The main reason for your back pain?
There isn’t one.
Yip, you read that correctly.
In the vast majority of cases, there is no single cause for back pain.
Unless you’ve been involved in an accident of some kind there is a huge range of things that have contributed to it.
This includes those “it’s the end of the world”, cases where there is damage to a disc. Where there is some nerve impingement.
Even with these there are and have been, many other things going on.
The disc didn’t prolapse spontaneously.
The nerve didn’t just suddenly become impinged or compressed.
Then we have the much more common chronic back pain.
The one the vast majority of us suffer from.
Yes, it can at times be crippling. But can equally just be a nagging dull ache.
I hurt my back the first time in 1991.
I was at the gym and warming to my work sets for the day in the deadlift. I hurt my back on the 1st set! I was around 70kg below what I was going to use that day. And probably around 120kg below the heaviest I could lift.
My point?
It wasn’t hard work. It was a weight I had done so many times before I couldn’t count them.
Anyway. It wasn’t too bad and settled over the next couple of days.
Then I played rugby on the Sunday. The games had been shifted becasue the Rugby World Cup was on.
10-15minutes into the game I started to notice it feeling a little tight, not sore though, just tight.
I ran across the pitch to the next phase of play and as the ball came out of the ruck I fell to the ground in pain.
I couldn’t stand up!
To say I was crapping myself would be an understatement.
I lay there for what seemed an eternity before being able to get to my knees and then off the pitch.
Being young etc simply taking it easy for a few days it cleared up. I got a little bit of treatment in the classic wham, bam chiropractic stylee and all seemed good.
I had a couple more episodes over the years and finally dealt with it by taking myself through the same system I use with my clients after the last episode.
The main reason I kept getting a recurrence of the problem was it had never been fully dealt with.
Treatment had always stopped at the pain free point.
The thing is, this is in reality only about halfway there.
The point where you stop noticing the pain is NOT the end of the process. It is the point where the real work begins. Where you work on the stuff that breaks the cycle.
If you miss this part out you can guarantee there will be a recurrence of the problem.
We need to create this robustness and resilience. To develop the ability to move comfortably in all directions without fear.
To be able to pick heavy things up.
To be able to just get on with your life.
To give you back thoughtless, fearless movement.