Why Do I Have Back Pain If I’m Active and Exercise Regularly? [Video]

Why Do I Have Back Pain Even Though I'm Active and Exercise Regularly? Video Summary

In this discussion, the team at Activ8 Posture addresses a common question: "Why do I have back pain despite being active and exercising regularly?" The answer often lies in poor posture and misalignment, which can cause certain muscles to overcompensate and lead to pain, even during exercise. Just like a car with poor alignment wears out its tires unevenly, the human body suffers when its posture is off, leading to unnecessary strain on the back.

The conversation highlights how even people who regularly exercise might be unknowingly compensating for dysfunctions in their posture, which can manifest as pain during or after physical activity. By working to correct alignment and balance through postural therapy, Activ8 Posture helps clients address the root causes of their discomfort, ensuring the right muscles are activated and the body is properly aligned. 

Realigning the body doesn't just alleviate pain during exercise; it also promotes more efficient movement and can improve everyday activities, like walking or lifting groceries, without the need for constant conscious effort. The team stresses the importance of retraining the body, ensuring that it functions optimally and subconsciously, allowing people to move freely without worrying about injury or discomfort.

This approach empowers individuals to not only continue their active lifestyles but also do so with less pain and greater ease, helping them perform daily activities and exercise with a more balanced, pain-free body.

Why Do I Have Back Pain Even Though I'm Active and Exercise Regularly? Video Transcript

Hi, everyone. Kim from Activ8 Posture. We recently got a question from a person inquiring, “I'm active and I exercise regularly. Why does my back hurt?”

Yeah. That's a great question. And, I mean, that’s an easy one for us from our perspective. Doing postural therapy is to say, yeah, because your posture is off. So I think the car analogy is always a good one with that. So, if you're driving your car and wondering why your tires are wearing out. Well, we gotta look at the alignment, not just replace the tires. So, if your back is hurting, and you're moving, you're getting from point A to point B like you would with a car, and getting it done, but you're having a negative result. So if the tire is wearing out or blowing out eventually, then we've gotta look at the alignment. 

Yeah. And you can break that down - alignment in posture equals form and exercise. If your shoulder is off, even if you like, elevated, if you think you're practicing good form and you think you're getting your shoulders back and you go into a deadlift. But if your shoulder is really elevated, you're already pulling too much on one of your erector muscles, so you're gonna end up hurting your back instead of working your glutes.

So there's all kinds of things like that where just one little area being off can make the wrong muscle fire, which can cause pain for an hour, hours, days after. 

Yeah. And it's tough on personal trainers. Right? Because they're trying to say, “Okay, drop your shoulder. Okay. No. No. Drop your hip. And no, no. No, move over there.” And it's like, yeah, that's it's too late.

So our posture should be subconscious routines. We should be in alignment because our body is using the right muscles and the right neuromuscular pathways and so forth to have our bodies aligned and ready to go. So that's one of the things we work with a lot of personal trainers to, in conjunction with them so they can, what we call, beat up on their clients – push them to their maximum so they're not failing because of pain. And to the people that are out there suffering from pain, when they are active and exercising, you're doing the right thing. The idea of getting 10,000 steps or the idea of going out and exercising, that's awesome. That's great.

And you should be able to do that. And, again, if you are suffering, though, then we gotta just take that step back and set you up better. So let's do the things to remind your body of balance and make sure the right and left sides are doing the right thing or that the shoulder is not up in your ear and helping your hip or or doing some weird compensation patterns. 

When I used to do a run club and lead a run club, one thing we would do was take videos of people as they were running, and people are always like, oh my gosh. I run like that? Or why am I only swinging just my right arm and my left arm is here? And it's like, well, obviously, something is going on with your body that it's not in balance. So, yeah, same thing, even if you are running and working out, are you overworking something? Is that why your back is tired? Is that why it's instead of your hips actually functioning? Is the back doing the work? 

So that's why, you know, coming in doing a session with us, at least you can figure out, alright, my back is compensating for something else in my body that might be underperforming during this sport, during this activity, during this exercise.

Yeah. Even similar to what you mentioned about when you did the run club and people would look back at themselves running and be like, oh my gosh. I have noticed too, especially my more active clients the very first time we take their posture photos because it's always kind of the same thing, you know, I work out all the time, why am I hurting? 

And, of course, we have the whole conversation about dysfunction compensation alignment, but then once they see those misalignments right in their face, all of a sudden it's like, so is that what I'm doing when I'm lifting, or is that what I'm doing when I'm running? And it's like, yeah. That's why we're here. That's why we realign you.

Yeah. And you shouldn't be doing that. I mean, that's not normal function, but that's what we tell people all the time. We have a design, and we you know, certain muscles are supposed to provide leverage or do certain tasks for us. So our world is more dysfunction. So we're dealing with musculoskeletal dysfunction where the body is not doing what it's supposed to do. 

And at the same time, it's like, okay. Well, let's remind it what it's supposed to do. And that makes our job very simple, and our approach very simple in the sense that we're always reminding the body and restoring it to its proper function. And therefore, we're not just trying to make it stronger or just stretch it out or trying to beat up your body or say, oh, your back is weak, so we're just gonna keep pounding on your back.

Well, the mechanism for your back injury could be one of many different things too. So let's say you're walking. If you have a tight hip or tight hips in general, well, you might be hyperextending your low back or causing… that might be your mechanism of injury or mechanism of pain. Whereas someone else who has weak loose hips, well, the back might be tightening up and then the back might be compensating, and so you might have muscles that are tight or tighter and spasming and so forth later because they're doing the job of other muscles that are shut down and not doing theirs.

