Stretches for a tight lower back are typically the first thing someone tries when experiencing tightness or pain. But this is doing more harm than good!
Hello and welcome. Coach E here from Precision Movement. You’re here because you suffer from a tight lower back. If you go and search for “lower back exercises,” inevitably, you’ll find a lot of videos and articles promoting various stretches, whether it’s touching your toes, twisting around, or side bending. There are lots of different stretches for those tight muscles.
Unfortunately, this is one of the issues with search engines. Many times, creators create content for things people are searching for, so people think, “I got to stretch my tight lower back.” But this isn’t what you need.
In this article, I’m going to teach you why that is and what you should do instead to relieve that stiffness and tightness in the low back.
I won’t be showing you any exercises in this article, but I will link you to further resources and other articles at the end to help you relieve that tightness in your lower back right now.
Let’s get right into it.
Why Do We Get Tight Muscles?
Why do these erector spine muscles, which run along either side of your lower back, or even muscles around the hips, get tight?
Well, it starts with a P.
If you said “protection,” you win the grand prize!
The muscles get tight for protection. Your brain sees something going wrong in your lower back, lumbar spine, or SI joint, and it doesn’t want anything to get worse.
It tightens up the muscles because that tightness prevents movement. If it prevents movement, you won’t do anything that could further damage those already damaged or irritated tissues.
This is a very, very simple and logical concept, but it’s one that people often forget about when they’re stretching whenever they feel tight.
2 Main Reasons to Stop Doing Stretches for a Tight Lower Back
What is stretching doing?
Stretching is basically picking a scab. This is the perfect analogy.
Everybody knows that when you get cut, you get a little scab. And if you’ve got kids, you have to tell them to stop picking at it, or it’s not going to heal.
The scab protects the wound from infection and allows the area to heal. It allows the cells to regrow in the broken area, allowing the tissue to heal.
The same thing happens when you damage tissue, whether it’s a ligament, a disc, a muscle, or even an irritation of joints.
Let’s get an example of a disc.
Say you’ve got a lateral disc herniation. Your muscles get tight in response to that damaged tissue.
You’re thinking, “Oh. OK. I’m going to do what I think I should be doing here because my muscles are tight. I’m going to stretch and do side bend and go back and forth for 30 seconds and just kind of pull on it. Maybe get a little twisting going on.”
You can see how that’s irritating the area. We’re pulling on it, tugging on it, and squeezing it—things that we shouldn’t be doing to a wound.
That’s exactly what stretching is doing. It’s picking a scab.
It’s clear now that tightness protects damaged tissue. Stretching counters what your brain is doing to help you survive and prevent further damage to your spine.
Stretching can even prolong the tightness. You might get some acute temporary relief, but that will prolong the issue and make it worse.
So what should you do instead?
Key 1 – Neutral Spine
Three words here: maintain a neutral spine.
I hope you’ve heard about this, but a neutral spine is really important for allowing those tissues to heal.
Maintaining a neutral spine can be achieved through a number of different methods, and you have to consider a number of different factors.
First, your general standing posture. Do you slouch? Do your hips stick out behind you or tuck under?
Here’s a quick way to fix poor posture in five minutes a day.
Second, your sitting posture. How are you sitting?
If you’ve got issues in the posterior aspect of your spine, like your posterior disc, and you’re sitting in a slumped posture with your tail tucked under, that’s causing further stress on that tissue. It’s something called tissue creep. Because you’re just sitting there for maybe hours, that will prolong your pain.
Now, those are the most static postural positions. What about if you have to move?
Well, if you have to move, you’ve got to use other areas to maintain a neutral spine.
Maintaining a neutral spine while moving requires good hip mobility, especially if you’re bending over. You’ve got to learn how to move using your hips, not rounding your back, and not tucking your pelvis under.
For another example, if I’m lifting my leg to go upstairs but I’m leaning forward to get it up there because I’ve never worked my hip flexors and don’t have a good hip flexion range of motion, that’s going to put stress on the spine.
Hip mobility is essential, and maintaining a neutral spine is key.
Key 2 – Core Stabilizers
The last key point is activating your core stabilizers. These are the muscles in and around the abdominals, spine, hips, and pelvis.
Some of the most important muscles for this are the multifidus muscles. These muscles span two or three vertebrae up either side of the spine. They’re considered deep muscles. They’re right on the spine, and they’re really important for maintaining that stability between each vertebral segment.
Opposite to that is the psoas on the front side of the spine. The psoas is more focused on the lumbar spine, whereas the multifidus goes all the way up. Classically, we think of it as a hip flexor, but it is really, really critical for maintaining that lumbar stability.
Deep muscles run along the front and back of the spine. If they’re working well, they keep the spine nice and stable.
We’ve got more superficial muscles like the abdominal muscles, the rectus abdominis, and the transverse abdominis, which are a little deeper. We’ve got the obliques, which are a little deeper.
They’re all important as well, but these deep muscles, multifidus and the psoas, are really critical to keeping the lumbar spine stable.
These are the reasons why you’ve got to stop stretching your tight lower back.
The tightness is a good thing. It protects that damaged area. Stretching will counteract the good thing, the protection that you need so that those tissues heal.
If you want to heal, you must learn how to maintain a neutral spine and activate your core stabilizers, especially the deep core stabilizers.
I’ve tried chiropractor, yoga, or stretching in the past and that didn’t work. This program is about “re-learning” how to activate and strengthen sleepy muscles. It took a few months to totally resolve the lower back pain but it was definitely with the effort. I’d recommend Low Back Pain Solution to anyone experiencing low back discomfort. It was a game-changer for me.” – Eric“After over two decades as a very competitive Ironman triathlete, I was experiencing severe lower back pain and muscle spasms when riding a bicycle for more than 30 minutes.
What Exercises for Lower Back Pain and Stiffness Should You Do?
Like I said earlier, I’m not showing any exercises in this video today.
I just wanted you to understand why you’ve got to stop stretching your tight lower back or even other muscles and other areas that get tight. Stop stretching them as a response to acute tightness because that’s doing more damage than good.
I’ve got a couple of resources for you.
First, get these explanations in video form with a spine model to really show what you’re doing to your poor discs when you stretch. Watch STOP Stretching Your Tight Lower Back (Follow These 2 Keys Instead) on YouTube.
4 Exercises for Lower Back Stiffness—Instant Relief! If you’re looking for instant relief, try these easy exercises instead of stretching.
The 5 Best At-Home Exercises for Low Back Pain. For exercises to couple with your newfound knowledge of why stretching can make things worse for a stiff/painful lower back, read this article to get the exercises we recommend.
If you want to go deep with us, get our Low Back Pain Solution because this will progress you through multiple phases over 30 or 40 exercises in an easy-to-follow fashion that takes 20 minutes a day. It’s very, very doable.
