Why Do People Have More Incidents of Lower Back Pain-Injury After Periods of Sitting Vs Standing?

When you sit for a long period of time, even sitting just 30 minutes or longer you are typically putting your lower back into a flexed position. This is typically the slouched way or collapsed way of sitting in in a chair vs sitting in a way that supports your body and helps align your structure. The after math of sitting in a position with your lower back in flexion is that the thorocalumbar fascia (the thoracolumbar fascia provides about 80% of the stability for the lower back compared to 20% of the muscles according to leading experts in Low Back Pain.) this layer of tissue ends up stretching or elongating over time in this position, much like if you were to slowly stretch a rubber band.

What happens next?

Eventually you will get up and begin moving in gravity. A common scenario is that you get up head out into another room, see something on the bathroom floor and bend over to pick it up and........ your back hurts, your back gets injured.

What caused the injury in this case?

Your back gets injured (read carefully as this is the important part) because the normal stability for the lumbar fascia comes back a bit later. By stability, I mean 'stiffness', strength the ability to resist stretch. I used the above example of slowly stretching a rubber band, so stiffness would be perhaps trying to stretch a bungy cord vs a elastic band (ie much harder). Research tells us that after around 30 minutes of being out of this position (lumbar flexion) that the tissue begins to 'swell' (re-hydrate) and become more stable and more able to support your back in forward bending and after 1 hour it is even more stable than 30 minutes earlier and the curve goes up. (there is a point where it does begin to trend down, meaning that the lumbar fascia is not going to just continue to get stiffer). So we need this period of time for our fascia to recover it strength and stabiity before putting it into movements or positions that will place it at risk.

So what to take home from this? So now we know that studies shown that people who bend forward after sitting for a long period of time (ie. 30 minutes and greater) have more back injuries than if they had been standing for the same time. So with this knowledge and the information from above. Here are some quick tips.

1. Get up and move from your desk frequently! Help your lumbar fascia out!! Set a timer to go off every 30 minutes or sooner, when it goes off get up and move. Better yet break periods of sitting at your desk and work from a standing position. Let me be clear do not sit for hour upon hour at your desk and think you will have a happy, healthy back this is called denial!!!

2. Change how you are sitting, meaning sit up on your sit bones and tilt your pelvis slightly forward to take your lower back out of flexion. I often educated clients on using a 5 point neuro-somatic standing awareness exercise (to read more about it click here). You can take the same principles and use it while sitting this will help you stay more mindful and less apt to fall into old patterns while sitting at your desk, in your car or on your coach.

3. Also, If you have been sitting all day, then jumping into your car and driving (yes sitting again) to the golf course or any other activity for that matter and heading right out to play is putting you at greater risk for injury. So instead, make sure you move around for a period of time before swinging the club, the softball bat, or twisting your body in a yoga class. Work with your body not against it!

4. Lastly if your slumped on the couch all day or weekend long catching up on your movies, just remember that if you see something on the floor that you want to bend over to pick up, do yourself a favor and bend downk from the knees to get it, because if you bend forward to pick it up well lets just say you may be in for a not so enjoyable surprise.

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