Back Pain: Causes and Remedies

Back strains are common and costly injuries that can occur on the job. Strains are when muscles, tendons, or other soft tissues are damaged or torn. These injuries primarily occur due to 3 things:

1. Heavy Lifting: It is extremely important to use your legs to lift. Bend at the knees instead of the hips and keep your chest up. Many injuries that occur to the back while lifting something heavy is due to a rounded spine that is not in a neutral position.
2. Sudden or Jerky Movements: These are often movements that your body cannot anticipate and or is not used to doing. Stretching and stability exercises can help prepare the body for the unknown and increase your own body awareness. Many strains occur due to the fact the body is unexpectedly being pushed beyond its normal limits, resulting in a muscular strain.
3. Repetitive Motions: These are movements that are done more than once in a short window of time. Injuries associated with repetitive motions occur due to muscular fatigue. When a muscle becomes fatigued and overworked it is more susceptible to being damaged.

Injuries such as these can often keep you from working for extended periods of time or can impede productivity. Doing daily stretching and exercising allows the body to better handle the daily physical demands placed upon it. This significantly decreases the risk of experiencing a sudden injury. SimpleTherapy has low-impact stretches and exercises to reinforce proper movement patterns and mitigate negative effects associated with similar tasks as the ones highlighted above!