• Your abdomen is basically the “front of your back.”  Some of the muscles that attach to your spine are actually accessible through your soft abdomen by a trained massage or muscle therapist.  Sometimes the muscles in the “front of your back” are the ones that cause your lower back pain.
• When you do sit-ups, the movement removes the natural curve from your lower back; it makes it flatter.  The curve is good–it’s there for a reason.
• When you do sit-ups, it’s easy to strain your neck muscles.
• Sit-ups shorten your abdominal muscles.  Short muscles in front help flatten your lower back and take away your natural curve.  Short muscles in the front of your body make it harder to keep good posture.  Good posture helps prevent back pain.

What are some safer options?

• Suck in your abdomen.  That strengthens your muscles without aggravating any other part of your body.
• Do reverse crunches.  Rather than raising your head, reverse crunches curl your pubic bone toward your nose by using your abdominal or stomach muscles.  Your head never leaves the floor and nothing gets strained.

How do you do a reverse curl?

• Lay on your back, knees up.
• Move your knees so they are over your waist.
• Activate your stomach muscles (not your hips, legs or butt.)
• Contract (squeeze) your abdominals and bring your knees closer to your face.  Your tailbone will leave the floor but your head does not.

Remember the key to being pain-free is having muscular balance on all sides of your body.  If you have a strong back AND the front of your body is also strong–so all of the muscles are working in balance–you can get rid of your back pain.

Want to discover more about what happens when you have muscle imbalances?

Go to Back Pain Natural Relief. It’s a long page packed with information.  Scroll down and read all about it.  You will learn more about the importance of balancing your muscles and discover how to get  rid of your back pain naturally.

Let’s think about this for a moment.  When you were little, you were running, sliding, hopping, jumping, climbing.  You were skipping, swinging, squirming, wiggling, jiggling.  Hula-hooping and jump-roping.  You were up and down, up and down.

You even used the muscles in your face.  And when you cried, you cried with your whole body.  If you were like most healthy children, you were moving all the time.  Unless you were asleep.

You used ALL of your 600+ muscles every day!

And, now?  Or, like most of us, do you use only the same 60 or so muscles, just the bare minimum to get through the day?

You might be able to lift and carry that little child, so you think you’re stronger.  But, the reality is, that little child is strong ALL OVER while some of your muscles are strong and some are weak.  Some are used too much, some not enough.

If you were as strong as that little child you used to be, you wouldn’t have that achy back and neck or those headaches.  Your posture wouldn’t be collapsing forward.  You’d feel really good!

Well, good news!

You can feel a lot better than you do now.  All you have to do is make a few changes, do some things differently, and start using more of your muscles again.  Like you did.  Remember?  When you were little?

Right here at SimpleStrengthening.com you can discover simple, easy ways to start getting strong again and use of all of your muscles again.  You can get a strong back.  You can relearn how to hold your head over your body.  You can become as strong as you were when you were that little active kid.

There’s no time like the present!  You’re gonna start feeling better and feeling stronger.

1.  Almost everyone can lie on their back in relative comfort.

2.  Gravity works with you rather than against you.  When you are upright, gravity is working to pull you down toward the earth.  When you are on your back, you are already down.  The force of gravity becomes your friend and assists you.

3.  Your bed acts as resistance.  It is soft enough to press into, yet firm enough to push back at you.

4.  If you have an anatomical leg length difference (like 10% of us–one leg is truly shorter than the other) or if one half of your pelvis (one hip bone) is smaller than the other (like 1% of us) it doesn’t matter.  When you are standing or sitting, these size differences can throw you off balance.  They move the center of your body away from neutral.  When you are on your back, these differences are taken “out of the equation.”

5.  Lots of us are “vertically challenged.”  We just plain feel better when we lie down. This is due to leg length differences, scoliosis (curvature of the spine) or weak back muscles.

6.  If your back is weak and you have trouble staying upright, working from a flat position is easier.

7.  It is easier to isolate the areas of your body that you need to strengthen when you are on your back.

8.  Stretching from this position is also easier because gravity pulls on your arms and legs while your back is in a neutral position.

