Functionally, the muscles of the arms and legs and the hips and shoulders are designed to create movement throughout a range of motion. Understanding the biomechanics of the spine and injury mechanisms of spinal tissue is important for injury avoidance and improved performance. Scientific principles of tissue loading and response to injury must be considered during exercise design whether it is for increased performance, general fitness, or rehabilitation. As you will see, the common yet misguided efforts to relieve the low back tightness, e.g., low back stretching, can actually lead to even more trauma. This tightness is often the first real sense of something wrong. Muscle spasms are born out of the inflammatory process and are a signal of significant tissue damage. Submaximal micro trauma of tissue will cause inflammation that can result in a muscle spasm, where the individual will experience a feeling of tightness in the low back.
It is important to note that tissue damage may not outwardly appear as swelling or even pain. When loading and subsequent degradation of tolerance is wisely followed by a period of rest, an adaptive tissue response increases tolerance. Tissue loading is necessary for optimal tissue health. 1 Sustained postures such as sitting and spine stretching are examples of sustained loads. Sustained loads over a period of time cause tissue to slowly deform, leading to a reduction in tissue strength and resulting in injury. 1 Sit-ups, Russian twists, and back extensions are excellent examples of repeated loading. Repeated loads cause tissue fatigue, reduce tissue tolerance, and lead to failure on the Nth repetition, resulting in injury. Submaximal loads can be repeated or sustained. More common, however, is the repeated submaximal load causing injury. A load that is great enough and applied once can certainly result in an injury, e.g., a fall. Injury occurs when an applied load exceeds the tissue tolerance. An exercise that builds one individual may overwhelm another. The optimal load is not too much, not too little, and is unique to the individual. Too little stress will not stimulate tissue adaptation and too much stress will overload tissue leading to injury. In general, biological tissues respond to loading stress as a U-shaped function. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the low back injury mechanisms causing excessive tissue loading and eventual tissue failure as related to common core exercises. Too many good backs are ruined by inappropriate training that follows current fads or traditional strength training regimens without understanding the biomechanics of the spine. 1 The key to optimal performance or rehabilitation is injury avoidance and this requires an understanding of the biomechanical principles of tissue loading and subsequent adaptation or degradation. Clinicians and patients alike will often attribute low back pain to an event, e.g., a sneeze or a bad night’s sleep, yet very few back injuries occur from a single event, often misguiding efforts to deal with the real cause of the cumulative trauma. Many awake in the morning with low back pain or tightness, attributing this to “sleeping on it wrong,” not knowing the cause of the pain was an accumulation of events that have been occurring over the course of the past few months or even years. The cause of the low back pain is misunderstood and efforts to relieve the low back pain are misdirected. Most people will experience a bout of low back pain at some point in their lives. Breaking Down the Exercises that Break Down Your Spine
0 kommentar(er)
