown and I was frustrated with my body. Enter Chi Running a mind body approach to running and slowly all my injuries started to dissipate as I focused on my running technique. Crucially moving from our modern structured traditional footwear into more foot shaped minimal footwear in daily life and eventually in running would be huge. I became so evangelical about Chi Running that I trained and became the first Chi Running Instructor in the UK in 2007. I taught the technique until 2015 helping hundreds of runners also to run injury free. I went on to run a marathon injury free 10 years later.

The only issue that remained unresolved at that time was a pelvic floor issue, read sneeze pee and urinary incontinence sometimes when I ran. It was not until 2012 that Katy Bowman of Nutritious Movement landed on my radar and the notion of movement not exercise entered my world. In the years since I had taken up running, I was under the illusion that although I was now exercising, I had ticked the movement box. However, over the course of a day exercise was but a tiny part, a mere drop in the movement ocean. I had to face the fact that although I was working and raising 3 children, all things considered, my life was still fairly sedentary.

I certified as a Restorative Exercise Specialist under the tutelage of Bowman. During my training I began to zoom out and understand the bigger movement picture. I stopped running in 2015 to focus on a more rounded approach to movement and everyday walking became more important to me.

Sitting in chairs less and moving to and on the ground would be a game changer. My body is on the stiff less mobile end of the spectrum. I am also tall and extremely long legged relative to the rest of my body. This makes ground movement still challenging and there was a natural resistance to go to the floor but looking at my life outside of exercise was where all the gains would eventually be made.

Over the next few years, I would begin to change my home environment to facilitate more movement for me and my family. We have less furniture, most of what we do have is low to the ground. I had some monkey bars built and a chin up bar sits over one of the door frames. There are exercise props dotted here and there.

I also became interested in other forms of movement, more play based movement and began confronting my fears around movement. I took up Parkour, I embraced the Evolve Move Play concepts, I trained as a MovNat Instructor in 2019 in the first certification for those over 50.

20 years ago, had I been asked to squat, I would have laughed, thinking it was something this body was not designed to do. I now understand that we live in a culture that encourages stillness. I know that when I was a small child, I could squat like a badass but that once I got to school sitting in chairs would begin and that over the next few decades my body would be shaped by my behaviours, my footwear, chairs and the world around me. Then injury strikes and it becomes a gift, if you let it, an opportunity to learn and understand the whys rather than how do I fix X or Y.

So I’m sharing my own thoughts about what I’ve learned along the way when it comes to resolving back pain or indeed many other musculoskeletal issues. There is some crossover on the tips mentioned in the article:

  • Movement over exercise. Expand your ideas around what movement is and think outside the exercise box. Consider your day and how you could put more movement into it. Exercise is excellent but merely scratches the surface. As Bowman says in the article movement like food is not optional.

  • Start walking. If you’re not a walker, start by taking a short walk first thing in the morning. Walk short journeys, don’t be tempted to jump into the car for anything less than a mile.

  • Sitting is not the problem. It’s the hours spent in the same position. As the saying going goes “the dose makes the poison”. There are countless ways to sit which require you to move a lot more. Set a timer for every 15 minutes and change the shape of your body, move your legs into a different position, check your head position. Stand up! If you feel desk bound, consider a standing desk or a makeshift stack of boxes or books to make your own.

  • Go to the floor.  How many times a day to you get up and down from the floor? Think about how many of your joints get moved through this motion. Use it or lose it. The floor is your most underused training tool. Getting up and down from the floor several times a day will nourish your body in so many ways.

  • Look after your feet and I don’t mean in a pedicure kind of way. Our feet are the most overlooked body part in considering whole body health. Our feet are our foundation and healthy, mobile, strong feet are crucial. Something many of us begin to realise too late in life. Your footwear are shaping your feet and everything stacked above them. Research minimal shoes and start the process of transitioning to less shoe.

  • Carry heavy stuff. As mentioned earlier, there can be a lot of fear around movement after a back injury but moving nourishes you. Your spine and the rest of your bones need to be loaded regularly. Earlier blog on carrying stuff.

  • Move for your pelvic floor. Your pelvic floor carries the weight of your organs, sitting on it all day means it’s not required to do the work it needs to maintain function. As already mentioned, begin spending some time on the floor. Use cushions and bolsters to make it more attainable. Move differently.

  • Age dynamically. Age is too often blamed for our bodies breaking down. If you were to see an MRI of any midlife body, you will see pathologies and wear and tear. We have, after all, lived a life. However, these don’t necessarily correlate to pain. Sometimes knowing there is a pathology IS the problem. Move move move. 

  • Educate yourself about your body. You will benefit from understanding how your body parts move relative too each other. For example, have you ever considered foot mobility; how about your ankles; how well do your hips articulate; do your ribs and ribcage move; how about where does your head sit, is it way out in front of you? Sedentarism, modern footwear and walking on flat and level ground have likely impacted all of your parts. Awareness is everything.

Humans naturally want to conserve energy, that squishy sofa, ubiquitous chairs, cushioned shoes, heating, technology all mean we have got used to a certain level of comfort AND we are movement starved. Those aches and pains you may be experiencing are not because you are getting older, it’s your movement starved body screaming at you to move. Pay attention!

Resolving musculoskeletal issues can be simpler than you think, you just need to go big picture.

Ask me anything.

About your hips

We are at that time of the year when many of us who made some new year's resolutions are beginning to flag with our intentions. If one of those resolutions was to get fit, well done you. These days finding the time and the motivation to keep going whilst leading busy lives can be a challenge. Unfortunately, we are often undoing some of the benefits reaped in our exercise time by returning to our sedentary lives because our non- exercise time makes up a much much greater proportion of our day…

Sitting Tip

You can’t fail to have noticed the sensationalist headline “sitting is the new smoking”. You know the one, designed to put the fear of God into us and make us feel even worse about the fact that we are not moving enough. It’s true, of course, we are not moving enough but many of us who are desk bound simply don’t know where to start. In this video, I give you a simple postural adjustment to bring more to your sitting time. The first step is to sit on the front of your chair, not into the back of it.

