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Back Pain Exercises – Which Other Muscles Play a Role?

There are many muscles that can contribute to spine stability but some are less well known compared to the anterior abdominal wall, and the posterior group of muscles in the back. There are a number of muscles that are unique in contributing to spine health, and stability, as well as muscles that are more familiar to us which are not often considered when discussing spinal stability. So which muscles are they, and what role do they play?

Back Pain Exercises – Which Other Muscles Play a Role?

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Welcome to the Back Pain Solutions Podcast – Back Pain Exercises. Which Other Muscles Play a Role?

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Introducing Back Pain Exercises – Which Other Muscles Play a Role?

Often in the gym setting we see people training for appearance and not really for health. When creating a lower back pain workout plan the key is it understand the different muscles that contribute to back stability, and not focus on one group of muscles in isolation.


The latissimus dorsi and the quadratus lumborum are 2 muscle groups which can provide a lot of support to the back. 


Historically, our ancestors would have relied more heavily on the latissimus dorsi, which would have been better developed, as the work that was undertaken often involved pulling activities where this muscle plays an important role. However, as the industrial revolution passed, and our lives became more sedentary we have not used this muscle in the same way. As a result, simple activities, such as pulling open a door, become more of a risk as we twist through the spine rather than brace our core and use the latissimus dorsi to generate the power required to achieve the task. Understanding this muscle, and how it can help us to ‘spare’ the spine is important.


The quadratus lumborum plays a role in lateral stability of the spine. It helps to keep the back upright when we walk. For example, when we take a stride with our right foot, and lift the left leg, the quadratus lumborum on the right side with stop the spine from buckling to the left. This muscle group is often not considered when looking at recovery from lower back pain.

The psoas can often cause some issues when managing back pain as tightness within this muscle group can have an impact of back pain. This is one muscle where flexibility, and stretching, could be a benefit.

Show Highlights. Back Pain Exercises – Which Other Muscles Play a Role?

Don’t underestimate the number of muscles that can contribute to stability within the spine and understand that the lives we lead often results in a weakness of key muscles that can help us recover from low back pain, and avoid recurrence. Work to establish a balanced low back pain workout plan to include all the relevant muscle groups.

Interview Transcription for Back Pain Exercises – Which Other Muscles Play a Role?

Ben James 0:00
When we’re young, we move with freedom and confidence with a great resilience to injury. Somewhere along the line, we’ve developed poor habits and become more vulnerable to back pain, smart, strong features, evidence based and practical advice to help you take back control of your health and get back to the activities you love. This is your guide to better health through movement So join us as we demystify some of the commonly held beliefs about back pain. build your confidence to a stronger back, the smart way.

Welcome back to the smart strong podcast, everybody. Good morning. This is Ben James again, and I’m with my co host as always, Jacob say morning, Jacob.

Jacob Steyn 0:37
Morning, Ben.

Ben James 0:38
So the last few episodes, we’ve been introducing all the muscles of the spine spine stability, how important those muscles are. Today we talked about the abdominal wall anteriorly and the posterior group of muscles. And we said today that we’re going to focus on the latissimus door sigh, the solace and the QL. So we’re going to talk about those muscles inherent Actually initially talk a little bit about the anatomy, why they’re important role in spine stability, and then, again, about training. And then we’ll bring it together as a bit of a conclusion, I guess, with respect to all of those muscles we’ve talked about so far. So these muscles are quite unique latissimus dorsi, I’ve been one of them. Very big muscle in the back often the muscle you see that, like we mentioned before, creates that kind of V shape. see a lot of people training that muscle in different ways. Jacob, let’s talk briefly a bit about the anatomy. And then we’ll talk about some of the exercises that people are doing and this the important role it plays in stability of the spine.

Jacob Steyn 1:46
Sure, when the anatomy of the latissimus also known as the lead on that runs from the upper arm, actually attaches to the upper arm, then it runs down It attaches to the inferior angle of the shoulder blade and attaches to the lower three ribs. And then the end of it at the bottom attaches to the five lower, low back vertebrae, the sacrum, and then the pelvis.