9.  You don’t need any additional equipment.

So, those are some of the reasons I’m working on a program to help you get strong while you lie in bed.  If you read the articles here at SimpleStrengthening.com you will find lots of “how-to’s.”

It is so important to have a strong back side!  Everything from your knees to the base of your skull should be strong.   When your back side is strong, you will feel better, your body will function better and you will be able to withstand the forces of gravity when you are upright.  This is a good thing.

“Because You Deserve to Feel Better!”

Do you have back pain between your shoulder blades?  Is the pain more on your dominant side?

Or, is it more lower back pain and/or your neck?

There are many possible causes for back pain and muscles are the usual culprit!  Honest!  Muscles!

That’s good news, because muscles can be fixed.

When your back muscles get overstretched, they will complain and cause back pain.

So, how do muscles get overstretched?

For your upper back it is usually from reaching forward, or working with hands in front of you, a great deal of time, especially with your dominant hand.  For example, most hairdressers use one hand more than the other, and the side they use most can get pain, unless…

They take the time to strengthen their back, and to do periodic stretches to lengthen the muscles which have become short in front of the arm and chest.  (The front muscles become short due to the arm being held in front of the body for so long.)

If you work with both hands in front (reaching or stretching) for long periods, your whole upper back can get overstretched and be uncomfortable.

So, how do the muscles in your low back become overstretched?

If you lose the nice low curve you used to have in your back, pain comes as a complaint.  Your muscles are telling you they are not happy, they are out of balance, they want to be back in neutral.

How did you lose the low back curve?  Mostly, it is from the way we sit, and sometimes how we stand.

Our couches, car seats and desk chairs don’t serve our muscles well.  They let us slouch.  They often don’t fit us.  Instead of looking for a better fitting seat, we allow our backs to round in the opposite direction of where we ought to be, of where we used to be, unless…

We strengthen our large gluteal muscles – our butt muscles – which are very powerful, and our hamstrings in the back of our thighs, and our backs.  Doing this will help bring the curve back into our low back, and help reduce our pain.

Strengthening your back side will help you stand and sit straighter.  That will cause less pull on your muscles, and so less pain.

How does your neck get overstretched?   Sometimes it is as simple as lying wrong in bed, or having our head turned in one direction for a long time, or any of the rotten things we do to our necks when we are slouching on a chair or straining to see a computer screen or game or driving.

Your neck will have a hard time staying in neutral, with its’ own nice small curve, if you have lost the curve in your low back.

What goes on in the low back, goes on in the neck, and vice versa.

Sometimes we just want to feel better…NOW!  That would be great, but…

It takes time.  It takes time for bodies to heal, but they do.  You know they do.  If you get a little cut, you keep it clean, and covered, and keep germs and dirt out, and it heals.

Muscles are bigger than a little cut.  They take longer to “heal” and get corrected.  A cut happens in an instant.  Muscle pain usually took a long time, a lot of overuse or abuse, until it started.  It will take longer to get rid of, but it can be done!

You can start getting a stronger back side by following the steps that I share with you here, or you can use another program if you prefer.

The important thing is that you start doing what needs to be done to feel better.

Why?

“Because You Deserve To Feel Better.” And, you can find more help at http://www.CarpalTunnelPainReliefNow.com and http://www.SimplePainRelief.com

Here is an example.  You may recognize this pain that lots of us experience:  The one on your back, between your spine and your shoulder blade.  If you are right-handed, it will be on your right side.

It feels like a knot, and almost feels like it is burning.  Do you know that pain?

Here is what happened.  The muscles in the front of your body, chest and arm, and probably your neck, become shorter and tighter.  This occurs because most of the time we hold our heads our arms in front of our bodies.   That makes the muscles in front become tight.

Unless you work to strengthen your back muscles, your tighter, stronger front muscles will win the body war.  They will make your body shorter in front and these shortened muscles will ”pull” on the weaker muscles in your back.

