here are four exercises you must avoid if you have back pain with an L4 L5 or L5 S1 disc bulge or herniation if you're new here my name is William and I teach people how to overcome years and years of chronic back pain by changing their mindset improving their movements and building smarter [Music] strength all right so let's first talk about really quick the anatomy of what's going on I ruptured my L5 S1 disc you may have an L4 L5 bulge or herniation or maybe you have something similar to me but I want to show you what is going on specifically in your back and why we must avoid these things if you're having a lot of back pain with this type of diagnosis so this is a model of a two vertebrae and a disc now your disc is not actually this squishy it's a lot more rigid a lot stronger what you're going to see here is just the basic anatomy of what is in between two vertebrae your disc if you have a herniation you might see something like this if you see that bulge there that is where the herniation happens it might be small it might be super intense depending on your symptoms and how things are going how you're experiencing your pain how severe or how much of a herniation or bulge you might have so what we're doing is if you notice if I lean forward this is the back of the body this is the front of the body if I lean forward then boom that's where that herniation tends to become worse now but remember you're not fragile you're not broken just because you have a herniation doesn't mean that you can't B over we're just trying to desensitize this area so it's not as severe and we can work on bringing that disc tissue back in as much as possible over time so what you want to actually keep from doing if you look at this if I'm leaning forward or bending over this is where that herniation or my symptoms might pick up so the exercises that you're doing for one we're trying to stay away from excessive unnecessary spinal flexion for right now and then build back up later that's enough for the anatomy now the first first exercise I want you to get rid of for now are barbell squats the barbell squat is a very technical exercise there is a lot going on if you're back hurts doing barbell squats it might not be because your back is weak or the bar position is bad it could be anything from the top of your head to the soles of your feet from a perspective of form technique and you have to really be mindful of how you do that what you have to keep in check is this idea or this myth that the barbell Squad is the king of lower body exercise it's just not the case sure it's a great exercise it's a very common well spread exercise but if you're in chronic back pain you're having some issues let's avoid this and actually do some other things instead so the alternative exercise I want you to do is the goblet squat now you can load this up if you feel tolerant of it you're able to do more weight your body feels good always feel free to increase the weight to your pain tolerance but there's a few key things I want you to keep in mind when doing the goblet squat one I suggest having some kind of elevation to to your heels you can simply take two 10 lb plates like you see me doing here where I have my heels up on those plates which allows me to have better range of motion in the lower part of that squat what we're doing is we're trying to operate or do this exercise in a way where we keep the upper body as upright as possible not that we're afraid of flexing or bending over but right now we're trying to still build strength in the body in the lower body and the rest of the body the core the back doing this goblet squat will allow us to keep a good posture a good upright position without doing any kind of excessive unnecessary forward flexion so aside from the heels elevated queue on the goblet squat here are a few other things I want you to keep in mind one when you're doing the goblet squat obviously you're trying to keep that weight as close to your body as possible not just holding it there but really engage the latch you're trying to bring the shoulders down compress the shoulders down and you're also trying to protract the shoulder blades forward so this is really going to engage the upper back the midback and the lats which go into the low back which is going to give the entire posterior chain more stability and more control when doing this really try to keep and maintain that position while going into the goblet squat always respecting your pain tolerance if you go to a certain depth and you're having symptoms then change that don't go as far cut that rep in half and only focus on what you can do same thing goes with the weight we're not trying to break any records with this amount of weight that we're holding start small and build up tolerance over time before we jump into exercise 2 if you're looking to really go deeper with this concept of using exercise as a pain relief tool I've got a free guide you can grab at Fitness forb backpain docomo trining I literally take you through the entire process that I walk through with 101 students in building out your ideal back friendly workout grab that at Fitness for back pain.com painfree trining now let's jump back now the second exercise is the barbell deadlift now this is a very common thing right up there with the barbell squat we're putting ourselves in a position that could potentially lead to too much excessive flection for right now again this is not saying that deadlifts are bad or dangerous they're actually a great exercise but for someone who has an L4 L5 or L5 S1 injury they're having some pain it's time that we back up off the barbell and try something different so the alternative exercise to the barbell deadlift is actually just simple back extensions so we're just going to be working on endurance though we not doing reps we're not going to be going up and down up and down up and down instead we're going to focus on one position and building stamina and endurance in that one position so you might have a back extension machine at your local gym you might have one at your house I don't have one at my home studio so what I do is I have my squat rack I've got my barbell I set the barbell up in a good comfortable position across my waist with a pad I've got my feet anchored to some kettle bells that will keep me from flipping over and looking like an idiot and what I do is I get into a nice straight position position so I feel my glutes engaged I feel my the back of my heels up against that weight I've got my lats down I'm bringing my shoulder blades down and I'm just maintaining that neutral position in that extended position now what I'm doing here is focusing on just building endurance now you because of your sensitivity you may not be able to do more than 15 