Unknown Speaker 2:20
Yeah.

Jacob Steyn 2:21
It’s quite a spread out muscle.

Ben James 2:23
Yeah. And it’s I think it’s important to say as well in terms of the muscle itself. The attachments to those kind of bony landmarks, as it were, that you mentioned, is via for a large part, the the the fasher again the thoracolumbar fascia.

Jacob Steyn 2:40
Exactly, yeah. Yeah. So yeah. What shall we discuss about the muscle? its function?

Ben James 2:50
Well, I think, yeah, I mean, you know, from a stability point of view, people would say, Well, how does that contribute to to stability of the spine because it’s Quite a it’s not a deep muscle and in terms of way, or you’re looking at where its attachments, are you kind of thinking yourself Well, okay, how does that contribute anything? You know?

Jacob Steyn 3:12
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s exactly that. That’s what we want to look at. And I think if you just look at the orientation of the muscle, you can, you can make common sense of it, that it’s actually contracting the upper part of the torso towards the lower part. So it creates compression of the spine. And in that way, it gives the ability and it’s very interesting to note that this muscle actually runs like I said, from the upper arm all the way into the low back. So just to know that there’s this connection between the upper arm shoulder blade and the low back pelvis, and it’s just phenomenal to to to imagine that you have a muscle that spanned over all these bony landmarks.

Ben James 3:57
Yeah, and you know, back to the kind of moment arm As we’ve said, you know, that lever as it were, its attachments from from, let’s say the back row all the way up to the, the upper arm means that it’s an important muscle for pulling exercises or actions. And so when you’re thinking about that brace position and the muscles contributing to that activity, therefore, the lats is an important muscle in terms of force, it’s been directed through that thoracolumbar fascia and into the, into the spine. So it’s important muscle to, to consider as part of, as part of our, I guess, insurance work and rehabilitation work a movement to ensure that that spine is safe to a nice activity.

Jacob Steyn 4:45
Exactly. And like we’ve mentioned with all these muscles, it’s, it’s not a muscle we want to really isolate, you want to train it in combination with the rest. Yeah, you can train it isolated. And I think that’s where a lot of people would have to start with it because a lot of people are actually very, I would say very weak in using this muscle and, and that purely comes from the fact that they don’t actually use the muscle. Like you just mentioned we we would use this muscle to pull things. Yeah, and we just don’t do that anymore, right? open a door we think people somebody, we’re not really pulling anything.

Ben James 5:23
Yeah, we’re kind of twisting from the spine. And again, it’s back to that Well, okay, if we’re bracing, when we’re opening that door, and we’re, you know, we’re thinking about the line of emotion, we’re pulling that door and obviously, you know, we’re talking about people with with painful backs here. We’re not saying, you know, for every person is right, really think about how you’re opening that door, you know, but when you’re thinking about the painful back and you’re thinking like you say, to to an activity as simple as opening a door, people are not training those motions anymore. And so, a lot of that movement is rotation through the spine. Which again, as always might seem like a Well, you know, how’s that affecting my back? You know, I’m only opening a door. Yeah. But if you’re opening a door and just twisting through the spine and you’ve got a, a disc irritation or disc problem, then quite clearly, that could be exacerbating that problem. So if you’re bracing, then where’s the movement you’re going to go through as you’re pulling that door. Clearly, the lats are going to be a big muscle to do that activity. And, you know, when we’re talking more athletic performance, the lats it’s very much a transference of power from the core, through to through to the arm. So, you know, it’s throwing exercises, it’s going to be a decelerator to a degree, you know, if you’re talking about that transference of power from the core right through to the arm, it’s got a lot of, it’s got a lot of contributory factors to different exercises of the upper body. And I think I guess the question is, are we training it in the right way? Because what you tend to see is, a lot of people aren’t training at all, or a lot of people are trying to train it in isolation, you often see the kind of bent over single row seems to be a classic for training the lats, you know, I, myself did do a lot of pull ups. Now, pull ups, I’ve been fantastic for increasing the strength and endurance of the lats for me. But again, a pull up exercise for somebody that’s got back pain could be a little bit problematic, because actually, the, the forces that are directly through the spine in terms of compression, when you’re doing a pull up a quite high, which would be a surprise for a lot of people because I’m gonna minute I’m hanging from a bar so my feet aren’t on the floor. How’s that compression through that spine? You know?

