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Back pain, alignment and structure 101

Here’s a pretty good, pretty basic explanation of alignment, posture and structure and how it relates to back pain. Then the following videos (parts 2 and 3) also get into some exercises from the Egoscue system in how to address the problems.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWUHTEJOyKs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78Pt_e5gHyc

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Te7gFcy_AiQ

Although I’ve only watched the first video so far, I thought it was a pretty simple explanation of the problems of alignment and structure. This is very basic information that might help out people in their study of bagua and xingyi structure and alignment. Hope it helps out.

PS: Egoscue is basically a physical therapy guy that does rehab and prehab with a heavy concentration on alignment and balancing out the body’s musculo-skeletal (sp?) systems. He has written a number of books, and works with professional athletes as well as laymen on his methods to help their performance and health.

This entry was posted on September 14, 2007 at 10:24 am and is filed under Training, General Info. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “Back pain, alignment and structure 101”

  1. jleeger says:
    November 7, 2007 at 1:17 pm

    These exercises are great. However, he doesn’t lay out much of a plan for following them or applying them daily. If you pick two and do them every day, you’ll pre-hab/re-hab your back in no time. If you try to do them all every day, you’ll get frustrated quickly.

  2. george says:
    November 13, 2007 at 2:49 pm

    One of the difficult things with back pain and rehab/PT for it is that you HAVE to become an expert on your own back and body. Over the long term, you need to be able to change things up and keep working it out and stretching it out and balancing it out. In my experience, I can’t see how a cookie-cutter approach will work for anything but the most basic intro, the most basic start, on a long road to functional maintenance. Even something as comprehensive in body training as our Gao Bagua circle walking sets, in my experience, still need to be complemented by more specific exercises to target each individual’s issues (of course, hence, the plethora of additional exercises and training methods our system has).

    Everyone’s injury is different and everyone’s body is different. Everyone needs a different approach to their own wellness and functionality. Especially once you do something serious like herniated discs, fractured vertebrae, or torn ligaments (I’ve had all these), its something that you will inevitably be pro-actively maintaining your entire life.

    That’s my experience though.

  3. jleeger says:
    November 14, 2007 at 12:27 pm

    I agree with you 100%! Unfortunately for most of us, we don’t get the message about pre-hab until we need re-hab! It’s a sorry state of affairs.
    The general fitness media is gradually shifting toward a more “core-conscious” attitude, but even that is just a fad, and not a real in-depth exploration of techniques or issues.
    George, you should definitely throw in a couple of these techniques at the end of every night, if you have time…
    My favorites are the four-point stance and the static half-crunch (holding the crunch position for 20-30 seconds per set). Those and the classic “child pose” stretch are something I do every day.

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