One move that can fix your posture and eliminate back pain!

Back pain is the single leading cause of disability worldwide – preventing many people from engaging in work as well as other activities of daily living. It is one of the most common reasons for missing work, and accounts for 264 million lost workdays in one year. It’s estimated that 84% of the population will experience back pain at some point in their lives. It can affect people of all ages and is the 3rd most common reason for visits to the doctor’s office.

Most cases of low back pain are mechanical in nature or non-organic, meaning they are not caused by serious conditions such as inflammatory arthritis, infection, fracture or cancer. Most people will recover from a low back pain incident, however incidents of reoccurrence are very high.

While the causes of low back pain can be multifactorial, there are a lot of anatomical structures that can be implicated or at fault. One of the epidemics we are facing with our society is lack of movement, poor posture and muscle imbalances occurring around the hips and spine.

Today’s technology has reduced our need to do physical labour but in turn has created it’s own problems by enabling us to sit at a desk for many hours at a time, not mention potentially adding a 1 hour+ commute to that job everyday. As a result, this has dramatically reduced our ability to access our power muscles – that being the gluteals and weakening the spinal muscles on the front and backside of our spines.

In this video I am going to take you through a step-by-step process of performing a deadlift, which is the one major exercise that everybody can do. We do it at all ages and do it everyday without even knowing as we eventually pick stuff up off the floor. If it’s performed poorly it can be a major contributor to a back injury, but when done correctly it can fix a lot of the issues from sitting all day.

What was once known as the health lift back in the mid 1800s, the deadlift has been made popular by strong men and power lifters all around the world as an impressive feat of strength and full body exercise. This tremendously effective lift not only builds full body strength but is viewed as a metric for good health, longevity and overall well-being.

This is the first lift we intuitively learn as a child when picking up something heavy off the floor and it should be the last one we give up. You don’t have to go to the gym to do it. We do it every day without knowing. The importance is how we do it that we can get the health benefits from it regardless of the loads we lift.

The compound interest of quality movement everyday will pay off in the end with overall health, longevity and resiliency.