Jacob Steyn 7:56
Yeah, and that often happens the compression often happens when you see somebody doing Pull up and they just pulling the low back into a complete extreme Hello. Yeah, posture. And then you know, okay, we’re doing way too much from a company, say three factor to get the body up there instead of actually staying and more or less than a neutral, relaxed in your spine and doing the work with your upper back set up with a lower back. Yeah, I wanted to mention there with the pull up that’s a good example then because what is he a lot of people do when they do the pull up is actually the shoulders coming loose from the torso and doing most of the work with their biceps. Now, I know you can do it with your back because you have your strong lats. But most people who would just start training in, for example, across the gym or you know, they want to be able to do a pull up and they start working on this. If you pay close attention to how you do it, you’ll notice that you most likely get it not only do most of the work with your biceps, your arms and that’s also why you’re able to do two or three and Then, yeah, you burn out. You can’t do like someone who’s really able to do a pull up. Do three times 10, for example, because they’re doing it with their back.

Ben James 9:12
Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then those guys that started out, they’ll also notice that actually the next day or the day after, while I can’t stay in my arms, because the biceps are so so destroyed that that, that yeah, it’s that post muscle soreness that is pretty significant because like you say, you’ve just not yet it’s a technique thing, but it’s also a, I guess, we’re not used to using that muscle. So the bicep torso, I guess, dominates that activity. So the so what we’re saying is the pull up is a fantastic exercise for the lats. But as always, we’ve got to think about the goal and think about the stage where I in terms of introducing these different exercises for that muscle. So Guess we’re not saying that we can’t direct exercises to the lats specifically in a bit more isolation because we have the ability to do that, I guess given the unique anatomy of that muscle in terms of it being more superficial and in terms of us being able to direct specific movements and therefore exercises to that muscle, predominantly never in isolation, because, as we know that that’s pretty much impossible to to isolate one muscle for one exercise alone. But taking that a step back, how do we start introducing the lats into a rehabilitation program because we talked about neutral spine and we talked about the kind of Superman exercises or the bird dog and this activation of lats seems to be something that we often see missing from practitioners when they’re when they’re talking patients through these kind of exercises.

Jacob Steyn 11:01
Well, yeah, exactly. That’s quite often if you have a patient in front of you and you ask them, can you turn on your lights? Can you squeeze the lead, then they look at you like, you know, they don’t know what you’re talking about. And that’s where it all starts. So the ability to spread the lads like a Molly bodybuilder does or two tends to lead. That’s actually what you what you’re after to start with. The best way I find to get people to do this is actually use it using the shoulder openers. Now, we’re not going to go into too much detail detail about it. That’s not the point of the podcast. But to explain a little bit or talk a little bit about it might be good idea. So you know, it’s where you have your neutral spine, you stand up straight and you just, you squeeze the lats and you squeeze the pecs and the medial bicep, so you’re protecting the shoulder that way, and then you straighten and bend your elbows, but you maintain life. pec and medial bicep tension. For example, from there, the next step would be something like actually pulling a rope. So the rope ball, because your while there are two ways of doing this mainly, there are more ways to do it. But the one way to do it is actually, you know, you have a slight bend in the knees and you’re hanging over with your chest a little bit horizontal to the floor. So you make the lever on between your arm when you pull the rope and your hips. You make it a very big lever arm, so you pull the rope and you pull your hand towards your navel. So now you’re really forced to use the lats the biceps will run out of energy quite quick. And then the more advanced way to do this is, you know, the McGill method where you where you actually stand up upright, you have a very neutral spine in a squatting position, you know, quite not deep squat but semi deep. And you really brace and you really focus on keeping the chest still and now everything when you’re upright and pulling this 20 30 meter rope with way to the end will be directed towards the lats. And that’s the most effective exercise to, to work on the lats in my view and my experience

Ben James 13:12
And what about the the sandbag?

