Low Back Traction Exercises
Research has shown that tractioning your low back can be a safe and effective way to relieve low back pain, particularly if you have an intervertebral disc injury, either with or without sciatica. Traction is also useful for alleviating low back pain from other causes like stenosis and irritated spinal joints and muscles. If you want to read more about traction, I discuss it in a blog here.
Low Back Traction Exercises
Just allowing yourself to hang by your arms from an overhead bar is a safe and effective method of stretching out your lower back. Please note, whilst taking all your weight on your arms is great, you don’t need to have your feet completely off the floor to get some benefit from this exercise, even just taking a bit of your weight through your arms will generate some useful traction. If you see the photo below, you can see that it’s fine to have your feet in contact with the floor to control the exercise and keep it safe.
You don’t need to have your feet off the floor to benefit from hanging.
Doing this for a few seconds (the longer the better) will help to decompress the spaces where your nerves emerge from the spine. It will also relieve the pressure on your intervertebral discs. You can repeat this twice a day, or as many times as you feel is helping.
This method is very safe and can help with sciatica-type symptoms and irritated spinal joints. The downside is that it only really suits people who have no problems with their shoulders and have a suitable place to dangle from. For those people that don’t have anywhere suitable at home, most parks have some kind of climbing frame that can be utilised.
For people who have shoulder issues which stop them from hanging from a bar, this is an alternative method of getting some gentle traction through their backs. This video shows someone using the armrest of a sofa, but as long as you have enough cushioning under your tummy (like a pillow) then you can also try this over the back of a chair. The key is to play around with the position until it feels like your low back is getting a nice stretch.
Low back traction exercise for people who can’t hang due to shoulder problems.
For those people who have someone who can help them, and they are not in too much pain, this is a safe and gentle partner-assisted low back stretch which you can also try.
Partner-assisted low back traction exercise.
Like always, if you are unsure about how to perform any of these exercises , or you try them and they cause you pain or discomfort then please don’t do them.
If you are looking for an East Grinstead Osteopath please get in touch with:
Cliff Russell, Registered Osteopath
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