Stretches for Low Back Pain – Dr. Berg

People are being taught stretches for low back pain all wrong. Here’s how to actually get relief.

I want to show you how to stretch the lower part of the body the hips and the lower back because the the typical way that they teach us in school is the exact opposite and I’m going to prove it and you can test this on yourself and other people that this actually is true so the first thing we’re going to do is we’re going to check the range of motion in her lower back in her hips so let’s have you lay in your back and so the first thing we’re going to do and it’s helpful to have someone do this to you you could do it yourself actually I’ll just on this one I’ll just I’ll teach you how to do it so you’re going to take your knee actually on let’s just take this side here and bring the knee up hold with your other hand gra hand yeah and hold your knee and just raise it up okay so that we’re checking the range of motion okay now we’re actually checking the muscles of the butt which is the glutamic muscles and that seems to be loose right okay so now let’s just check this side do the same thing on this side oh look at look at that so this one does not go up so what means what that means is that this muscle down here is restricted and it’s tight so she has a tight glute and Associated muscles on the right back posterior side okay so that’s one thing now the way we’re going to fix that is we’re going to stretch the opposite muscles okay so if the muscles in the backside are tight we’re going to stretch the front part right through here there’s two muscles that we must work on and one is deep inside the pelvis and that’s called the soaz muscle that’s the one you do when you just sit ups and it just lifts up your it connects the upper with the lower and the soas muscle you know that can come from sitting um and crossing your leg or sitting incorrectly or driving um in the in the seat all the time but um so this sides we’re going to work on this side and then the muscle on the thigh right here from here so you got this muscle here and this one we want want to stretch this now it’s really good if you can have someone do this on you um but I’ll show you both ways why don’t you lay in your stomach what you can do is you’re just going to take this muscle and you’re going to stretch it upward right here and we’re going to relax it we’re going to stretch it and relax it stretch it and relax it stretch it and relax it now I’m going to show you how you can do it if you don’t have someone to stretch you you’ll take that it’s the right side we’re going to take the right side right here we’re going to cross our legs and we’re just going to lean backwards this way so we want to stretch all these muscles right through in here now there is another way you can do it lay on your back face up go a little bit close to the side here so you do this on the couch or your bed and you can take this leg and stretch stretch it down do you feel any stretch here okay so we can just stretch this right here relax stretch relax stretch relax stretch relax okay now um so that’s how you would stretch a tight glute on the same side you work on the opposite side now how do we test this the the front part of the muscles these are all the flexors the soas and then some of the flexors on the hip because we can do them both at the same time like the thighs right here I guess we could it’s the same thing you would lay on your bed and you bring your leg down here so let’s go ahead and um have you lay on the other or actually yeah scoot on the other side yeah and then bring this leg down I want you to feel that okay now go to the other side yeah and compare which side is restricted that side that side okay so we have a tight flexor on the uh so of course we just stretched this one so okay so now you can sit up for me and face this way all right so what’s happening is that it’s She’s Tight on the right butt and the left flexor right here so what we’re going to do is we’re going to stretch the butt muscle on the left side so cross your leg over here and take the knee and raise it up and lean forward okay good let’s um bring it up and then lean forward with your butt yeah do you feel it pull mhm okay so we’re basically just stretching the opposite muscle on the same side okay so you can kind of just do this watch stretch forward okay stretch forward stretch forward and you can bring that in too you could bring up bring this up and you’re going to stretch this side right here that’s going to take a lot of um asymmetry or out of balanc muscles and put them back into balance and your back is going to feel much much much better this all these things I’m showing you is good for back pain now the next thing we want to do is go ahead and stand up and we want to stretch the chest the muscles on the the side right through here and here um it’s called the tensor FASA lat so what you’re going to do is you’re going to take you just take your hips and just kind of lean your pelvis this way push your pelvis into this wall yeah good okay now feel the tightness now go to the other side okay which one’s tighter okay so we’re going to stretch into the good way go ahead and stretch this one two okay and really push that out yeah there we go okay do that about four more times yeah this is very very important to get your back uh feeling good okay now go to the other side now tell me if it’s easier yeah okay good have a SE that problem comes from a lot of crossing your legs at at work and you know at home or uh the way some people drive like this you know so that just throws off the back so the last stretch I’m going to show you is a rotation so what we’re going to do is we’re going to take take your left hand put on your knee and just keep this straight and twist and look back yeah we’re rotating her lower back okay now compare that to the other side yeah just twist and stretch okay which one’s tighter the right the right side okay so she can’t go to the right we’re going to go to the left so we’re going to just twist her uh just picture that you have a a rag that we’re we’re just kind of ringing out the water and just twisting her this way for about an hour yeah okay good okay now go to the other side okay good so every time we do this we actually create a turnoff response of the tight muscle so we’re getting symmetry so if you could if you take the principle and apply it to the whole body you can really melt these muscles it’s going to help your sleep as well so go ahead and apply this and uh comment Down Below on my blog to see how it works