Jacob Steyn 13:17
The sand makes a good one but I find that you have to already have some, some some control over using the lead so that when you’re used when you’re carrying the sandbag, you’re able to direct the power to the lead and not elevate the shoulders into going into the traps, which quite a lot of people do when they’re not strong, you know, and they don’t have that core stability yet.

Ben James 13:40
Yes. So for the listeners where what we’re talking about there is there the sandbag is an exercise where you’re effectively holding a sandbag I guess, Tommy level with your with your arms kind of crossed and as I guess the best analogy is hugging. hugging the sandbag very much right into a bit of extension in the back. And then we’re walking a set distance. But like you’re saying, Jacob, if you’re not at the stage where you have that kind of motor control and that awareness of that control of the lats, then the danger is you kind of hike in the shoulders as it were, as in scrunching up the shoulders, and then that’s activating the, the upper traps, which, as we know is is quite often a, an aggravating muscles as it were in terms of office workers and general work that we do, which is a lot more sedentary and an anterior chain as it were. So another good exercise maybe alongside something like the pull up, but we just got to be aware of that motor control and that ability to to activate that lap first. Yeah.

Jacob Steyn 15:00
That’s a good point, you know, the traps, most of the time steals the work from the lats. So when we’re when we’re weak in the lead, and it’s quite often if you you know, if I work with people, I’ll feel the lead. And I’ll try to feel if there is any lead present, you know, is what is there any muscle there? And that usually gives me a good indication whether they are using this muscle. Yeah, you know, whether they are not and then then I can just look at them speak and you quite often see how they hike up the shoulders. So we know that there’s this trap dominance, you know, the muscles on top of your shoulders are doing most of the work and that means that the shoulder blades being pulled up, where we lose this anchoring stability factor from the shoulder blades to the core, if it’s being hiked up. Yeah. And that’s basically not using the lat.

Ben James 15:56
Yes, and and as always, you know, refer to the show notes, go to the website, because we’ve got a will have a video on this one specifically because I think, you know, as we try to point out, this is really quite important. Just generally, the awareness of that lap, because just trying to pull those shoulders down to the floor almost is is one way of trying to think and activate that muscle and start to be aware of that muscle because, as you say, a lot of what the work we’re doing is letting those shoulders kind of drift upwards, it’s it’s kind of lazy work, I suppose, is the best term rather than drawing those shoulders down to the floor before we then doing those exercises that might be around the shoulder etc. And, you know, taking that a step further, even when we’re doing the bird dog exercises and the or the Superman, those kind of exercises where we’re on all fours. Again, we’re still saying we got to activate that muscle and draw those shoulders back and down, because that’s still very important in terms of its contribution to spine stability. So And awareness that is is really important. So moving on from from the lats, we we know that they contribute stability through that energy transference to the thoracolumbar. fascia specifically, we know there’s a lot of exercises that we see in our isolated exercises, which could be great for people with the ability to control that muscle. And we’ll, we’ll kind of tie that in at the end to to a conclusion around the muscles in general but the qL in the sauce, they’re quite unique because again, an anatomically if you look at those two muscles, you saying well, they look too, they look to be very similar area we’re looking at, you know, kind of 12th rib attached into the lumbar vertebra and into the pelvis. And yet the actual role age play instability and in fact, contributing to back pain is is pretty different. Yeah. And so the QL First of all.

Jacob Steyn 18:05
So shall I go then?

