EFFECTIVE low bACK PAIN MANAGEMENT

It is important to understand you should be able to complete any task (picking a pencil off the floor) with a number of different movement patterns, however it is when this choice of movement is lost that repetitive stresses are placed on your soft tissues (muscles, ligaments, tendons and joints). This is when it is likely that problems start to arise.

The key to identifying these movement faults lies in linking the dysfunction with the symptoms (Comerford & Mottram 2001). Identifying movement faults is fast becoming the accepted best practice for neuromusculoskeletal practice (Sharmann 2002), who went on to profess that;

“musculoskeletal pain syndromes are seldom caused by isolated events and that habitual movements and sustained postures play a major role in the development of movement dysfunction.” 

Your pain must be addressed first, it is important to be able to get on with your daily activities, and there are huge benefits to returning to normal activities. Your movement specialist will complete a full assessment to understand the best way forwards for your condition.

You will then have explained fully to you;

The reason for your symptoms and the full diagnosis.

The first step to ‘remove your pain’.

You will then begin the best treatment to help your recovery, and our highly skilled physiotherapists will give you the best outline of the time frame for this first step.

N.B.

If you have made it this far previously and find yourself in treatment again then there are a few key factors that you need to be aware of; 

Recurrence is the toughest area to address in low back injuries, primarily if you only completed the first step previously then the chances are you have not changed how the body is moving to prevent loading and issues returning at a later date.

The ability of our team to identify poor movement patterns, muscle imbalances, timing faults and related issues both above and below your back injury means the team are ideally placed to explain and address these factors to move you to a better long term result and allow you to spend more time doing the activities you enjoy. 

Building your foundation is the key to step 2, to complete this phase we need to identify the underlying movement faults that you have. You have a couple of options here depending on your specific requirements and end goals and your options can be fully discussed wiht your practitioner;

1. Movement Screen – a brilliant way to understand how you move affects your tissue loading and can be easily related back to many of the reasons behind the injuries we see in clinic each and every day.

2. Pilates Discovery Session – can be an exciting option looking forward at your long term movement health, the the screen helping identify issues in your movement that can then be addressed through targeted Pilates sessions.

3. Running Video Analysis – if running is your thing then this a great way to change the way you move to prevent future issues.

4. Walking / Rehabilitation Evaluation – your back especially is crucial to walking and understanding how you move and how you load the lumbar region can open the pathway options to improve patterning and create long term back health.

You will have the ‘how you move’ identified and explained in full detail to you, and this will allow your movement specialist to plan the next phase of your recovery.

The main goal in building your foundation is to not only identify the underlying causative factors but explain why they are there so you can make lifestyle changes to help avoid recurrence and begin the movement retraining phase to adapt how you move to change excessive loading and tissue stress building up again in the body which can affect your back injury.