seconds of holding that position you might not be able to hold your weight up at all it's totally fine you have to modify this exercise to fit where you're at a suggestion always give people is if you're on an actual extension machine you can put your hands on the actual bars that go alongside that and support yourself while you build up tolerance to the endurance position or if you have a barbell you put your hands on the barbell and hold that body weight up over time your goal is to work up to being able to hold it for 2 minutes multiple sets go slow be easy Don't force yourself into 2 minutes right away build up over time and you should be good the third exercise you should avoid with an L4 L5 or L5 S1 herni or bulge and pain with those things are crunches and sit-ups very common exercise done in a lot of different ways in the gym let's just stay away from those right now cuz it's creating that flexion position that we're trying to for right now stay away from as we heal a great exercise that I love to do is What's called the opposition Crunch and you can do this with a stability ball or without a stability ball but essentially what you're doing is on your back you're kind of getting in this dead bug position where you have both of your hands your knees are bent and both of your hands are pushing up against your knees so you're kind of meeting in the middle uh looking like a dead bug now what you're going to do instead while you are pushing into the tops of your thighs or the tops of your knees you're going to be bringing your knees or trying to bring your knees towards your chest you're going to create an opposition so two forces are coming together and you're not moving so you're actually keeping your hands in your knees or your legs in the same position you're just trying to build a compression force in the middle so a good example of this or just visually is if you have a stability ball and you have a stability ball in between your hands and your knees and you're trying to squeeze that stability ball and pop it but obviously you're not going to be able to this is creating a compression with your hands and your knees which is activating your abdominals and it's keeping your back nice and flat and straight with the key with the being on your back is not everybody can flatten their low back into the ground and actually feel comfortable whether you need a little bit more of an arch whether you need more like maybe a towel under your low back to keep you in a neutral position or if you can find that neutral position brace around it and then do the actual work of the exercise whichever works better for you I encourage you to explore your body and get to know how your body is responding in these different positions there's not a right or wrong way of doing it it's based off of how your body is responding now with this exercise you're going to be using your breath at the same time as you're compressing or creating this tension what I like you to do is as you are pushing and creating creating this pressure in the middle I want you to be exhaling all of your breath through pierced lips you're going to do that the entire time that you're pressing or trying to squeeze this ball and you're going to let all of your air out as much air as possible let it all out of your lungs and what that's going to do is really help contract the lower abdominals so really embrace the entire trunk 360° while in this neutral position building strength You're Building endurance You're Building stamina in the core along with strengthening your ability to breathe and stay contracted during movement you can vary the Reps you can vary the sets you can vary the time that you're exhaling again base it off of your comfort and work from there now the fourth and final exercise isn't a flexion based exercise but I see a lot of people having back pain while doing it it's one of the most common exercis in the gym and that's a shoulder press now the specific ones that I'm going to be targeting are the standing dumbbell or barbell shoulder press any kind of heavier load as you get stronger as you want to push the weight when it comes to getting it above your head you're going to have to compensate because it's kind of a weird position to be pushing in so as you're pushing your chest is going to come up your extension is going to kick in you're going to be really putting a lot of load on that low back and if you have an issue in this area it's only going to make it worse so to get into the position you'll kind of get into this take a knee position you don't want your legs super close together you want to have them actually spaced out to have some good stability you're going to brace the back leg contract that core contract that glute really creat some stability in the trunk and then you're going to be pressing with that single arm one at a time now the other way you can do this is using a bench now if you have pain with sitting on a bench and compressing with a dumbbell you should again only be doing one arm at a time so the load shouldn't be too crazy but if this sitting variation hurts then just stick with the staggered stance or on one knee position that we just covered but when you're using a bench you're going to sit comfortably in that bench you'll have yourist ribs down your abs on in a neutral position and you're simply going to be pressing that dumbbell or whatever you have as weight above the head using one arm at a time the key right now when it comes to a low back injury specifically with an L4 L5 or L5 S1 herniation you're dealing with sciatica or pain is to find your current limits around your symptoms you have to build back tolerance but pushing through the pain is not going to get you pain relief in no way shape or form will you ever push through pain when it comes to getting out of chronic back pain you have to find where your tolerances are match them and go below that always stay below your pain tolerance and build up from there so that's it if you've been doing these four exercises and you have that diagnosis and you're dealing with a lot of pain but you don't want to give up exercise follow these Alternatives and you're going to feel better before you run off make sure you go grab that free guide you can get it at Fitness forb back pain.com painfree trining you're going to take this concept that taught you here about the four exercises to avoid and I'm going to show you how to structure your workout to take what you've learned here and 10 times the results that you're going to get I'm lit going to walk you through how to build the best back friendly workout you could possibly do Fitness forb back pain.com SL painfree training thanks again for watching guys God bless and I'll see you on the next [Music] episode