Ben James 18:07
Go for it? Yeah.

Jacob Steyn 18:08
Yeah. So the qL, you mentioned that a the QL and the psoas , they kind of attach at the same point. The other attachment of these two muscles are little bit different. So yeah, the the qL runs from the lower, like you said, the lower ribbon attaches to the sides of the five lower vertebrae, and then to the sacrum and the pelvic bone. And we have obviously two of them on the left one on the right, and they said, lateral to the spine. So you know, that gives us an indication of what their roles are. Basically, when you are on one leg, the leg that you’re standing on on that side, the quadratus lumborum, the qL and that side is preventing the other side to drop down by actually stabilizing holding onto the spine, if you may call it like that. So So it’s basically taking care of this lateral stability of the pelvis and the spine that stands erected on top of it. And the big role that plays is when we for example, walk or run, and you know, then this this spine standing upright on the pelvis is incredibly important when we’re demanding power or pushing off with our leg, or if you run and you do a sport like football or rugby, for example, then your, your stability at that point is incredibly important for directing forces to the to the hips or to the shoulders or to any other part of the body. So that’s why this muscle is so important. The other important thing about the qL is also that when it’s measured, it seemed that it fires with almost everything you do, probably because it’s such a such an important stabilizing muscle. So not only when you’re on one leg, but also when your squat For example, with two legs on the floor, weight on your back, this muscle fires a hell of a lot.

Ben James 20:06
Yeah. And it’s interesting when you look at the research that you’re saying it fires a lot, but actually, its length doesn’t change very much whether we laterally bend because again, back to that classic anatomy, well, the qL is lateral, these are the these are the origins and insertions therefore it must when it contracts cause the spine to laterally bend or with bending to the side, but actually, the evidence and the research suggests that the length of that muscle doesn’t change much at all, whether we’re whether we’re flexing or bending forward and leaning back or leaning to the side or twisting, which means that whilst it’s firing is firing isometrically so it’s kind of not changing lens. So again, that that indicates the role it plays in stability of the spine and certainly resisting shear movements of those vertebrae again, again on top of one another. So a big muscle in terms of stabilization.

Jacob Steyn 21:09
Yeah, and I mean, we already the clues there, how do you train this muscle, when you’re on one leg, the same side, it’s actually working harder. And so if you walk, then you’re alternating, giving more work to to the side that you’re standing on. And if you want to increase the work that’s done by this muscle on one leg, we simply hand the person weight on to both hands. So we’ll be doing a farmers walk like exercise. And now we’re challenging the stability fact that even more?

Ben James 21:43
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and I think, you know, it is important to focus on this muscle in terms of the rehabilitation and challenge in this muscle because, again, back to the research and the evidence. It’s very much been implicated. in patients with back pain, you know, when we’re talking muscle spasms, etc, etc. This muscle is important in terms of the training to, to take some of the load and take some of the strain and help stabilize because if we’re, if we’re not focused on this muscle, and again, the activities of daily living that we do now are just so far removed from, you know, what our ancestors were doing and genetically really how we’ve been, how we’ve adapted, that we’re not doing the kind of farmers walk type exercises anymore. So you know, and, and, and even, you know, when you think of the best example, probably of the exercise from an activity of daily living is is carrying shopping. Now, you know, we’re all trying to drive as close to the supermarket as possible or where we’re now we’ve got the ability to put our shopping in the trolley and we look to the car. So we’re not really challenging ourselves and therefore, we’re not trying In this muscle, yes, it’s been challenged when we’re walking, which is why walking is such a good therapeutic exercise for people with back pain because it is challenging that muscle and is working that muscle, as well as it being a reliever of back pain, as we discussed before. But if we’re not training that muscle, then that muscle isn’t conditioned. And then therefore, how are we helping its role in spine stability? And therefore, how are we putting ourselves at risk of injury or certainly preventing us from getting out of back pain. So again, it’s all back to the condition in a movement of, of some of these important muscles, the qL been an important one. And I think back to some of the exercises we talked about previously, such as the side plank, there’s going to be a contribution of qL in that role, as well as the obliques and we’ve talked before

