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What is the Relationship between Core Strength and Back Pain?

Blog, / By Shi Qi Yap

If you’re suffer from back pain, you must have heard before that strengthening your core muscles can help you get some relief. But what is the relationship between core muscle strength and your back pain?

In today’s blog, we are going to discuss the relationship between core muscle strength and back pain and teach you some simple exercises to improve your core strength.

What are the Core Muscles?

  1. Rectus abdominis: Front abdominal muscles.
  2. Internal & external obliques: Side of your trunk muscles
  3. Erector spinae, multifidus and Quadratus Lumborum: Muscle located between your spine bone and run along your spine
  4. & 5. Gluteus muscle: Buttock muscle

Your core also includes transverse abdominis, hip muscle, diaphragm, and pelvic floor muscles.

What is the Relationship between Core Strength and Back Pain?

  • Without enough strength of your core muscles, your body will rely more on passive structures for stability, including spinal bone, ligaments (the tissue that connects bone to bone) or discs which lie between the spinal bones. This can cause pain.
  • When the core muscles function normally, they can protect the spine by maintaining segmental stability and reducing stress impacting the spinal bones and intervertebral discs, hence, the core muscles are also called “the natural brace” in humans.

Exercises that Help to Improve your Core Strength

  1. Plank
  2. Side plank
  3. Bird dog
  4. Cat and camel
  5. Dead bug
  6. Crunches
  7. Bridges

If you’ve been tried these exercises out, but your back pain still persisted, we recommend seeing a physiotherapist as they will determine the root cause of your condition and treat you accordingly. If you have any more questions or would like our physiotherapists to assess or treat your problem, feel free to drop us a question or talk to us. Do check out our Instagram page too.

Yap Shi Qi

Rehab Therapist

Sources

  • Bone, M. and J. T. (2020, September 22). Why a strong core can help reduce low back pain. Cleveland Clinic. from https://health.clevelandclinic.org/strong-core-best-guard-back-pain/.
  • Chang, W.-D., Lin, H.-Y., & Lai, P.-T. (2015, March). Core strength training for patients with chronic low back pain. Journal of physical therapy science. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4395677/. When the core muscles function normally, they can maintain segmental stability, protect the spine, and reduce stress impacting the lumbar vertebrae and intervertebral discs11); hence, the core muscles are also called “the natural brace” in humans10).
  • Keys, G. (n.d.). Building core strength to reduce back pain – spineuniverse. Retrieved from https://www.spineuniverse.com/wellness/exercise/building-core-strength-reduce-back-pain.
  • Eyers, C. (2017). Living with back pain? 5 core exercises you need. Henry Ford LiveWell. Retrieved from https://www.henryford.com/blog/2017/02/back-pain-core-exercises.
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