As I said in the video, it’s not sitting that’s the issue, it’s the time spent in a single position that’s problematic for us. There is no one best way to sit but sitting in such a way that your body has to do more work is going to be more beneficial to you.

Get comfortable being on your sitting bones supporting your own bodyweight. You will no doubt feel yourself slump back into your chair because it’s what your body knows and has adapted to but you’re going to retrain yourself to do some work while just sitting there!

It will be impossible to sit better if you are in a bucket style seat, in other words, where the back of the chair is lower than the front. Find a chair that has a seat parallel to the ground.

Then get up and move frequently :-)

Be well.

Michelle

Getting to the Core of the Matter

Core strength to me is the ability for my body to respond appropriately to any physical task and ideally is something that would be acquired dynamically on a daily basis. Core strength is often reduced down to a few isolated moves in a class but how do the moves you learn in an exercise class translate into your everyday life (carrying a heavy suitcase, stepping off a kerb, bending down to tie shoelaces)? I want my core to kick in and respond accordingly in any of these scenarios …

Are you walking?

It takes an inordinate amount of mindfulness to get movement back into our lives these days but walking is one of the easiest and best ways to do it. The benefits of walking are many and well documented. The notion of 10,000 steps a day has crept in as a daily movement prescription and I love the way that various devices like Fitbit can motivate someone to get up every hour to hit their number but we can do better than 10,000 steps!

Moving into Summer

May is one of my favourite months. Spring turned into summer over the bank holiday weekend and it's been great to shed the layers, free our feet, get outside and soak up some vitamin D.
 
Movement as opposed to exercise is something I write about a lot. Exercise alone doesn't seem to make us healthier and use it or lose it remains true. With that in mind, I strive to find ways to make any activity, whether that be working at my laptop or a household chore more movement rich.

Upper Body Strength

Strength is one of those words that gets people’s attention particularly if they feel they lack it. There is no denying that being strong feels good. More than that though, mobilising our upper bodies sets us on a path to improving breast health, better bone density and enhanced breathing. Who doesn’t want that? Upper body strength in particular is a concern for many people, but for women in particular. If the question is how to achieve it, the answer invariably seems to be, “I need to go to the gym and lift some weights.”

From Your Feet to Your Hips

I hope you got out and enjoyed the recent cold weather! Personally, I love it and it had me thinking about the importance of restoring and maintaining mobility in our feet and everything above them. That mobility will improve circulation; circulation that is essential for the nerves, muscles and skin of the feet and lower legs. The more 'alive' your feet the better they will be able to sustain you....

Moving in Winter

Belated Happy New Year! I hope that you are settling into 2018 and the dark January days are not getting you down too much. Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been reflecting on 2017 rather than setting any New Year’s resolutions. It's been a worthwhile experience looking back at what I have achieved, focusing on the positives rather than what I didn’t do or didn’t get done. Try it, I’ll bet you’ve had a much better year than perhaps you thought!

The foot bone's connected to the ...

I’m sure you remember that song from your childhood! We tend to look at many issues in our body in isolation forgetting that everything is connected to everything else. It might be hard to see how the tension in your feet and lower leg muscles can impact the tension in your shoulders and head but it could.

Fit for Life

On this date last year I published a blog post titled Fit for What? which clearly struck a chord because it was shared widely and read thousands of times. I talked about why I had stopped running and wrote “I want to try lots of different things, move in many different ways. Climb a few trees, become less fearful of heights, play more and do it all with a body that is getting stronger not weaker with age.”

Evolve Move Play

I had the pleasure of attending an Evolve Move Play seminar with Rafe Kelley a couple of weekends ago in London. Always a student of the body, I have many movement teachers who inspire me on a daily basis and Rafe is one of them. As a former runner, I came to understand how limiting only running as exercise was for my overall ability to use my body well. I had become a movement specialist, working on my running form for many years but neglecting many other forms of movement. I was movement starved in general being mostly sedentary the rest of the time.

From the ground up

If I had a penny for every person I hear complain about foot pain, I would be rich! As someone who has previously suffered with chronic foot pain for years, I understand how frustrating and debilitating foot problems can be. When our feet hurt, our whole body hurts. Wearing stiff, cushioned, positive heeled shoes with narrow toe boxes has not only changed the shape of our feet but also our bodies and indeed how our whole body functions. Plantar fasciitis, neuromas, bunions, hammer toes, metatarsalgia, to name a few, are just some of the many foot complaints I come across.

A Movement Practise

You may have heard the term a movement practise but wondered what it means. Many years ago I was introduced to the idea of a mindful movement practise through Chi Running. The value of a practise became clear to me as I learnt to truly enjoy running and eventually run injury free over time by paying close attention to how I moved. This was the beginning of getting to know my body better and learning how to move well in all sorts of ways.

Fit for what?

For many years I have been a distance runner, I loved it. I worked on my form every day, running defined me. I would often be greeted by a stranger when I was out and about “Not running today?” Although it came to be something I loved to do, I also assumed that an added bonus was that it was good for my health, that I was fit. Most people who know me think of me as fit and therefore healthy.

Everyday Movement

As much as I would like to spend more time outdoors in nature, stuff needs to get done, the house needs cleaning from time to time, etc. In an effort to get more natural movement, I find myself looking at the household chores differently. Once something I did not look forward to, I now see housework as one way to get the thing I crave more and more - varied movement throughout the day.