Motherhood and lower back pain

the most common cause, and what to do about it.

Over my career as a personal trainer, I coached hundred of women, 98% of those have been mums. All from different stages, but a lot of them new 1st time mums, or 2nr or 3rd time mums.

I have had countless conversations with these amazing women about how they have lower back pain. Not like really really bad back pain, but enough to be annoying and make you feel limited in your ability and feel weak.

The majority of these cases all have the same cause and can usually be alleviated with the same approach. Obviously, everyone is different and this wont work for all people, but I have definitely seen a trend and recommended things and seen improvements in my clients lower back pain.

Firstly lets address the cause. Unfortunately, a big majority of it is unavoidable. Firstly during pregnancy as your baby grows, your tummy get bigger and bigger and bigger and you end up losing a fiar amount of core strength. Also, due to getting larger and heavier, feeling tired and the other tough things that go with pregnancy, the majority of women end up sitting more.

So then, you give birth, woohoo, baby is out, great stuff. Now you have this little person to look after who is relying on you to provide them with literally everything!!!! WTF, mental. You just can’t be prepared for that shit, but anyway. Core strength has disappeared somewhat, you have this little person attached to you, you’re sitting and breastfeeding for literally hours and hours a day. Then you might have to rock the baby to sleep, or maybe you go for a walk, followed by a coffee. Then maybe it’s time for another feed, pop the TV on or scroll social media and sit there for another hour.

Anyway, the point i’m

getting at is that you’re sitting. A lot. There’s a whole lot of sitting. So, this is what happens when you sit a lot, and i’m just saying this is pretty unavoidable so don’t beat yourself up, but when we sit that much, and our core strength has dissipated, our glutes lose strength too and stop working as well, and we shorted our hip flexor muscles.

Also we are in a compromised position, feeding our little person all the time so we have rounded shoulder and pretty shit posture. Great right. Anywho, our tightened hip flexors, usually end up causing our pelvis to tilt anterior, causing our bum to stick out and create an over arching through our lower back and voila, excess load through out lower back and we end up with pain and discomfort.

Awesome, so now we know that, let’s talk about some things we can do to fix it and hopefully reduce this pain. Note, it will require you doing some work.

The 2 best stretches you can do as a mum (or pretty much anyone) are hip flexor stretches and shoulder stretches.

But let’s tackle the hip as this is more directly related to our back pain. We need to stretch out this overly tight muscle so that it stops pulling our pelvis into a compromised position. Hip flexor stretches are pretty simple and I promise if you did it for 2 mins a day each side, i’m sure you would see a dramatic reduction in pain even after a week.

Then, to add to this, we need to build up strength in our glutes and core, which again can be done daily easily at home, or go to the gym, or any good bootcamp or pt should be programming this into your session. Glute bridges, clams, crab walks, toe reaches and planks are all great and easy places to start. Start stretching your shoulders with a wall stretch and you’re going to be in a much much better place and I would think living with a lot less lower back pain.

The worst thing you can do is become more inactive, it’s not going to get you anywhere. Walk where you can and move where you can, yoga, pilates, weights and boxing. They’re all going to help you feel much better in your body after the amazing thing it’s done, but also the changes that come afterwards.

Anyway, I hope this is helpful and you can implement some of the info here and live with less back pain.

Lawrence x