Quick Tip To Avoid Low Back Pain | Chiropractor for Low Back Pain in Fishers, IN

One of the most common questions we get in our clinic is how to properly bend over and pick up items. Here are some quick tips to avoid low back pain when picking up objects.

Problematic Movements To Avoid

This can be something as simple as this foam roller. This can also be something as simple as picking up your son, or daughter, grand-baby you name it, but what we don’t want to do is what’s called a “coupled motion” where we bend over and we twist. It’s going to load the low back muscles, and it’s going to cause the spine to have extra bearing that could cause it to go out of alignment, it could also rupture the spinal disc. So Hannah, if you will just bend over and then turn as you bend over, I want to demonstrate the improper way to pick something up, so bend and then just turn. So that’s not good, it’s gonna cause a lot of stress to her low back, you’re gonna see a lot of torque. If this is a heavy object, it can really throw out that low back. Now go and stand up, please.

Healthy Squat Technique

Conversely, if we bend down and we use our legs and not our back, we squat down and what you can go ahead and do is keep things in front of you and close to you. Then we use our legs to come up and that’s the proper motion. The second part of that is distributing that weight. If it was a child or something and you were wanting to hand them off, you wouldn’t want to reach and turn. That’s going to load as well, rather you’d want to turn her whole body and then distribute the weight out as such, and hand it off.

All right, take those quick tips with you. Spare your low back. You guys have a great day!