Walking and Back Pain

“Hey! What’s up? It’s Ian Hart here. I’m here at my fitness studio and I had a quick thought that I think can help you if you’re dealing with back pain. And so that being: how you walk.

Okay, a lot of times the way you walk can either cause back pain or relieve back pain and so there’s one tip that I think a lot of people can use right now. And that is when you walk, you’re suppose to swing your arms, alright. If you notice that your walking without swinging your arms you’re putting a lot of torque and tension in your lower back and it’s causing damage. Now if you swing your arms you’re dissipating the force and letting your body flow freely. And what happens is, when people have back pain they actually tighten up and they let fear get into the mind so they tense up their whole body and they stop moving their arms and their shoulders and they walk, you know, in this position like this (please see the video) and this is actually causing more pain than if they just walk freely. Alright?

So you’ll notice when you swing your arms with your body nice and fluidly, it feels great. Just in general just go nice swing, you’re actually, your whole physiology will change and this goes, you know, you’re changing your nervous system when you let your body flow freely and walk. This is true for posture too, you know we know that if you sit up straight you get your spine in alignment, information sent from the brain down to the spine faster, automatically your whole physiology change. You feel better about yourself and you feel better about the world around you just by increasing your posture, increasing your breathing and all those things because that’s the way the body’s designed. It wasn’t designed to be hunched over alright. So as soon as you’re hunched over or you walk with your arms tightened up and you’re not moving, these little things can transform the body dramatically. Alright, so when you walk, walk with your arms swinging nice and fluidly, it dissipates force so you don’t put torque and more compression in your back leading to more microtrauma which will cause more pain. Alright, I hope this helps. Walk with your arms swinging. Ian Hart with MyBackPainCoach.com, BackPainRelief4Life.com have a great day!”

Ian Hart is a Body-Mind Transformation expert, the creator of EarthFIT Training Systems, co-creator of BACK PAIN RELIEF4LIFE, and founder of BEAUFORTPERSONALTRAINING.COM and MYBACKPAINCOACH.COM. Ian and his team help people get into optimal shape in the safest, fastest and most effective way possible, using cutting edge science.