Why discuss the Spine?
I write this on an early May morning, swaying slowly from foot to foot in front of my improvised standing desk set-up that I’ve been mostly avoiding for months. Why? Because I myself am crawling out of the throes of a back injury. I mention that not to garner sympathy, but to share that if you’ve ever had back pain, I GET IT! Pulled a muscle? I get it. Bulged or fully herniated a disc? I get it? Broken a vertebra? Thank goodness I haven’t done that … but nonetheless, I have a deep (and at times sad) appreciation and understanding of back pain, injuries, and the long twisty road back towards healthy and pain-free movement.
Also, I’m not a clinician, and I’m not giving medical advice. If you’re experiencing back pain, get help beyond the words of a gym blog – that’s not what this is for. What I CAN do well is talk about human movement, training, and the incredible role the spine plays in our lives.
And so here I stand (and sway), kicking off a three-part series about the spine. I’ll break this series up into three separate posts: The first will overview the incredible role of the spine and what its functions are, the second will be a deeper dive into back anatomy and the various forces that are applied on the spine, and the third will be about training your back, spinal movement, core bracing/strengthening, and other practical applications.
To zoom out and get an idea of how amazing and critical our spines are to our overall well-being, just think of any expression where people use “the backbone” as a metaphor. “Communication is the backbone of a good relationship,” or “Our employees are the backbone of this company.” Heck, plenty of people have wonderful and fulfilling (and very athletic) lives without the use of some limbs. Having a mobile, kinetic life without a spine is something I haven’t heard of yet. Our spine is the backbone of our bodies.
What does the back do?
What I DO want to do with this piece is to marvel at the incredible structure of the back (the spine, the vertebrae, the discs, and all those other pesky supportive bits), and pay tribute to the role it plays in healthy human movement. The back is an amazing structure, quietly doing impossible work all day long. It withstands forces, sometimes tremendous Jedi versus Sith level forces, and keeps those forces in check-and-balance so our bodies can keep moving forward. It supports and connects 4 independently moving limbs, AND a head, and it works all day long in pretty much every position, finally getting some relief when we lie down at night.
At its simplest, the spine connects our limbs, supports our rib cage, protects vital organs, and creates the structural foundation for nearly every movement we make.
Our spine is remarkably mobile, bending and twisting through all kinds of positions, while still providing enough support to transfer power from limb to limb. In life, you’ll need to stand, sit, shovel snow, tie your shoes, ride a bike, pick up a grandchild, or maybe attempt a double-bodyweight deadlift; a healthy spine can be safe through a wide variety of movements as well as in its neutral shape. A healthy spine isn’t one that never moves—it’s one that can tolerate a wide variety of movement demands safely.
To maintain that neutral spine, we must recruit a symphony of complicated musculature. This process of muscular recruitment (engagement) can be very challenging and quite exhausting. And, just as your arms would hurt and struggle in a challenging push-up workout, or your legs would burn during and after a long hike, the supportive muscles of our spine, our entire core, for that matter, can often feel quite torched from our efforts. At some point every week, somebody will tell me “I feel it in my back,” which always turns into a longer conversation. “How do you feel it? Where do you feel it? When do you feel it?” I never want people to experience back pain, but culturally we’re very hyper-vigilant around the notion of back pain, so sometimes completely acceptable muscle soreness or fatigue of the muscles of the back gets conflated with an injury or “doing something wrong”. While that may be the case, just “feeling something in your back” does not mean it’s wrong. If I were to do pull-ups, I would definitely feel it in my arms, but it doesn’t mean I’m doing something unsafe or excessive. Learning to differentiate “this is an okay sensation, and I’m safe” versus “this is not right, unsafe, and I need to change something” can be very challenging, and here is a huge opportunity for people to learn from their coaches.
In our next post, we’ll get a little nerdier—diving into some of the anatomy, examining the forces your spine deals with every day, and why certain areas tend to get cranky.
