A few of the links that caught my eye recently:

• All Around Strength posts a nice collection of back exercises.
• Static stretching still has its place: Jason Ferruggia on stretching.
• It doesn't get much simpler, and I bet it works: simplefit.org.

Always looking for new things to try with my rings. I think I'll add scarecrows into the mix. « via Straight to the Bar »

I was reading this old Straight to the Bar post on Bruce Lee's back injury, and followed one of the links to this terrific piece on the legendary Lee physique (all functional, not for show). Lots of great anecdotes. Definitely worth a read, fan or not.

But back to the back injury... To me, it's very scary to consider that one small misstep with the weights can screw you up forever. And if it can happen to someone as superbly conditioned and focused as Lee, it can happen to anyone. It certainly gives me pause in my self-taught (albeit with good books), uncoached approach. Not that I'm going to stop, mind you. :-)

T-Nation is running a good article titled 50 Tips for Serious Athletes. The last tip suggests, "for team training, play games with your athletes." Included in the list is "speedball", which I'd never heard of. Sounds like fun though.

I can't remember how, but I stumbled across a reprint of a Stuart McGill (the back fitness and rehab guy, coincidentally recently mentioned by De Vany) article dealing with Low Back Exercise and "Superstiffness". It reminded me that I really want to get his Ultimate Back Fitness and Performance book. Looks like it's in it's third edition now. Maybe Santa will bring it to me.

My new contraption is great for doing back extensions, and it reminded me of this interesting article from Sport Injury Bulletin on lower-back pain. In it, they question a very common belief: namely, that powerful ab and back muscles will help protect you from back injury. While this is intuitive, here's the rub:

Intuition and logic are great things, but several scientific studies have actually shown that muscle strength does not predict which persons will have future back troubles. For example, in research carried out by venerable Danish spine expert, Fin Biering-Sorensen, M.D., 82% of the inhabitants (male and female) of Glostrup, a Copenhagen suburb, were surveyed to determine potential relationships between anthropometric measurements, flexibility/elasticity of the low back and hamstrings, back-muscle strength, and back-muscle endurance with the probability of low-back troubles during a one-year period(1). The main finding in this study, which received the prestigious 1983 Volvo Award in Clinical Science, was that good isometric endurance, not strength, of the back muscles (in other words, an ability of the low-back muscles to maintain moderate levels of force for prolonged periods of time without significant fatigue) was the best apparent preventer of low-back trouble in men and women.

The article goes on to describe how in studies an individual's inability to hold a back extension for time corresponded to their tendency towards back injuries.

For me, while I'll keep doing sets of back extensions as part of my regular core workouts, I'm going to make the finisher for my Friday workouts holding a back extension for time. It's only fair, I'm already holding planks for time on other days.

Oh, the article goes after other back "myths" as well. Definitely worth a read.

Three Art De Vany posts for today: Sports and Spines, followed by an answer to a readers question, "Is Everything Bad?". The two posts seem tangentially related to an earlier post of his I recall, Sharp Angles.

My second post in a row on injuries. I should have named this weblog "InjuredAndWastingAway.com", as I put my back out playing pickup about two weeks ago. Fer cryin' out loud, such a Masters-division injury. Actually, trusty Mr. Kim was right on hand to make me feel a bit better on that score:

Some athletes feel immune to back injuries, associating back pain with people who are older or out of shape. Contrary to that perception, back pain is the number one cause of "limited activity" for adults under age forty-five. In fact, after the common cold, back pain is the most common medical complaint in the United States. No one is immune, particularly not those who put increased stress on their back by engaging in demanding movements like high kicks, falls or throws [like whatever it is that I did to myself].

Anyway, I don't know what precipitated it, it just started siezing up until play was no longer possible. It was bad enough over the next three days that it would take me a good 30 seconds to get up off the floor, for example. On the fourth day it loosened up considerably, and I was able to start doing pseudo-workouts again, but even half-assed efforts would set me back on the sieze-up scale. And that's basically where I've been for two weeks. The lack of walking-around pain is nice, but losing conditioning as we approach the critical juncture of the season was plunging me into despair, especially with improvement in my back plateaued. On Tuesday I started prescription muscle relaxants and anti-inflammatories, but they were making no difference at all (the anti-inflammatories can take awhile, I understand). So last night I went to watch pickup, got a tip for something to try, and today I feel much better! I have hope again. But before I describe the miracle cure, let me describe the exact nature of the pain:

After the initial sieze-up subsided, the pain was sharp and pretty much centered where my spine and belt intersect. If I locked my knee mostly straight and swung my right leg from the hip, I could get full range of motion, forward swing parallel to the floor, no problem. But with my left leg the forward swing produced sharp pain at that spot in my back maybe 25 degrees into the swing. Like my hamstring was pulling something very specific in my back, or was pinching a nerve that ran up there, who knows?

So here was the tip from my holistic-posture-breathing-alignment-healer-type teammate (I really should get an official title from him). Paraphrasing:

Try rolling up a washcloth into a small cylinder. You don't want it to be too big. Then lie on your back, knees bent, feet on the floor. Put your head on a couple books for comfortable neck alignment. Lie on the rolled up washcloth such that it runs along your spine under your lower back. Visualize your back flowing and relaxing over the cylinder formed by the washcloth.

Twenty minutes later, my range of motion on the left-leg swing had at least doubled. Amazing! Your mileage may vary, of course. Get a proper diagnosis before trying this. Backs are nothing to screw around with. I'll leave you with more immortal words from Mr. Kim on that score:

Back pain, if left untreated, can lead to other nagging aches and pains. If you try to compensate for back pain by favoring or "babying" the offending area, you may find yourself deveoping sharp shooting pains in your leg or tense knotted muscles in your shoulders. Back pain should be addressed at your earliest opportunity, wiht a visit to your doctor or a physical therapist.