Many of us believe that at a certain age, things go “downhill”. They believe that their nagging back, knee or neck pain is because of old age. They say things like, “I can’t perform squats because my knees hurt, I don’t like to push myself because I’m worried about injuring my back again.” Is this old age or an old way of thinking? Things go “downhill” mainly because we let them, not necessarily because we are getting older. Granted, after our mid-twenties and early thirties, we begin a gradual decline of cardiovascular output, muscular strength, endurance and bone density. The rate of decline is what we have control of, however many individuals believe that they must give in to getting older.
The older we get, the more responsibilities we take on, such as spending more time working and taking care of the family. This translates into less time for you and a more sedentary lifestyle. The body has an amazing way of adapting to the activity placed on it, whether it is physical or sedentary. If you are used to running 5 miles a day, it will adapt to that type of demand.
Conversely if you sit down 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, your body will adapt to that. Sedentary activity can be highly correlated to low back, knee and neck pain. Let’s take a look at how prolonged sitting can affect your back and lead to possible injury.
The spine has a natural “S”-shaped curvature. There are numerous combinations of loads and torques that your body must deal with on a daily basis. Without getting into a full-blown physics lesson, we will look at compression and tensile loads. A compressive load can be thought of much like gravity pushing down on top of you, or the force pushing up on your foot when striking the ground. A tensile load can be described as a bending force, similar to bending a twig in half.
The “S”-shaped curvature of the spine is designed much like a spring to absorb the compressive load and is able to handle tensile loads by optimally balancing muscles on the front and back of the spine. When we sit down for long periods of time, such as what is seen in a sedentary lifestyle, your body adapts to the hunched-over posture, and shortens muscles in the front of your spine and lengthens muscles on the back of your spine. Instead of the nice “S”-shaped curvature of your spine, it now resembles more of a “C”. This now places the spine at a disadvantage to deal with the compressive load and has to deal more with the tensile load. How does this increase the risk of injury?
Take a pencil and push on either end of it, thus applying a compressive load. The pencil, much like your spine is very resilient to that load. However, take that same pencil and bend it at both ends, thus applying a tensile load. You will find that the pencil will reach its breaking point very quickly, much like your spine. Most injuries to your spine occur from improper movement patterns. These patterns are generally developed from muscular imbalance as a result of poor posture, working on your “mirror” muscles (chest, abdominals, biceps, and quads), weak stabilizers of the spine or lack of core strength and most of all stubbornness.
We are all creatures of habit. We generally like to do things that we feel comfortable with and what may be socially “acceptable”. However, if you do not take a look at the reasons why we suffer with these types of injuries then you will undoubtedly have to face them on a constant basis and place the blame on our age, not our lack of insight. The reasons why your back hurts are because you sit down entirely too long and your body is out of balance.
When you get to the gym you take your poor posture with you and work muscles that you can see in the mirror. Your exercises of choice require you to lie down, sit down and mostly move forward. You rely on the bench for stability, perform crunches that place your spine in that “C”-type curvature, and use selectorized equipment that isolates muscles. Basically, the more you practice these patterns, the closer to injury you get. It just happens to present itself when you get older, because you move less. Choose exercises that improve your posture, challenge your body in different planes, and work muscles that utilize the body from the ground up, not in isolation.