A spine – how to make your back more flexible?

Your spine – like all your body construction is a complex and complicated structure. One of the most important body parts is responsible for helping you in moving, bending and carrying your muscles. Furthermore, a spine is included in processing every sensation that allows you to communicate with the outside world, thanks to the spinal cord.
At the very moment, you feel the pain, the backs are not in the centre your spotlight.
From day one it happened, you start to realize, how you much your body is addicted to alignment, and joints of the spine on a daily basis.
In the article you find some useful info about your spine structure, why it may sometimes hurt, what to do then and what actually you can do to make your spine more flexible and strong step by step.

Lots of spine’s wheels

The main goal of the article is not to describe all spine structure details bone-to-bone. The issue is so complex we need to write the whole book about it. Besides, to operate properly on a daily basis and to have the basic understanding, how a spine works, you surely do not need to know it.
Let’s just take a quick view, how the spine actually operates.

If you would like to organize a spine structure, probably you had to divide him into four groups, from the bottom to the top:

– Sacrum (between low back and tailbone)
– 5 Lumbar vertebrae (low back)
– 12 Thoracic vertebrae (upper and mid back)
– 7 Cervical vertebrae (neck)

In the first place, we will analyse the lumbar and thoracic parts of your spine, because those areas are the main points of what we are perceived as backs. If you want to extend the neck issue, go to our another article in here.
The thoracic part of the spine is responsible for connecting with the ribs and enables the flow between the neck and the low back. Thanks to the thoracic spine you are able to make sidebands, turns, and twists.
Lumbar, on the other hand, is focusing on allowing you to make forward and backward bending. If you want to keep appropriate moving in the lumbar spine, you need to do exercises for expanding you flexibility.
The mid and low back section – the most complex parts of your spine – allow you to move whenever you want if you care about it good flexibility. In addition, the section must be also stiff enough to send bigger burden through the legs and arms, whatever we are doing (running, kneeling, sitting etc.)
The answer, why it happens lays in the connections of the vertebrae to the different ligaments and muscles.
The thoracic spine has to play a role as a supporter and mobile structure for the upper limbs. Also, it makes direct connections to the ribs through joints and ligaments and indirect ones fascial and muscular annexes to the shoulder arms and blades.
The lumbar spine mostly has to be stable to be able to move the force appropriately from the hips and the upper back and arms. The role of lumbar is highly feelable during and activities when you need to lift or carry something.
The flexible and strong spine is a great base for any properly done activity, which contains the use of your hips, legs, arms, so basically – any movement. At the time, when your spine doesn’t work like it suppose to, even the simplest activities, like picking up an object off the ground, can be a huge issue.

The spine issues

As with any complex construction, there are always more than several issues that actually can go wrong. In terms of the spine, there are some issues which are the reason why the spine isn’t working like it supposed to do.
Reminder: Treat the following information as an additional knowledge helped in understanding the basics of the spine issues. These mustn’t be treated as an alternative to the doctor in-person visit in case you feel the spine pain or any other spine-related issues.

Most of the spine issues can be divided into three groups:

1. Lack of mobility
2. Lack of strength
3. The backs pain

Before the analysis each of the group issue, most of the spine pains come from the long, static position we have mostly when we are sitting for the longer period of time in one position. Of course, it isn’t possible to avoid sitting at all – especially at work – but what you actually can do is to be aware of that.
Also, the posture issue has a big impact on your overall spine condition and how you perform daily. In the article, you’ll find out, what to do to achieve a better posture.

Tightness in your back

Most restriction, in the thoracic and lumbar spine, coming from mobility issues. When you are sitting by the desktop, usually your spine has a bit rounded shape. In addition to the tight hips, it can cause issues with the spinal overall health.
Limited mobility becomes even worse when you have an accident or injury and the consequence of those actions can be limited abilities in moving.
When it appears so, the solution can be a couple of yoga exercises or even a basic rehab. There are some cases when individuals whose weren’t able moving properly but after a couple of sessions, they could almost walk normally.
Some people actually don’t have any spine pain issues but theirs bodies are limited for so long period of time, even a small stress and strain can cause the body overreaction. In the same time, more mobile and a strong back could handle these issue with pleasant way.

How to conquer issues with back strength building?

Mostly, the sitting position is a cause of a rounded back, where the shoulders expand and curl, what actually limits you the use of a neck and shoulders in a proper position.
Sitting in that position force your muscles next to shoulder blades (the rotator cuff, middle, upper, lower traps, and rhomboids) to be weaken what affects your overall posture. Also, the more intermediate and deep muscles of your spine, who are responsible for stabilizing and supporting your back, become weaken because of feeling into and sitting for too long.
Weak muscles can be a strong boundary to build strength in the back and, with time, you will experience a strong inability to advance or even the simplest exercises.
If you want to work on your backs proper condition, there are many ways you can make it, from the bodyweight leverage training to the weight training exercise.
A proper back training should contain a wide variety of exercises, from bending and carrying workout to other exercise sets to improve your back strength and overall condition.

The backs hurt?

During listening to a professional trainer like regular, blue-collar individuals, it’s really easy to hear something about the back pain in lots of different ways.
In your body back area, you’ll find a couple of parts which can be the pain issue: muscles, discs, tendons, ligaments, and joints.
Usually, we assume that the pain cause is one area, but it isn’t that simple like it appears to be.
All back body points are well connected and sometimes you feel the pain in a specific area but after all, it appears that the pain issue was somewhere else.
The best way to solve the issue is to assume that you need to work on all your next-to-the-back and back areas. The exception is, where you are freshly after the surgery for a specific issue. The clue is, the pain usually adapt to the other parts of the back due to the consequence of seriously, emotional events or injury.
There is no professional trainer or a doctor who could sell you one for all solutions for the body problems – keep it in mind in the future.

Now let’s fix it

Thanks to the sitting lifestyle and lack of time for workouts, issues such as weakness, pain or back tightness appear in more and more on our daily basis.
The solution to solve the back pain problem, which is realistic also for professional as a regular individual, is to set daily exercises routine, instead of rapid and intensive lifestyle change.
In the text below you’ll find a couple of articles with exercises workouts to help make your back healthier. As you have probably will notice, those workouts are focusing on all your body, not only the back, because of the connectedness mentioned above in the text. It’s hardly possible to solve the back issue, without taking into consideration the holistic approach (shoulders, arms, hips, next etc.)

Shoulder Mobility – An ideal, if you feel limitations in the mid and upper back. The workout helps you in opening up the shoulders.
Neck Strength and Mobility – For the tight neck or the further pain. The exercises will help you expand upper parts of the spine functions.
Back Stretching – A perfect start for the beginners. Gentle exercises help you even start training after an injury.
Hip Mobility – Helping in opening up your hips to minimize the pain or tightness.
Backbending Flexibility and Forward Bending – Set of exercises help expending spinal flexibility and expand all your spine’s possibilities.