Why Moving More Matters: Protecting Your Back with Strong Muscles

Weak stabilizer muscles from not moving enough can lead to more lower back issues, especially as we grow up. That’s why it’s super important for us to keep playing and moving every day to keep our muscles strong and our backs healthy! #healthy815 #palmerproud #icachiropractor

www.rockforddc.com

Transcript

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Hello, Dr. Brant Hulsebus here, and welcome to another edition of Ask the Chiropractor. Ask the Chiropractor is my little podcast that I do when someone has a question about chiropractic or chiropractic care, I try to answer. I'm a chiropractor here in Rockford, Illinois. I'm a proud graduate of Palmer College of Chiropractic, and I'm happy to be the team chiropractor of the Rockford Icehogs. Let's dive into it. Hi there. So I was recently asked by a patient who was in my office, who noticed there was a lot of young athletes coming in. And they were curious why so many young athletes. Now let me define young athlete. We're talking about high school freshmen, sophomores, and juniors, and a couple of local college kids coming in. They wanted to know why so many of these young athletes were getting adjusted, why they have to be there so much, because if you figured a young athlete would be a very healthy, strong person, they probably don't have a lot of problems. And it's just the opposite. Now, I'll say about 20 years ago it wasn't so much like this, but today it really is. And so I sat down with some of my friends over at Movement Fitness and I was having a conversation about this. Why are we seeing so many young people with instability in their lower back? What do we know about the lower back? We know that physical therapy really doesn't help it unless your physical therapist focuses on stability exercises. There was recently a study that showed that people who had back surgery, they took them through a gambit of tests before and after back surgery, asking which one of you actually felt better after your surgery. And they found the ones who had weak stability muscles before surgery, had surgery, and then had pain. The right PT, making their stability muscles stronger after the physical therapy, did great. And the ones with weak stability muscles before and after did awful. And they taught them how to do stability exercises, and those people actually improved, even post surgery. So we know stability exercises are huge. So why do kids today have bad stability muscles? In my youth, I used to ride my bike everywhere. I would ride my bike to the mall from where I lived. I'd ride my bike to the mini pudding place where I lived. I yanked my bike everywhere. And when I wasn't on my bike, I was on my skateboard. And when I wasn't on my skateboard, I had a scooter. Matter of fact, I was on my skateboard so much, we used to have a half pipe in our front yard. It was about 20 feet long and 10 feet tall. So we were always testing our balance, testing our stability. We were climbing up trees, having tree houses. We were doing all this fun stuff. But today I want to let my kids ride their bikes half the places I rode my bikes. Not because they're not capable of riding their bike, because I don't trust something bad won't happen to them compared to when I grew up. So today kids don't get to ride bikes and go explore things like we did because The world's changed, right? We're not going to let our kids ride from neighborhood to neighborhood. We wouldn't even let our kids, I couldn't, I don't live that far from where I grew up. I couldn't imagine my kids today taking their bikes and doing the things I did. Not only that, but where are they going to go? Are they going to go to the mall? Have you been to a mall lately? There's no reason to go to a mall, unfortunately. It's not like they even have the destination to go to the places we went. The whole idea of riding the bikes, the kids don't do that anymore. And so they lose all that stability. They lose all that growth and development that we had going on bikes everywhere. When I rode my bike to the corner where there was a big pond, I had a five gallon bucket, a tackle box, and a fishing pole trying to keep all that balanced. That was great stability exercises. The other problem I feel today is that kids only do one sport. I played football. And if I wanted to play defense on football, I had to wrestle. Because our defensive coordinator was also the wrestling coach. And you didn't have to, but it sure did help to be in the wrestling team. But there's different muscles and different things you use in wrestling versus football. Today's kids, more and more, are just doing a sport. And they're investing all their time and energy into one sport. And so we even lose that cross training that we would normally get in the old days. I When football practice was over and wrestling practice started, I quickly learned I really miss football practice because wrestling practice was awful. Maybe because I was going against my best friend's older brother every day because we were in the same weight class. I don't know. But man, I hated wrestling practice. I love football practice. So there's just a difference in the way you move, you bend, you twist. Because in football, you're not rolling around the ground with somebody like you are wrestling. And in wrestling, you're not running long distances. So it's just totally different types of practice. And again, you throw another sport in, like baseball, you have a whole different kind of practice again. The idea that kids today are only playing one sport really suffers them. So now we have these kids that come in here and they don't have any balance. I love having the young kids come in. One of the first tests we do is we have them stand on one foot. And I want to see me, being almost 50 years old, who could do it longer, me or them. And I tell you what, I win more times than I lose because they don't have the balance anymore. And without the balance, we don't have the stability muscles. Without the stability muscles, we don't have the way to keep the back strong. So I have all these volleyball players, football players basketball players, especially those that are on a hard surface like the volleyball and the basketball players, they're coming here all the time complaining about their lower back pain and how their lower back hurts because they just lack all the stability. I have other kids that come in here, and