Jacob Steyn 23:57
And much more a starting point that What I mentioned with for example, the farmers walk. Yes,

Ben James 24:03
Yeah, yeah, with back pain and and it also just shows how we were kind of linking things back in. Because if we, if we think back to the anterior abdominal wall, we talked about the plank, we talked about side plank, side plank challenges, obliques, it also challenges QL. So you start to see how some of these key exercises are challenging a number of these important muscles. So some of the listeners might be thinking, so far, there’s a lot of there’s a lot of information about muscles and training. But actually, there’s a number of key exercises that are going to safely challenge a number of these muscles. And so that’s where we’re starting to bring back to the orchestra and looking at how we’re challenging these muscles, collectively, so that we can condition ourselves effectively.

Jacob Steyn 24:54
Exactly. Yes. Anything else you want to say about the QL open?

Ben James 24:58
No, I think I think it’s a good Place to move on to the to the so asked because we’ve we’ve kind of indicate just how important the qL is and its role in stability and then the SOS is almost the not the opposite. But it’s got similar origins and decisions, as we say. And yet it’s, it’s, it’s rolling back pain is quite different in that what we often see is a lot of tension in that muscle that is contributing to compression of the spine and actually, over activation, that muscle seems to be a problem, rather than it being a case of let’s train that cell as muscle for its role in stability.

Jacob Steyn 25:41
Yeah, so we we know that this muscle runs from the low back, like you mentioned, through the pelvic bone, so through the pelvic ring to the upper leg to the inside of the upper leg, so it’s more or less at the front of the hip joint. So It’s important to mention that it it works as an opposite to the glued to the buttock muscles around your neck on the other side of the hip, hip joint. So like you mentioned, quite often this muscle is a little bit too tonic, it’s a bit too tight. And I think a big, big reason today for that is that a lot of people are sitting on a chair or sitting in a car or they have a seat the job, which means that this muscle for the eight hours that you’re sitting or quite often much more is actually shortened. Whereas we would stand the muscle would be longer. And if you’d walk you’ll actually get even more length through this muscle. And we just don’t do enough of that basically. So

Ben James 26:47
Yeah, yeah. And I think, you know, when you look at this muscle, you question it a little bit because actually, its role seems to be a nice activation really only seems to be there when when you lift in the thigh. yet we’ve also got the the iliacus, which you would say, well, that’s doing the same thing. Why do we have both muscles, and it seems that the size almost resists. If we think about the levers that’s going to draw the pelvis forward and cause lumbar extension, so so as an excuse me actually helps to balance things out a little bit. But like you say, we’re we’re in postures and situations that are really contributing to that muscle just being in a contracted state. And then that contraction is contributing to compression of the spine and is, is causing often some of the discomfort the Lord patients experience, which is why we often and again, will, will link back to this video in the notes. There’s a good stretch to challenge that solace and try and get a bit of relief in that source muscle which is a good starting point because if you’re, if you’re if you missing that, then that could be a contributory factor to back discomfort.

Jacob Steyn 28:02
And yeah, and you know, that’s it’s interesting because with a lot of patients, or actually with, with, with the experience I have with my patients, everybody is very different when it comes to how tight their size is. Yeah, you’ll have, you’ll have your short, stocky guy, you know, strong, got a lot of muscle and they’ll have incredibly tight. So as muscles, which means the hip extension is just limited. And this can be a real problem when it comes to sitting a lot for this guy. And then you’ll have the, you know, the sort of skinny lady, maybe she’s doing yoga and maybe not but she’s got a lot of mobility. And there’s just not enough strength in the service to provide a stabilization effect throughout the whole pelvis. So it’s it’s not that everybody has to go and get more lengthen, so if they have a seat, the job might be quite The opposite. But the the typical presentation that we see is we see a very short and so s, which then pulls the low back forward into a greater curve if you’d like in the low back, which causes that compression that you mentioned. And then we get as a response, we get a tightening of the low back muscles, right that so they are they, you can draw a line going from back from the low back to the front of the hips of what is tight, and then if you look at the opposite sides, you look at the buttocks, that would be usually a little bit weak. And that that leads the sour to take take over the job. And then we have at the front of the stomach, the anterior abdominal wall, which we discussed will have maybe some weakness there as well. So we’ll have weakness at the ABS will have weakness at the buttocks. And this then leads to the stiffness and the muscles in the low back and so as doing too much and this this course is compression.

