Back Pain Can’t Stand Up Straight

Can't stand up straight because of back pain?

What is causing my back pain and why can’t I stand up after sitting? 

Do you have pain in your back that is preventing you from standing up straight? 

Are you having difficulties getting up from your work chair after a day at the home office or office?

Trouble with getting in & out of the car because of back pain? 

By the end of this video you will you will know why you are having trouble standing after work or driving… and know the essential exercise/stretch combination to do at home to help.… 

I am Stephen Dunn, Holistic Physical Therapist and we wrote a book on back pain after helping thousands of patients at our studio in Austin, CORE Therapy and Pilates. 

Why can’t I stand up straight? 

When we sit our hip flexors get tight, the psoas and iliacus. When our back is injured from poor mechanics with lifting or sitting in poor posture for years, the hip flexors will go into spasm to try and help out… 

They are compensating but not really helping. They get tighter and tighter when we sit and then we go to stand up and they do not have the flexibility to allow it. This causes the back to sway or present with an excessive lumbar lordosis.

We see this all the time at CORE. Now lets talk about how to help it! We are going to stretch the hip flexor with kneeling on one leg and having the other leg in front with the knee bent to 90*.

Now shift your weight forward onto the front leg and this is a hip flexor stretch… but this can be improve significantly with a simple abdominal contraction. Try the same stretch but this time tighten your deep abdominal by pulling your belly button to the spine as you perform the stretch. 

This will limit how far you can stretch out but the stretch will be specific to the correct spot and be much more effective than doing this stretch without the abdominal contraction.