it's apparent to me they don't play any sports at all, or ride their bikes at all, and they just sit around all day, and they don't have any stability at all. They can't last at all in that balance test at all. So my balance test is real simple. They look at me, I look at them, and we pick a foot, and we stand on it, and we see who can stand the longest. And whoever falls over first they're the loser. And I can tell you, I beat them all the time, and they're, these kids are between the ages of 14 and 18. Like I said, I'm almost 50. I shouldn't be doing this good against them, but I'm, I win more than I lose, like I said before. So they lack these stability muscles from the inability to do stuff outside. And then they also only play one sport and they only develop one way. So what can we do about it? Now, it's great to point out the problems, but what can we do about it? The first thing is if we're not going to go out and ride our bikes and do all the stuff I talked about, then we got to make it up in other ways. One of the ways I like to have them is a wobble board. Or one of those BOSU balls. B O S A, excuse me, B O S U BOSU balls. And flip it upside down. And get them on an unstable surface. I have a lot of my athletes stand on the wobble board, the upside down BOSU ball, and play their sport. My basketball players will have them on the Insta, insta, instable platform shooting free throws. And we'll change the hoop. If that's four inches tall, the wobble board will make the hoop four inches taller. Therefore, they're still shooting at a ten foot hoop. If you can make free throws while standing on a wobble board, imagine how strong you would be during a game if somebody bumped you or came into you. If you're a volleyball player, just stand on a wobble board and bounce the ball off the wall. If you're playing a sport that you just can't do that with, like wrestling, then what you do is you just put the wobble board, have them stand on it and bounce a ball off a wall or with a friend back and forth. Now we're getting the stability exercises. Also, incorporate it into your workout. I have the kids ditch the weights for a set of squats. I just have them stand on the wobble board. You can do your weights too, but give me a couple of sets with no weights on the unstaple surface. So they cross their arms and they do squats on that. And I always say by the sixth one you got the shaking bait going on. Your ladies are all over the place wobbling because of how challenging it is. I also have new push ups on it. I have new spider mans on it. They're unstable underneath them and they're doing the spider mans on it. You can go to a gym and work with some of my friends at Movement Fitness. Where they do all kinds of exercises where you're challenging your stability the entire time. You don't even know they're doing it. We do a lot of single leg left presses. Where you're on one foot the whole time trying to keep your balance. So you gotta find ways to make it up. You have to. And not only that's going to last you a whole life. Because if you're having instability in your spine at 13 or 14, It's only going to get better as you get older and do less. It's only going to get worse. So getting these things and making these things up is crucial. Or maybe just simply like in our town we have some trampoline parks they can go play at. They have obstacle courses. They have ninja courses and stuff like that. Get those kids in those places. Get them challenging those things. And not only that, but get them playing another sport. Even just for fun with other kids, find another sport to play pickleball could be something you can just pick up. You don't have to do dedicate a whole season to, you could join a league somewhere where you're just going to play a game a couple nights a week. You can organize a whole bunch of other kids from the team to get together and do a different night. I know like the ice hogs, the hockey team here in town, they'll go out and play different sports just for fun as a group. So get that group of kids together. I know you all got Facebook, chat lines, right? Groups that y'all, the parents get together and talk about things. Organize a night when they start playing other sports and doing other things. It's a great way to get in the cross train a little bit without interfering with the season of what they're trying to do. I understand that college is expensive. I understand you're trying to get a scholarship to pay for school. I get that, but there's ways to have still fun events. Even if it's just a swim night, right? Everybody goes swimming and try to organize, like the first, Friday of every month we go swimming. The first Tuesday of the second Tuesday of every month we go play pickleball. Just something like that. Trying to incorporate more of those activities in there. Sum it up. Healthy stability muscles get better. So to stabilize these muscles, you want to get a wobble board and do some activities on the wobble board. Or you want to go to a place like I talked about here in Rockford. I sent you over to Movement Fitness. And they have you do some balance stability exercises. Incorporate into your workout or the game you're playing with them. So you don't even know you're doing it. Play another sport. Get another sport in there involved. Even if it's just a recreational sport for fun, not a whole league. Try to get others to join you and do it too. It's good for camaraderie, good for everything. So there you have it. Why do so many young people have these injuries? I love to be able to hear to help them, but I'm sad that they're in here every week with the same issue. This is how we make them stronger and better. And remember, if you think your child's having these issues, go see a chiropractor. They're the only ones trained to tell you what's going on with the hip instability and stabilization muscles. We're the only ones that get that training and we know how to incorporate it when it's time to bring in a strength conditioning coach, when it's time to bring in physical therapy. We're well trained on how to do that. So let's take a chiropractor first. And remember if you have a question about chiropractic or chiropractic care, always ask a chiropractor. We're the only ones that really study chiropractic. We're the only ones that really know the answer. All right everybody, if you have a question for me, go to my website. You'll see links below to everything. Take care and thanks for tuning in.