How To Start Exercising Safely After a Back Injury

When commencing a rehab or exercise program, it’s important to know how to adjust the exercises to prevent overload – either from a general fitness perspective or rehab. This is not the same as progressive overload for the training enthusiasts. 

Lets say you googled ‘low back pain exercises’ and retrieve 100’s of options.  How do you know which one to pick? But lets say you picked some popular ones.  You proceed with the exercise and start having some pain. How do you know what you should feel? How much pain or discomfort is okay?

This information partners with the traffic light guide to pain. 

Rule 1, If your post-exercise soreness lasts longer than 48 hours, then decrease the intensity of your exercises. 

Too much pain or soreness means your load was more than your system could handle.

Rule 2, In the session, adjust the exercises dependent on your symptoms. 

This may mean decreasing the number of repetitions that you do or the amount of resistance..

This uses the Traffic Light Method of Pain Monitoring which will be covered later.

Rule 3,  Pain Does Not Always equal Harm.  

However sharp, shooting, stabbing pain could be exceeding tissue tolerance. 

A lot of pain people have from exercise is due to being deconditioned , from the joints to the muscles. Exercise is uncomfortable, let’s face.  But Avoiding the exercise will only lead to poor outcomes.

How do you distinguish good versus bad pain?  Use the traffic light method to guide you.

Any pain that is sharp, stabbing, shooting and is very localized usually means the load exceeded tolerance and you need to change. 

The PDF sheet of the 3 Methods To Adjust Your Exercise And Activities to accelerate your recovery is included with the Better Back Exercise Programs