You are not rehabbing your Nan's back.

You're not rehabbing your nan's back.. so why would you do her exercises?

Let's be frank. The exercises you see to 'solve your lower back pain' are not built for high performers.

They are safe, they are generic, and they are aimed at people who don't move enough, who are weak, and who just need to get their body moving to ease their pain.

And even for those people - they are probably deeply irrelevant.

The difference between doing gentle floor exercises and playing sport, running marathons, or competing at Hyrox is not just different worlds. It's a different universe.

But let's start from the beginning, so you know exactly where I'm coming from.

There are two types of lower back pain.

The first is structural - a disc problem or a spinal issue originating from the lower back itself. If this is you, go and see a specialist who can get you to a point where it's safe to strengthen properly.

The second is compensatory - the lower back is stepping in for muscles elsewhere that aren't functioning well enough. It's a solution to a problem, not the actual problem. If this is you, keep reading. This one's for you.

When you run, bike, swim, or lift, you need all of your muscles working in unison to produce that movement. Nothing underworking. Nothing overworking. Because that's where injuries happen.

If you have old injuries that haven't been rehabbed properly, or body parts you've never trained well enough, those muscles won't be contributing what they should. And when something isn't pulling its weight, something else has to pick it up.

The back is usually the hero of the party.

The body needs a certain level of stability to create movement. If it's not coming from the right muscle, another muscle steps in - and the lower back is often the one that does.

Here's the best way I've found to explain why this happens.

Think of your body like a power station.

Every muscle group is a generator. Each one has a specific job - producing a specific amount of force for a specific part of the movement.

When everything is working, the load is shared. No single generator is overloaded. The system runs efficiently. You move well and nothing breaks down.

But when one generator slows up - through injury, weakness, or years of not being trained properly - the other generators need to pick up the slack.

This is where the lower back steps in.

Your quads aren't functioning properly after an old knee injury. You pulled your hamstring three years ago and didn't rehab it well enough. You twisted your ankle and your calf complex isn't functioning well.

So the lower back steps in to take up the slack. And this is why we need to fix the generators, not the lower back.

Take a moment to digest that before we move on.

You can probably see from this analogy that generic exercises aren't going to work - because they're not specific to your story. Your injuries, your training history, your body, are completely different to everyone else's. Your rehab needs to be specific to all of those things.

Now we get to the more interesting part.

There are a number of stages to rehab. Think of it as a ladder, with the top being the target you want to achieve. Physio-based exercises are the first step - designed to get you pain-free. If it was your nan who just wanted to get back to walking comfortably, that might be enough.

But your nan doesn't want to do what you want to do.

If you want to get back to something more gentle, or just be able to play with your kids, you might only need to get halfway up the ladder. If you want to get back to something more athletic, you need to get all the way to the top - which requires a completely different approach to what you've been given.

So what do we actually need to do?

It's the same process for any injury:

Find the problem.

Strengthen the problem.

Strengthen it more.

Add speed to that strengthened area.

Reintroduce the movements needed for your sport at a slow pace.

Build speed into those movements.

Reintroduce sport.

Play sport.

Dominate sport.

And in practice, that looks like this:

Isometrics

Heavy loaded isometrics

Heavier eccentrics

Full range of motion movements

Loaded full range of motion movements

Full range of motion movements with speed and plyometrics

Sport-based movements reintroduced

Return to sport

Play sport

Dominate sport

Now I'm not here to pretend that lower back injuries are easy. They are not. But they also don't have to be a forever problem. You will be able to get back to functioning very well after a back injury - trust me, I've had some serious ones.

I've also found that once you go through this process properly, any flare-up that does happen recovers in half the time compared to someone who hasn't strengthened everything up. Flare-ups will occasionally happen - but if you have the tools, the strength, and the right advice, they become a minor inconvenience rather than a full reset.

Case in point.

My client David had been training with me for a while. We had completely solved his back pain. Then he spent three weeks eating and drinking well, enjoying himself - and then decided to do some aggressive stretching. His back went.

With some simple progressions, breathing exercises, and plenty of warm baths, he was back training fully in seven days. This was an amazing outcome, and it took much shorter time to recover the back than to fix the back in the first place. This was in part down to the advice I gave him, but predominantly about the work he'd done before this back flare, which gave him an opportunity to recover so fast.

Finally..

If you take one thing from this newsletter, let it be this.

Don't get sucked into 'these five exercises that will fix your back pain' - because they probably won't. You'll see testimonials from companies who have sold their programme to thousands of people, showing you the one or two results they got. Just remember - a broken clock is right twice a day.

Some news from Razor Performance.

Eight months ago I went all in on Razor Performance as an online business. It was a leap of faith - but deep down I knew there are people out there who I can genuinely help, and who will commit to being helped.

I am genuinely pleased with the clients I currently have. I like all of them, I love helping them, and I look forward to speaking to them every week.

With that said, I now only have two spaces left on the programme - and I'm in a position to be selective about who I take on.

In June I'm planning to close the programme for a month to make some improvements and make sure I'm serving my existing clients as well as I possibly can. When I return, my prices will increase.

If you've been reading this newsletter and sitting on the fence - now would be a good time to act.

If you'd like a no-pressure chat, book a call here:

calendly.com/razorperformance/30min

See you next week.