How to Exercise with a Torn Back Muscle

Wooden doll leaning forward with hand on back - Image by Wolfgang Claussen from Pixabay

By Kate Feinberg Robins

How Do I Know I Have a Torn Back Muscle?

Here are some signs that your back pain might be due to a muscle tear:

  • You can remember the moment that it started hurting.  

  • You feel lopsided, with one side of your back much tighter than the other.

  • The pain gets worse when you try to use the muscle.


How Did it Happen?

Think back to that moment when your back started hurting. You might have torn a muscle if you:

  • stretched abruptly without warming up.

  • forced yourself to stretch further than you were ready for.

  • lifted too much weight suddenly and with poor form.


Any movement that causes a sudden strain may cause a muscle to tear.


How Can I Prevent it from Happening Again?

  • Always warm up before stretching. Make sure you’re doing the the right kind of stretching at the right time.

  • Stretch gently, giving your muscles plenty of warmth, breath, and time before deepening the stretch.

  • Practice proper form with resistance or small weights before increasing your weight load.

  • Give your torn muscle time to heal.

How Can I Exercise While Healing?

Pilates is great for injury recovery, because:

  • It’s low-impact and non-weight bearing.

  • It helps us center and align ourselves to avoid aggravating injuries.


Here are some tips for how to approach your Pilates practice while recovering:

  • Stick with Beginning classes.

  • Remind yourself to slow down and focus on form.

  • Do just five minutes at a time.

  • When your torn muscle hurts, move slowly and take deep breaths.

  • Keep your movements small. Even just visualizing muscle movements while lying still and breathing can train your muscles without aggravating them.

  • After five minutes, stop and rest.

  • If you're working with a pre-recorded class, come back to the same class to do another five minutes the next day.


It will take several days to get through a full pre-recorded class. That’s okay! Doing a full class before moving on will ensure that you strengthen and stretch in a balanced way. This is essential for injury recovery.


Torn muscles can take months to heal. If you push too hard too soon, you can aggravate the tear and be out for even longer.


Be patient with yourself. You will make it through!


Location: Redlands, CA, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to Stretch for a Warm-Up and Cool-Down

Image
By Kate Feinberg Robins Warm-up stretching  should increase your mobility in preparation for more intense exercise, without putting yourself at risk of pulling a muscle. Be gentle and dynamic.  Move continuously rather than holding a position.  Keep your stretches small and your muscles in motion.  Cool-down stretching  decreases muscle soreness and tightness, and leads to long-term gains in flexibility. Sustain your position for several breaths or at least 30 seconds. Relax the muscles you're stretching.  Stretching for increased flexibility  requires repeated sustained stretches and lots of patience. Choose a moment when your muscles are very warm--like after a long walk or run.  Hold your stretch for several minutes, making sure not to put weight on the muscles being stretched.  Deepen your stretch gradually and with lots of breath.  The longer you hold the stretch and the more often you do it, the more gains you'll see in flexibility.  Never move suddenly into a deeper stre
Read more

You Will Succeed - An Interview with Misty Copeland

Image
By Kate Feinberg Robins In a 2014 piece from NPR's Morning Edition , American Ballet Theatre dancer Misty Copeland discusses her children's book Firebird and how important it is to tell children, "You will succeed." Here are some highlights. On the challenges of women of color breaking into the field of professional ballet: I don't think that every African American or Latino or, you know, have the same body type, but yes, that's been one of the excuses, I think, saying that African Americans are too muscular or just aren't lean enough, and usually they say, "Oh, they have flat feet. So they don't have the flexibility that it takes to create the line in a pointe shoe." When people meet me in person they're usually surprised at how petite I am, because there's this idea that because I'm black I should look a certain way.... They hear those words from critics saying I'm too bulky, I'm too busty, and then they meet me in pers
Read more

To Control Your Center of Gravity - Strengthening Core Muscles

Image
By Kate Feinberg Robins To find your center is to control your center of gravity . The most literal meaning of "finding your center" in ballet and capoeira is to physically control your center of gravity by developing and using strong core muscles. Many of the pains, imbalances, and physical vulnerabilities that we experience in our everyday lives can be addressed by strengthening our abdominal, back, oblique, and hip muscles. Lower back pain is what first drew me to Pilates . Many years after I had stopped training ballet professionally, I took a Pilates class and realized that my back pain was due to weak abdominals. I began to practice Pilates daily, which got my core muscles into shape and all but eliminated my back pain. I continued with low-impact Pilates throughout my pregnancy and post-partum, strengthening and rebuilding my core muscles in correct alignment after the bodily trauma of pregnancy and childbirth. If you'd like guidance in figuring out which of your
Read more