How to Sit Properly to Prevent Low-back Pain

Why sitting can cause low-back pain and how to prevent it? Male Speaker: So I am a pilot and I do a lot of sitting and everyone else who has a office job does a lot of sitting. And it just seems like sitting can cause a lot of lower back pain, especially in men over 40, I don't know what is -- is this true? What's wrong with sitting? What does that do to your spine? Lisa Ford: I don't know if it's just really me, it is somewhat age-related. But I think what it is, is that if you don't take good care of yourself and it has -- Male Speaker: It's a holistic approach, whole body approach. Lisa Ford: Yes. As we get older, we would have more injuries and more repetitive injuries and different things that will add up to -- we're just not as strong as we were, and we even have a whole life ahead of us to cause us problems. So typically, as we get older, things get worse. But I think if you really took care of yourself properly, and you did the right exercises and all that, that it's not necessarily and age thing. But yes, when you are sitting, I mean sitting for a long periods of time is not the best thing, but most of us have desk jobs. And so we do have to sit. So obviously having a good chair is important. One that has some lumbar support, so that you can stay in a neutral spine, but still get some support and relax a little bit. What ends up happening to most people is they sit like this, and as soon as you get into this position, you get stress on your lower back, you get stress into the neck, the shoulders, and that's a whole another area that will cause you problems. But when you come up into that neutral spine, now is my low back in a good position? But my shoulders are in a better position; my neck is in a better position. And so if I am on the computer, I am not going to have all these shoulder problems, wrist problems. You can have a slight, slight muscle tension just to protect your back a little bit, to hold you there, and your back might get tired doing this all day. And that's why you'd want a chair with some support, because it would be hard to do that all day long. And what we do is we get tired and we slouch, and you are just kind of hanging out on your ligaments and muscles and that causes a lot of stress in the lower back. Male Speaker: Get back up on your sit bones. Lisa ford: That's right. Some people will put a little towel or something rolled up, because that picks up your sit bone and that kind of throws you forward into a better spine position. If you just - it doesn't allow you to roll back. Or the lumbar support as well will keep you there. So you want to have a good chair, but most of us don't sit back in our chair. Male Speaker: And stand up and take breaks, walk around. Lisa Ford: That's right. Stand up, take breaks, move, just do some movements through the spine; stand up. And the other thing that happens is our hips get tight, because we are sitting all day and we don't really stretch our hip muscles. So stretching your hip muscles is so important. So many people have tight hip muscles. Most people don't stretch them, and they don't know how to stretch them properly. So stretching your hip flexors, especially, if you have a job that you sit all day, over time it creates a tightening, a shortening. Literally, the muscle fibers shorten, and when they start to shorten, you stand up and even though you are standing up, they have shortened. They may kind of keep you pulled into this position; I am exaggerating a little bit. And when you are in this position, now you are walking around and you are creating havoc on your back because you really can't get into that neutral spine anymore, because your hips are so tight. So stretching your hips, walking your psoas muscles or your iliopsoas muscles, your rectus is important but that iliopsoas muscle is really important. I think that's the one that gets forgotten. So stretching your hips will help to be able to get into a more neutral alignment and to protect your back. So hip stretching is certainly a very important thing. A couple of things you could do -- we all know how to stretch our quads and so everybody kind of does this thing, but it doesn't get into the hips. So to really get into the hips, you need to get those knees together and tilt -- you want to go into a posterior pelvic tilt, so you are kind tilting your butt this way and that helps to elongate the hip muscles. That's one way. Another way is to get down on your knees; same thing, you get that posterior pelvic tilt, because if I am like this and I am bent here, I am not getting the stretch, so I want to elongate through here, and then depending on how loose you are, you can bend through the knee and come forward. To really want to feel that stretch through here, keep your body up straight, you don't ever want to fall forward; you are going to lose the stretch. And so stretching those hips that reaches the quads, but they don't really get into the hip muscles, and that's going to help protect your spine.