Low back pain and swimming

Probably a cmobonation of both the increase in leg work and yoru distance. Give it a another few workouts and see if it gets better. IN the meantime SSSTTTRREEETTTCCCHH

As a swimmer with a "bad back", my discomfort during & after the swim is significantly reduced by focusing on pelvic tilt, even when swimming. It seems natural that your body's bouyancy should suffice to keep your spine in line, but I find that unless I focus on bringing my pelvis up towards my belly button and engaging my abs, I endup with a hyperlordosis (swayback), which irritates my low back and my sciatic nerve. Your body rotation should come not just from your "hips", but your entire abdominal core from your ribcage to your pelvis (my own opinion, based on what I know of anatomy). Find an anatomy book and look at the attachments of the core muscles from your ribcage to your pelvis, including abdominus rectus, and the two layers of obliques. Maybe that visual will help.

Second tip: Ala Total Immersion, focus on "pressing your buoy". By pushing your buoyant chest down into the water, your hips will pop up, also decreasing the lower back curvature.

In order for one set of muscles to contract, the opposing set has to relax. If you engage your abs and push your chest down, your lower back muscles MUST relax. On many swims, these are the only two focuses that I concentrate on in order to eliminate back pain.

Edited by AdventureBear 2005-08-07 2:51 PM

Strething is the key, no doubt about it. Sounds like a mild muscle sprain. I'll tell you what I am now an advocate of chiropratic care. It has really helped my sore lower back. Lifting people from basements and other weird places at work puts alot of stress on it, so now it is a priority of mine.

Thanks for the advice! I will continue to stretch. I work on "pushing the buouy" when I swim but will focus more on tilting that pelvis.

Thanks again!

Your welcome and remember ibuprofen will help in the meantime.

also don't forget to work the abs, if you have week abs, especially when it comes to swimming, will lead to back problems, i hurt my lower back in high school while swimming, took four years to get it back into working pain free, be careful about swimming and exercise through the pain, i ended up having major scartissue build up. Use an exercise ball to help stretch, lay over it and curl up, it helps stretch the lower, also make sure you stretch out your butt muslces, a lot of time this is over looked, but if you have a tight butt your more than likely going to experience low back pain, and if you have tight hamstrings that will lead to a tight or pulled back, so be sure to stretch the hamstrings. Ice and heat will also help, ice after a work out, heat up before. Hope all this helps, i know back problems hurt, i've been there and done that.
Take care,
Kelly in Tampa

Look at this site. www.smiweb.org Look at they're injury prevention guides. I always use to get lower back pain until I incoporated some of their exercises into my routine. Look at the guide on core exercises.

Mike