Move your body and prevent lower back pain – mobility exercises

This is the actual movement part and I certainly do some during personal training sessions.

I hope you could do this regularly (2 – 3 times a week or even more).   Since human bodies are relatively tight in the morning, doing these exercises in the afternoon or evening so that you get better result compared to doing them in the morning.

Hip flexors stretch

Hip flexors tend to get tight by sitting all day.  Neglecting tight hip flexors make a hip tilt forward which will create the spine in the abnormal position. 

I see many are doing this wrong. I think they mix things up with pigeon pose stretch (I will explain this next part). 

You’re targeting a hip stretch but with this position above, your hip tilts forward along with the torso. Going even forward can’t achieve the goal at all.

Alternative hip flexors stretch

Instead, your body should be almost straight up and here comes the most important part. 

In this position, you should try to tilt your hips back.  That way, you get the optimized result for hip stretch.

To make the previous one harder, you just want to get close to the chair.

Pigeon pose

Gluteal muscles also get tight by sitting too much.  Tight piriformis muscle (one of the gluteal muscles ) may cause sciatica pain.

The picture above is the one you see everywhere.  Let me introduce something better.

Alternative pegion pose

Start from tilting your hip, then one leg crosses the other leg. 

As you see in the picture,  your leg should be more than the center line of your body which gives you the  optimized result for hip stretch.  

Ankle mobility

Does ankle mobility relate to lower back pain?  Possibly yes. 

In order to pick up something from the ground, ankles are involved.  If your ankles are not mobile, then the next part of your body compensates, then that part is also tight, then the other part and you get the idea.  

Starting from the quadruped position, then bring a butt down while your toe and heel are maintained in the same position.  This is almost like you are squatting but without lots of force. 

Click here to see the first part.