Another example is how one part of our spine can cause pain in another. Today's topic covers how the thoracic spine effects the lumbar spine.
Since having the pleasure on injuring my lumbar spine around 5 years ago, I have learned a lot about how the whole spine effects the lumbar region. If you only deal with the lumbar region, you might not be dealing with the cause of your pain.
In previous post I have talked about how the lumbar spine should be stable and the thoracic spine more mobile. If you lose mobility in the thoracic spine your body might compensate by moving through the lumbar spine. Sometimes you won't know it. Sometimes you might wish it hadn't. If your lumbar spine decides to move too much you might get to experience the pleasure of back spasms. Back spams are our bodies way of controlling the spine if it tries to move too much.
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| Golfer's know they should rotate their thoracic spines. |
Rotation:
Our lumbar vertebrae are only suppose to rotate around 3 degrees each while our thoracic vertebrae are able to rotate up to 8 degrees each. This might help convince you that you should learn how to rotate through the thoracic vertebrae instead of the lumbar vertebrae.
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| One of my favorite ways to work on thoracic extension |
Extension:
Another dysfunction in the thoracic spine that can lead to lumbar pain is a lack of extension in the thoracic spine. If you use the lumbar spine to hyper-extend instead of extending in the thoracic spine, that can lead to pain. One the the best ways to make sure you don't hyper-extend the lumbar spine is by keeping the abdominal muscles tight.
One of the best exercises to teach you how to extend the thoracic spine is the overhead squat. A broom stick can be used to teach the proper technique.
| If I had only learned how to overhead squat at her age. |
Learning how to rotate and extend more though the thoracic spine will make thing a lot easier for your lumbar spine.
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