Training with Back Pain: Spare the Spine

This is Al. He’s an older fella who maintains a pretty serious surfing & prone paddle boarding schedule that has him in a different country every two months to challenge their waves. This past January he threw out his back surfing which put him up for 3 weeks. He’s made it a point to make sure it doesn’t happen again. His physical therapist & I have been working along side each other for over 3 months. The results have been awesome. # Using manual work, mobilizations, & “corrective” exercise she works on restoring extension and internal rotation of his left hip along with external rotation of his right shoulder. On the days Al’s not with her I do my part to put strength on top of his solid movement patterns while using regressions & self limiting exercises to back up the physical therapists work & ensuring to NOT overload his poor movement patterns. We even went as far to change the way he sets up on the board & the position he sleeps in at night which were both exasturbating the problem. # He’s lost 20 lbs, surfing better than ever, and feeling great. Will he ever hurt his back again? That’s impossible to know. Nothing’s guaranteed. What I can tell you is that with hard work (kudos to Al for putting in the time) and a team effort with open communication where we complement each other’s work, well, the results speak for themselves. # @movementasmedicine @bodybyboyle @collectmomentsnotthingz @functionalmvmt #teameffort #egosaside #trainingequalsrehab #movementsnotmuscles #trainwhatyoucan #sparethespine

A photo posted by Movement As Medicine (@movementasmedicine) on Jun 29, 2015 at 5:35pm PDT