Our backs take a beating because we are constantly using our back muscles—and not always in the best of ways. During the day, we certainly don’t hold perfect posture, we slouch, and we bend in many ways that our backs may not appreciate depending on how young we are. But once the day ends and we go to bed, the work doesn’t end for our backs. While we sleep, we roll, bend, and lay in funny positions—sometimes for extended periods—which we only feel once we wake up and get out of bed; and only then do we regret what we have done as we begin using our backs yet again for the day ahead. Simply put, if you have ever injured or even tweaked your back in any way you know exactly how instrumental our backs are for daily life.
At Sports Reality, the above is why one of the most common questions we are asked always involves back health. What are the best ways to keep a back healthy and well? For us, a strong, flexible back is a healthy back. Stretching and exercising our backs is necessary to keep our backs in good condition, to promote less down-time when we have slept on our backs poorly the night before, and to help not injuring our backs in the first place. Coach Kim does a great job of keeping all of Sports Reality’s athletes’ backs in good shape by constantly and consistently applying back-strengthening routines to our athletes’ workouts. By building our back muscles we have a much better chance to avoid injury or even having a stiff back when getting out of bed. But beyond strengthening our backs, what’s great about stretching out our backs is that it takes very little time to do so and the effects can really improve our day. Think of it as preventative maintenance; you may not feel as though you need to do it every day, but if you keep up with simple stretches when you get out of bed the benefits far-outweigh the inconvenience of remembering to stretch. Knee-to-chest, supported bridge, trunk rotation, and cat-cow stretching are all stretches we implement at Sports Reality because they are simple and get our athletes’ backs ready to handle the workout ahead, and also assist in making a better recovery for the workout we have just finished. These are also simple stretches you can do at home when you wake up in the morning. Stay tuned—in our following posts we will discuss the proper ways to do these stretches.
