Back pain

DISCLAIMER: By performing the exercises in this article, I take no responsibility if you injure yourself in the process. If a correct warm-up is performed beforehand, the risk of injury will be minimal. However, if you do become injured whilst performing one of the exercises I recommend, by performing said exercises you lose your right to legal action against me. So don't sue me, it's totally not cool.

The American Institute of Biomechanics estimate that 80-85% of people suffer from back pain at some point in their life. I know quite a few cricketers who have told me that after every game they have back pain. Back problems have affected everyone in my close family, including myself and seriously affected members of my extended family.

So what's going on?

Has anyone thought that their 'core' muscles, the muscles that stabilise the trunk, are just plain weak?

As motivation for the rest of this article, lets consider a study by Hodges and Richardson (1996). The transverse abdominus muscles, muscles which run around your waist and connect to the lumbar spine were found to contract before any movement of the limbs. In other words, the transverse abdominus muscles contract to stabilise the trunk before any other movement can occur. This study demonstrates just how important these muscles are. If these muscles are weak, your lumbar spine will not be stable. I would not like to hypothesise what this could lead to as I haven't personally done the research, but I hope you understand that a stable spinal is vitally important in order to minimise undue pressure on the spinal column.

The key to avoiding back pain is a strong core and correct posture.

'Core strength' is another one of the many fitness industry buzzwords that gym instructors like to throw around. The basic idea isn't particularly flawed though.

To quote Ross Enamait, 'the core is the body's centre of mas. It is the valuable link between the upper body and the lower body. In addition to providing stability, the core allows one to develop and transfer force from the lower body to the upper body, and vice versa.'

This paragraph highlights one of the most important features of bowling fast in cricket. Fast bowlers run in to gain momentum, in the hope of being able to bowl faster. If we cannot transfer the energy we develop in our legs to our upper bodies via the core, we may as well bowl with our feet in concrete! In other words, if you really want to bowl fast, you've got to have a strong core. Through rotation or 'drive' of the hip, the really good fast bowlers (and golfers and footballers and boxers and baseball pitchers and javelin throwers and...) are able to generate force from their hips in order to launch the ball quicker. This highlights the importance of the core muscles in sports, as these are the muscles which create the hip drive.

Anyway.

I could go through all the muscles that make up the core, but I doubt it would help people out much. Instead, I'd like to explain why people get back injuries.

'Stretching scientifically' by Thomas Kurz states that one of the causes of injuries is 'great differences in strength between opposing muscle groups'. If you're wondering what this has to do with back injuries lets have a look at your stomach.

What do we all want? A six-pack. How do we try to get one? Crunches and sit-ups. What happens? We do lots of crunches without doing any back work. What happens then? We get muscle and postural imbalances. Consequently, we get injuries.

This is something I've experienced myself. Around the age of 15-16, I lost a lot of weight and started doing a lot of sit-ups. I can 'proudly' claim that I've done 1000 sit-ups in one go. However, I didn't really have an amazing set of abs. Something I did have was constant back pain. I didn't understand what what going wrong! The problem was one of balance.

Unfortunately no one cares if you have an amazingly well balanced core. If you want to play cricket for all your life, you'd better start caring about it. Lets not wait until we get serious lower back injuries before we start training the core.

Here are my top tips and exercises to strength your core muscles:

- Improve you posture: if you're on facebook, sit upright! Don't slouch, pull your stomach in and make sure the desk and monitor are at the right height.

When you're standing around, don't slouch either! Stand tall and pull your stomach in and your shoulders back.

- Have a go at these exercises. If you're aching the next day, wait until the day you're ache-free to do them again:

The knee hug: Lie on the floor with your feet slightly above the ground. Bring your upper and lower body together and hug your knees. Don't let your feet touch the ground between repetitions.

Back extension: lie on a table. Get your mum/dad/brother/cleaner to hold your feet. Slide yourself forward so that your hips are just resting on the edge of the table. Bring your head towards the ground. When you reach the bottom, bring your head up until your body is horizontal again. Repeat.

Leg Twist: Lie on the ground facing up with your feet together. Bring your feet in the air until your body and legs make an 'L' shape. Keeping your legs together, rotate your legs to the left until they touch the ground, at all times maintaining your 'L' shape. Bring your legs up and to the right. The whole motion makes an arc with your feet.

The side crunch: lie on the floor on your side with your hands touching the opposite shoulder. If you're lying on your right hand side, bring your left shoulder up in the air and towards your hip or vice versa.

Don't do each exercise really slowly, just slow enough so that you don't use the momentum created from the movement.

I would suggest doing 5 circuits with 15 reps in each circuit to start with. Every session try and do 5 more reps until you get up to 30 reps. If you get that far, email me at gffc@hotmail.co.uk and I'll tell you some progressions.

Finish each session with The Plank: start in the push-up position and drop your elbows to the ground. Make sure that your back is straight. Hold this position for as long as you can bare :-D.

Since I started doing a core workout, my back problems have (almost) disappeared. I still have a fair distance to go before I would say I have a strong core, but I noticed improvements within a week of starting.

As always, if you have any questions, email me at the address above. I'm more than happy to help, especially since this blog is read by my friends.

DISCLAIMER: By performing the exercises in this article, I take no responsibility if you injure yourself in the process. If a correct warm-up is performed beforehand, the risk of injury will be minimal. However, if you do become injured whilst performing one of the exercises I recommend, by performing said exercises you lose your right to legal action against me. So don't sue me, it's totally not cool.

Cheers,

Tom