Is it a cleaning week/weekend in your house? Oftentimes while starting to clean people often bend, twist, and lift many more objects that they do in their normal daily routines, which in turn leads to either low back or neck pain. One of the most common causes of this is due to core weakness causing instability and compensations throughout the body while moving.Â
What Really is Core Strength
When people think of core strength, their first thought is that this includes the abs, specifically the rectus abdominal muscle which is what makes the “6-pack” that people commonly associate with core strength. While this is one of the muscles involved with core strength, it is not the only one, and is not one of the main ones associated with dynamic core stability. Some of the other muscles of the core include the transverse abdominus, the oblique abdominal muscles, the quadratus lumborum, and the erector spinae muscles. All of these muscles work together to create our core and provide trunk stability.
Twisting and Rotational Movements
The muscles that provide your stability with twisting and rotational movements include the transverse abdominis and the quadratus lumborus. Movements such as sweeping, scrubbing walls/tiles and turning and moving furniture. When these muscles are too weak and do not provide you with the stability needed for these actions, whether lifting a heavy object or repetitive actions such as scrubbing and sweeping, a lot of pressure goes through the back can cause low back pain.
Carrying Objects
Another action that often causes significant back and neck pain is carrying objects on one side. When this happens, the back needs stability in the side to side plane, or the frontal plane. Holding an object such as a bucket for cleaning, a bag of yard clippings, or bags of mulch, or wiping windows can create a significant demand on the internal and external oblique muscles. When you carry objects like a trash can full of yard clippings off to the side, this creates a large demand from these muscles to prevent you from tilting and falling sideways.
Finally, when lifting and carrying items in front of the body, lifting and pushing a wheel barrow, or repetitive forward bending such as gardening creates a high demand in the front to back movement plane, or the sagittal plane. To prevent you from falling forwards your body needs to be stable while using the muscles that cause spinal extension, such as the erector spinae muscles. Movements that don’t seem very demanding, like pulling weeds in the yard, causes a repetitive movement that demands a lot of stability throughout these muscles and can cause pain radiating from the low back and can go up into the neck and between the shoulder blades.
How Do I Strengthen My Core?
When most people think about core exercises they think about exercises such as sit ups and crunches. While these are great exercises for the rectus abdominus muscle, there are many other muscles involved in the core that people often overlook or do not know about. When muscles such as the erector spinae, transverse abdominus, or obliques get weak, simple daily tasks such as carrying a basket of laundry can get very challenging and painful, and it can seem confusing as to why these small activities cause so much pain. If you recently started your spring cleaning and are having back or neck pain, please give us a call at 703-450-4300! We will do an in depth evaluation, find out what muscles need more support, and get you back to living your life pain free!