Ben James 30:01
Yeah, and that combination of muscle imbalance is that classic lower cross syndrome is what is often referred to. So like you’re saying sources is, again, another important muscle to consider but maybe slightly different to a lot of the muscles we’ve we’ve discussed so far, in that it’s its role is important. And yes, in some individuals, we may want to train it but largely, we want to be looking at how we can take relief away from that muscle and get it to relax a little bit more and, and again, back to some of the exercises we see such as the classic setup, we’re often finding that people are activating that muscle in in that exercise, which, again is is the wrong way of training the ABS and you’re actually training a muscle that could be the muscle we’re trying to relax. So, drawer and everything back. Think about the goal. Think about the exercises because we need to be training the right muscles in the right way, and helping to alleviate tension from other muscles such as such as the Psoas.

Jacob Steyn 31:12
And I just want to mention there been about the so as before we go, because we’re getting to the end of the podcast. We didn’t quite mention that very well, the service is actually the main hip flexor. Yeah, so people know what it does, you know, that’s the muscle that we use when we run to pull the knee up, for example, but I want to mention on this point that if you are using the service to pull your knee up, you are very dependent on a stable core. So that’s coming back to what we mentioned before, you need to be super strong and be able to control the stiffness proximal in the core to be able to generate power with this powerful so as hip flexor without irritating the low back. So that’s what it boils down to.

Ben James 31:58
Yeah, and again, That’s a great place to finish because like you say, again, we’re back to, as we move forward into more athletic level training, it’s the core stiffness, generates the power distally. And, and if you’re not doing that, then you’re relying on the wrong muscles, and then you’re, you’re increasing your risk of injury. So, back to the gym setting. Don’t try and, you know, run before you can jump kind of, you know, that’s, it’s that classic analogy of, let’s, let’s, let’s think about their goals and progressions and let’s start start at the right level for for the right individual. So, I think just to conclude, you know, there’s a lot of muscles there, there’s a lot of information. But the important thing is there’s some great exercises that we we talked about on the website and, and will help to activate all of those important muscles collectively as an orchestra because it’s important that we’re working them together to develop those patterns and those motions and those neurology motor patterns so that we’re in control of those muscles, we’re aware of those muscles. And then in time, we can improve the insurance of those muscles and progress through different exercises to develop, improve strength and control because that, as we’ve said, so far on these podcasts is what’s going to help in the long term, to resist incidents of back pain, and for sure, help you get out of back pain if you’re suffering at the moment. Because if we’re not focusing on those muscles, were not focusing on that stability. Then you can go and see any any practitioner for massage or manipulation, the continuation of of, of instability and the exercises or the movements that are contributing to the instability are just going to aggravate that back and it’s just going to be a repetitive frustrating cycle. So

Jacob Steyn 33:59
That correct

Ben James 34:02
We agree.

Jacob Steyn 34:03
We agree. Yeah, yeah, we agree.

Ben James 34:05
So thanks again, Jacob. And as always guys, you know, head over to iTunes, give us a rating as we, in time, develop more material. There’ll be more information on the website and more video so head on over and take advantage of those resources. And, as always, focus use the right exercises think the goal and collectively will will get better spine health. Thanks again, Jacob.

Jacob Steyn 34:32
Thanks, Ben.

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