Your back muscles are getting stretched because they are not as strong as your front muscles.  Your back muscles go into a type of contraction, or spasm, to keep from being damaged by further stretching.  The stretching strains the back muscles.

You feel the contraction as pain or burning.  Your body is complaining.  It says, “Please fix me!”

So, when an area is stretched for a long time, or overstretched, the result is muscle strain.

How can you fix this?

Getting a strong back will balance your stronger front-of-body muscles.  A strong back will help you avoid muscle strain in your back.  A strong back will prevent your back muscles from being overstretched.

Strong hamstrings (the muscles on the back of your thighs) will help you avoid hamstring strain.

Strong muscles in the back of your neck will help prevent muscle strain that causes headaches.  When the muscles around the base of your skull or at the sides of your neck become strained, you can get a headache.

Strengthening the back of your neck will help you hold your head in the proper position to avoid straining those muscles.

There are Simple Strengthening Tips here to help you get a strong back side, and more to come.

It is never too late to change our bodies for the better.

Bodies sometimes just need a little assistance from us to feel better and perform better.

You can do it!

Find more help at http://www.CarpalTunnelPainReliefNow.com and http://www.SimplePainRelief.com.

There are many causes for neck pain, but here is a very common cause and a simple strengthening solution.

Often our heads get “stuck” in a forward position.  This happens because of the way we hold our head for long periods.  The muscles both in front and in back of our necks can cause distress for us.

The front/side neck muscles attach from collar bone at the “notch” to our skull behind our ears.  The back neck muscles attach to our skull.

When we are in this “forward head” position, the muscles in the back of our neck can get weak and overstretched.

Here is a simple tip to strengthen the muscles in the back of our neck.  When these muscles are strong, they help us hold our head upright.

1. Lie on your back.  Your bed is fine.  Use no pillow or the flattest pillow possible for your comfort (only if you absolutely need to.)
2. Rock your head slowly by tilting your chin up and down.  When you find the position for your head that feels the most neutral and comfortable, stay there.  Your chin should not point up or down at this time.
3. Gently press the back of your head into your mattress.  Do this gently. Pay attention to what is going on in your neck as you do this.

If it causes discomfort, or feels inappropriate, stop.  It should only feel like movement with resistance from your mattress.  You are only pressing until you feel resistance.

It is not a competition!  Find your neutral, most comfortable neck position.  Press gently into your mattress until you feel resistance.  Repeat several times, assessing how your neck feels.  If you hear a little noise in your neck, like creaking, that is natural.

This is  the first step in strengthening the back side of your body.

A strong, balanced back is a happy back!

For more help, go to http://www.SimplePainRelief.com and http://www.CarpalTunnelPainReliefNow.com.

If we are a new mom, the position we are stuck in might be holding our baby.  If we work at a desk, it could be leaning over the desk.  If we are a mechanic or line worker or cook, it is using our hands in front of us all day while we look at our work or project.

So, our shoulders and heads get “stuck” in front of us.

Our poor back suffers as a result.  Muscles don’t like being in that position.

To lift your head, pretend a hook is pulling you skyward.  The hook is attached to your breastbone, near the top of your chest.

To do really nice things for your shoulders, lift them up and roll them back and down.  Since our shoulders are in front of our bodies all day, instead of out to our sides where they belong, moving them backward – toward our spine – is a good counter-move for them.

Lifting and rolling our shoulders back and down does several good things for us.

• It gets circulation going around our shoulders and neck.
• It loosens the muscles around our shoulder blades.
• It strengthens the muscles that hold our shoulder blades toward our spines.
• It gives our poor, overstretched muscles a break!

Some people like to roll their shoulders in a big circle, back to front or front to back.  If that feels good to you, do it.  But, if that feels to you as though you are overstretching your back muscles, then you probably are.  So, just move your shoulders up and back and down.  Squeeze your shoulder blades together.

Ahhhh.  Feels better already, doesn’t it.

For more help, go to http://www.SimplePainRelief.com and http://www.CarpalTunnelPainReliefNow.com