So that's where, again so just to that point is, we look at the dysfunctions underlying and then the compensations that are wrapped around that. And, you know, as far as our approach then, it is really specific in that sense and individualized to what's what's going on with each person. 

And it is a retraining. One of the… watching their running videos actually reminds me how so many people on their first appointment because we do functional tests with people. And we'll point out, oh, when you pick up your leg, your foot turns in and your knee goes out, which means your hip's stuck in external rotation. And so they just say, oh, okay. I'll just fix it. You know? Well, that doesn't fix the problem. 

Just really focusing on it doesn't make it go away. It's about retraining the muscles, and that's why we're doing these tests to see what is a compensation, what is a dysfunction, and then you really have to work, and it's repetitive. It's like 6 weeks of repeating is when you're gonna start to really, really change the muscle fibers and the muscle memory. And so it's not simply about just looking down and fixing that one thing that you see off.

Right. Not conscious effort. Yeah, the thing I like to say is, we'll help align your body, but then activate the right muscles and then go play. Go do your thing. Don't worry about it.

So, if we think of our ancestors and let's say you run across a saber-toothed tiger, then you don't have time to, okay, hold my core. Okay, make sure my left my left foot's turned in, and then make sure that my shoulder's down and that my head is back and and so forth. No, you're dead. You're eaten already. 

So to be able to just take off and run or do what you need to do, because your body is ready. And that's why doing your exercises, doing your routines daily, as we give them, or as often as it’s possible, then the more you do it, the more your body is ready and in that ready state to do the things that you wanna do and go play. So for me, it's mountain biking, snowboarding, hiking, carrying the kids, playing, tossing them up in the air, doing all these fun things and not having to think about it or to go, okay, hold on. I gotta brace my core so I can lift you. That's not fun.

I think it happens a… I think a lot of clients, what they notice around maybe 5 weeks, will just you know, they have these things that they do, these little tricks to help them carry their groceries up the stairs, and it might be like pulling your stomach in, putting your hands here, and then being really mindful of something. And then 5 weeks after coming to see us, they'll be like, I just walked up my stairs today. I just picked up my bags and walked up my stairs and didn't think.

Actually, I just had a guy, who is an older gentleman, but he's strong, and he lifts weights regularly. And he can go to the gym, and he can lift really heavy weights and do deadlifts and all these complex movements and have no back pain. Every time he carries his laundry upstairs or sweeps his floor, his back hurts pretty bad. And so he is a good example of somebody who is aware and was fixing things when he was working out, but then he wasn't really fixing them. He wasn't really retraining his shoulders.

He was just thinking about it when he was working out. So anytime he swept, of course, he's sweeping and he's forward and he's pulling on his back. And he called 2 days later. We just had one session. He called. He's like, I swept my floor. I just swept my floor today, and it was amazing. And so it just makes life better when everything runs smoothly.

 And sometimes even if you're not somebody that is in constant, constant pain, man, you don't know what is missing until you really get yourself realigned and just everything firing at the right time, then you really feel great all the time. 

Kind of carrying on that, I have a client saying she came and seen for almost 2 years now because of back pain and just was moving very gingerly and was like, let me hold on to the wall, hold on to the chair, and then sit down very slowly, and then just kind of from this level 7 pain and slowly bringing it down, bringing it down.

And I remember during Christmas, she started walking last year. I was like, you need to move. I was like, do your routine, then walk. I was like, even if it's 5 minutes, walk. Let your body get used to this is how we're supposed to move in this new position.

And during Christmas, she was doing her walk and she saw a really neat decoration and she took her phone out and then she squatted down on the floor and put one knee down and took a picture of this thing and then stood up and then started walking. And then after 5 minutes, she was like, wait a minute. I just got down on the floor and didn't think about it. No conscious effort. Her body had just gotten a much better position from when we first started working.

It was funny because the next time she saw me, she told me, I got on the floor. She was, I didn't even know until 5 minutes later, and then she said, I had to look through my phone to make sure, did I really do that or did I dream that? She was like, I was in no pain, and it's funny because even when she's here in the clinic with me, she'll do something, like, she'll be like, oh, I saw this thing on YouTube and I tried doing it. And I was like, okay. Well, have you done it?

She's like, yeah, I did it. And she showed me, and I was like, okay. You're in a very low lunge and you're doing a reach up and then you're reaching under. And in my head, I'm… I don't know if you know that this is kind of incredible what you're doing where before she was just like, let me hold on to a chair and sit down. And when she stood up, I was like, I don't know if you know that, but that's amazing for your body and your back and what you were doing.

I didn't wanna say anything while you were doing it to not freak you out that this is actually a big deal. But, yeah, it was all just she just did it. Just not, like Paul was saying, let me hold my core. Let me make sure my quads are fired up. Let me do this. Hopefully with the correct exercises, training, and activation, you can get your body posture, skeletal system, muscles all working as optimal as possible that it's all just unconscious effort. 

Yeah. It's a good reminder. You're not broken and sometimes your body just needs a nudge in the right direction and to be reminded of how it's supposed to work and all the wonderful things it can do.

Are You Tire of Dealing with Back Pain Despite Staying Active and Doing Everything Right?

Don’t let sneaky poor posture hold you back any longer. At Activ8 Posture, we specialize in uncovering the hidden imbalances that may be causing your discomfort.

Schedule your FREE Consultation & Posture Assessment today, and let us help you realign your body, eliminate pain, and get back to doing what you love without limitations. Your path to a pain-free, active life starts here – take the first step now!