Video: Back Pain Avoidance Through Stretching

Stretches for the hamstring and piriformis muscles that can help you avoid back pain; learn this and more in this free series of health care videos on chiropractic care taught by a pack pain expert.

Video Transcript

Hi! I'm Dr. Eric Sayer from Sayer Family Chiropractic. In this segment of the video, we're just going to talk about certain stretches that definitely help with the low back. We want to get all the muscle fibers. Some of the fibers of course, run across a lot or laterally and some run up and down. Then there's muscles on the front of the spine and also on the back of the spine. We want to be able to get all different types of muscles. With the stretching, there's different types, very simple ones that most people are familiar with, are bringing their knees to their chest and touching their toes. Things of that sort are going to stretch the hamstring, but they're also going to stretch the back muscles, the ones that are going up and down. Another one that is very common for people is stretching of the low back, the fibers going crosswise, and that is done with more of a type of a twist where a lot of people will lay on their backs, let one leg come off to the side. In schools, they'll call the pretzel where they'll put one leg over the top and they'll do a twist type of thing like this. Another stretch would be the stretch of the muscles on the front of the spine. They're done a couple of different ways. We call them a lunge. It's just to try and lengthen the muscle that runs along here and deep on the anterior spine. A couple of different ways to do that. There's also another stretch that works very well. It's for the piriformis muscle, which is a muscle that runs across from the hip to the tail bone along the rear end. Stretching that muscle out causes the legs to stop flaring. Decreases back pain quite a bit according to research.

Back Pain Avoidance Through Stretching

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