Breathing and Stability in Low Back Pain

How to incorporate breathing for low back pain relief

If you have been experiencing low back pain and have been told to strengthen you core then you are not alone. However, people who recommend this often fail to give advice on how to properly achieve it. It can be super frustrating to be told advice and not strategies on how to implement the advice. 

Immediately starting to do core exercises or pilates is a great start to alleviate pain but properly learning how to brace your core during those movements is key. The best way to stabilize the low back is actually by creating pressure in the abdomen with your breath. By creating that pressure in your abdomen you can ‘lock’ your lumbar spine in place allowing it to maintain a neutral position.

If you are a chest breather you constantly have to lift up your rib cage up to breath and lose a lot of the stability in the low back. You want to keep your rib cage and pelvis stacked on top of each other which becomes difficult to do when you are inhaling into your chest. 

Breathing down into the abdomen while maintaining a core brace allows you to maintain your lumbar stability while lifting or doing a core exercise. This can be helpful for people in low back pain who are trying to manage their symptoms and get stronger so they can tolerate more load. 

So if you have been dealing with back pain and find your exercises have not been helpful, it may be a good idea to scale back the intensity and make sure you are breathing into not just your stomach, but also into the low back and sides. Keeping the core braced during your exercises may be the missing piece to your recovery. If you want more help on learning how to achieve this reach out and we can work together!