In part 1 of the Mechanism of Spine Injuries, I've shared information on how the spine is structured, importance of spinal curvature, different types of spinal injuries and some of the myth that people have about spinal injuries. In Part 2, I will be sharing the difference between cause and symptom and function trade off.
Cause and Symptoms
When anybody comes to me with any pain, I don't just look at the area that is in pain. Often times, where the pain is and the cause of the actual issue can be different.
For example, when someone complains about knee pain during squat, I often look at their ankles instead of knee because usually ankle mobility is compromised due to calf tightness. If I just help reduce the pain around their knee, the pain may come back again because the actual cause is not being addressed properly. Spinal injuries are the same. It is important to know where the pain or discomfort is for sure but it is far more important to learn what is the cause of the pain.
What surprises me the most is many therapists or corrective exercise specialists, focusing too much on reducing pain and call it pain management. Pain management is, as the words describes it, it is design to manage the pain. They may prescribe or suggest pain medication or popular one nowadays is CBD oils. It helps reduce the pain but it is not finding or treating the cause of the pain.
If you are looking to reduce pain then pain management will be fine. However, if you are wanting to get rid of the actual cause of the pain, then you will need to dig this deeper although it may take some time to solve the issue.
Here are 4 questions that you can ask yourself to find the cause of the pain. And if you are working with experts, these questions (and more), should be asked during the first meeting.
What happened when the first pain started? - This is to find out if there was mechanical trauma like fall or car accident, or the pain started slowly and continue to get worsen.
Are there times when the pain is gone? - this question is to understand if the pain changes from certain time of the day or certain position you are in.
What makes the pain worse? - If this question can be answered you can pinpoint what is actually causing the pain.
Does the pain travel or radiate to anywhere else? - This is to understand what is happening at the pain location.
By answering these questions you will vaguely see what may be happening to your body. So you might want to learn what exercises to do. But before moving into actual exercise to improve the spine function, lets go through something called Function Trade Off. It is very important to understand this because everybody wants everything but there is reason why you can't or you don't want to based on your training goal.
Function Trade Off
Function trade off is when you have specific goals and because of the goal there will be some functional trade off where you will be focusing on one thing knowing that there will be some compromise some place else. Let's say for example that you want to by a luxury car but you currently don't have budget to fit it in. You will need to plan your budget according to your goal of buying the car. But this may mean that you may not be able to eat out or travel for a while. That is the trade off.
This will be similar with exercise and definitely for spinal mechanism. For example, if you are working towards becoming a dancer, you want the muscles around spine to be more flexible. However, if you are working on powerlifting to enter strongmen competition, then the muscles around spine will be need to be stiff to withstand the load. Dancer cannot afford to stiffen their spine or the performance will be compromised. Same thing goes for strongmen. I will not suggest strongmen trainee to do yoga or Pilates for their core training because most likely the stiffness that they had build will be compromised. So based on your activity goals how you train the muscles around spine will be different.
Dancer and strongmen are extreme example so lets talk about someone who is working in front of computer and workout for 3 times per week to stay healthy and hike on the weekend. This person probably does not want the spine to be too flexible or too stiff for what activity he/she will go through. The core muscles supporting spine should know how to stiffen so it is capable of supporting while sitting in front of the computer at work. The core muscles may also want to learn how to be flexible so he/she can enjoy various activity including workout, hike, and so on. But this may mean that this person may not be able to perform like dancer because of the stiffness and may not able to participate in strongmen because of flexibility. This also is a trade off.
So along with the 4 questions and understanding the goal, we can know start thinking about type of exercises that you should be working on. In Part 3 I will be sharing exercises to improve spinal functioning and also exercise consideration based on some special conditions.
Comments