How to Deal with a Back Spasm: 5 Home Exercise Tips

Image by u_8kpv5nme41 from Pixabay

By Kate Feinberg Robins


What Is a Back Spasm?

If you’ve experienced a back spasm, you know it can be incredibly painful, start suddenly, and last several days. The good news is most muscle spasms can be managed through home exercise and over-the-counter medicine. (For more on causes and medical treatments, we recommend the Cleveland Clinic’s website.)


A back spasm is basically when a muscle in your back contracts involuntarily and will not release. In our experience, it feels like sudden shooting and debilitating pain (usually accompanied by crying ☹️).


Here are some tips we’ve learned that help get us through when it happens.

1. Slow Down

Be patient with yourself. It can take weeks for the pain to go away fully. Often a spasm is (in part) your body telling you that you’re doing too much and forcing you to slow down.


(And maybe next time, we can remember to slow down before it happens and avoid it altogether 🤔.)

2. Keep Moving

This is the hardest and most important part. When it feels impossible to move, resist the urge to lie down. Instead, slowly and carefully work on standing up straight and walking. We use pain relief medication and topical creams to help us move through the pain.


Don’t stay seated for too long. If you need to sit, periodically stand and move.

3. Focus on Posture & Ab Strength

Two common culprits for back spasms are poor posture and under-use of the abdominals. It’s likely that your posture was misaligned when the spasm started, and now you have to work harder to correct it 🥴.


Focus on standing up straight and using your abs to maintain an upright posture. If you notice your leg, hip, or back muscles taking over, try to relax them and engage your abdominals.


Lie flat on your back to align your posture. This helps stretch out tense muscles that are preventing you from standing up straight. It will likely feel painful.


Once you’re able to stand up straight, slowly walk in a safe space. Avoid sudden movements and uneven surfaces. Focus on engaging your abs and keeping shoulders over hips.

4. Do Full Body Exercise at Home

Once you can walk, gently ease into full body exercise. This will increase your range of motion and help you address muscle imbalances.


Choose anything that inspires you. Ballet, capoeira, flamenco, Pilates and yoga are all great options. Find a safe space where you don’t feel pressure to do more than your body is allowing. Start with basic movements, working slowly to increase your mobility.


Notice which muscles feel weak and which feel tight. Focus on engaging your weak muscles and relaxing the ones you’ve been over-using. A physical therapist can help you identify under-used muscles and offer exercises to strengthen them.

5. Recognize Related Pains

Because our back is connected to upper and lower body muscles, the pain can move up and down throughout the entire body. What starts as a back spasm can turn into neck or thigh spasms. This is why gentle full body exercise is so important. Be consistent and patient, and little by little you’ll get back to normal. 🧘🏻‍♀️🧘🏾‍♂️🪷

Location: Redlands, CA, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

Thanks for your comment!

Popular posts from this blog

Learning Ballet as an Adult: Embrace Your Ballet "Accent"

Image
by Kate Feinberg Robins, PhD Embrace Your Ballet "Accent" I know as a linguistic anthropologist that languages are not made up simply of words, but of grammar, sounds, and cultural understandings. The same is true for ballet.  Ballet is not about what steps we can do. It’s about how we move.  If we know a few words (steps) and understand the principles behind them, we can communicate. If we know lots of words but don’t understand how they fit together grammatically, what they mean culturally, or how to pronounce them, communication is difficult at best. There is a myth that both ballet and languages must be learned in childhood.  Children’s brains and bodies do have greater plasticity. Children can speak new languages without a foreign-sounding accent. Their bodies can be shaped to the aesthetics of ballet. But anyone at any age is capable of learning.  Adults have a lifetime of experience that we can use to learn deliberately and purposefully. Whether learning a language or
Read more

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

6 Ways to Make Creativity a Habit

Image
By Kate Feinberg Robins Working on creative projects reduces stress and anxiety, and improves problem-solving skills. So that’s great! We should all do it, right? But for adults who don’t make art as part of our jobs, it doesn’t always feel so simple. Here are some tips. Focus on the process, not the product. Give yourself a regular time and place to do your art, where you can focus on the doing without judgement. This might mean closing your door, covering mirrors and cameras, or putting on headphones. Any kind of creative expression counts. Make a list of creative activities that you can easily do. Remember—focus on what you have the resources to do, not what you consider yourself good at. Your list can include things as varied as writing, baking, playing music, dancing, or designing inventions. Choose anything on the list that you’re in the mood for. Play and explore. Try letting go of things like recipes, sheet music, and choreography. Give yourself the freedom to play with your m
Read more