Today, I have a little interview for you.
It is from one of the fitness masterminds that I was at. This was from one of the meetings in Las Vegas.
So here we go…
Rick Kaselj, MS
CLICK HERE to watch the YouTube video interview.
Dennis Heenan: Hey, what’s going on? This is Dennis Heenan from FatBurningNation.com
My good friend, Rick Kaselj, is here today to talk to us about back pain. Now, being an athlete, I went through plenty of back problems in my career, and now that I have transitioned into working on my computer quite a bit, I still experience back pain.
Now, I will have Rick share a few ways you can easily fix that by spending five to ten minutes. So Rick, why don’t you take it away?
1. Look Above and Below Your Back
Rick Kaselj: One thing I will get people to focus on is looking at mobility in your mid-back and your hips. When there is stiffness above and below your back, it puts more stress on your back. If areas above and below are stiff, the place in the middle takes all the stress, and a lot of times, that is the weakest part, the back.
So, we need to loosen up the mid-back. If we can loosen up the hips, we decrease the stress on the back. This allows the back to heal and be less likely to injure or re-injure. I would focus on that with whatever you are doing; your warm-up, cool-down, or stretch routine.
2. Offload The Pressure On Your Back
If you are doing a lot of sitting or driving, try to decompress the spine. Sitting puts 40% more stress on your lower back than standing. So with time, this pressure builds more and more in the back. You want to offload that pressure in the back.
How can you do that?
In a sitting position, reach for the sky. Reach as high as you can for two seconds, and then relax. You can do that sitting, but it’s even better to get out of your chair, stand and reach for the sky and try to offload the spine. If you are in a gym setting and have some pull-up bar, grab the pull-up bar and then sink your hips so you get even more traction. The key is to hold for two seconds.
Dennis Heenan: Two or three seconds.
Rick Kaselj: And start with five repetitions. Don’t go crazy; hang for 15 minutes, or do 50 repetitions. You will risk flaring up. Doing too much of even a good thing can lead to irritation. If it feels good doing five repetitions for 2 or 3 seconds, that is a sign that it’s something that you should incorporate. It’s more important to incorporate that more often throughout your day instead of doing 15 minutes or 15 reps of it all at once. So, those will be the two things I recommend if you have to sit all day.
Dennis Heenan: Now, many of the workouts I have created are super intense and very athletic-based, and often as athletes, we tend to jump into the workouts. We don’t pay attention to the warm-up or the cool-down after the workout.
What would you suggest for warming up or cooling down? Which one is more important? Which one would you emphasize? What can we do about that?
Rick Kaselj: That’s a good question.
Quick Back Warm-Up
I recommend a bodyweight warm-up. It could be bodyweight air squats, push-ups, or plank movements that serve multiple purposes. I put more emphasis on the warm-up and tried to look at it as dynamic.
We want to get our mindset into what we will be doing because we might still be thinking about work. If we do a warm-up, it shifts our focus to the workout to get better results. A good warm-up wakes up the muscles and lubricates the joints. It helps stretch out the muscles dynamically.
If you are doing a circuit 5 or 6 times, you’ll get the hang of it the first time you go through it. You might go through it lightly, focusing on technique and the full range of motion, reviewing how to do the movement fully in your head, and then as you go through the set or the reps, you increase the intensity.
Dennis Heenan: Rick has an incredible product called Fix My Back Pain. I will let him explain a little bit about what it is. This would have been a lifesaver for me when I quit basketball. I probably had 3 or 4 back injuries then. This would have been a huge help for it. So, why don’t you tell us just a little about that?
Fix My Back Pain Program
Rick Kaselj: So what is it? It is the Fix My Back Pain program. It helps you overcome your back pain, especially for someone active. My focus is to get you back to pain-free workouts. A mistake I made when I worked in the clinic was focusing solely on stretching and strengthening. That didn’t work. I needed to set the stage for my client’s back to heal. Now, I do it in three steps.
Step 1 is reshaping the back from a painful back to a pain-free back, focusing on the inside of the joint. So trying to set things internally like focusing on hydration and eating the right foods that help in recovering from back pain. The second thing is reshaping that back from the outside. Doing things on the outside that is going to help it heal and recover. The third is doing injury-specific exercises for back pain. Often, people will have back pain and exercise for that back pain. This doesn’t seem right.
Depending on your type of injury, you need to do some injury-specific exercises. So that’s what Fix My Back Pain is about. The cool thing is you have to plug it into your workout. It’s not going to be an hour or two hours long. You can do Dennis’s program and easily incorporate the Fix My Back Pain program.
Dennis Heenan: That’s a perfect solution! I know I love the saying, get back to the pain-free workout. And I love the sound of that. I know you guys would love the sound of that. And again, with the workouts we go through, it’s anywhere from 20 to 25 minutes, and adding this in would keep them still under 30 minutes, which is what we want to do.
Parting Words
So, this is again Rick Kaselj with Fix My Back Pain. There is a link right below this video where you can get a ton of information about this product. I highly recommend this program, so check it out! So, again this is Dennis Heenan from FatBurningNation.com, and I thank you for watching.
Rick Kaselj: Thank you.
Rick Kaselj, MS
Check out the Low Back Pain Solved program if you want to take charge of your back pain and eliminate it safely,
