Welcome back to another week of discussion here on the ARC blog! Hopefully everyone is staying healthy and active during this time. Last week we discussed directional preference as part of diagnosing low back pain and how this helps to classify patients into subgroups to better help your therapist treat you. We gave you some early exercises to help you at home as part of the intervention process and this week we are going to review progressions of those exercises if they were helpful in reducing your low back pain. The exercises will be accompanied by some videos which will be posted at the bottom of this page and they will once again be grouped by directional preference, either extension based or flexion based.
For extension- based exercise, if the prone press ups and prone on elbows were helpful, we encourage you to continue with those along with the additional exercises we are going to review in this video. If anything, they will help continue to stretch the joint and will be a good warm up for more challenging exercises later on. The exercises for extension we will talk about are going to be a supine bridge, bird dog, standing extensions, and wall slides with gluteal setting. Please watch the video below for instructions and guidance. Once again, if these exercises worsen your pain in any capacity (unless the pain moves closer to where it originates in your low back, also known as centralization), please STOP and consult with your physical therapist.
For flexion- based exercise, we also suggest to continue with the stretches we previously discussed in last weeks blog as a general warm- up for more challenging exercises. The exercises we will be reviewing in this week’s video will be dead bug progression, pelvic tilt progression, and clam shells. Please see the note on worsening pain listed above for your review with these exercises as well.
Please remember, these are generally prescribed exercises for low back pain based on directional preference. If you would like specific exercises tailored towards your clinical presentation and impairment, we would love to serve you here at ARC therapy, or consult with another physical therapist in your area. Hope you enjoy these exercises and they help relieve any pain you may be experience. We hope to see you soon at our next post! Oh and if you could help us out, please subscribe to our brand new Youtube channel: ARC THERAPY, where you can view these videos at your own leisure.