Back Exercises For A Herniated Disc - Basic Guidelines For Lasting Relief

Back disc exercises can be helpful or harmful, so it’s important that you follow a few simple guidelines for exercising with this condition. This article will discuss some simple exercises that you can do for herniated disc healing, but before we can talk about that, we need to briefly talk about how a spinal disc functions so these recommendations make sense.

The discs of the spine are cushions that separate each set of bones in the back. Their primary function is to act as shock-absorbers, which prevents the bones from absorbing this shock and helps you avoid quite a bit of pain.

Each disc is composed of two parts – a strong outer covering called the annulus, and a soft jelly center called the nucleus. This structure essentially resembles a jelly doughnut.

When an individual has a herniated disc, the strong outer covering of the disc tears and the jelly begins to shift out of the center into the area where the disc is weakest. This results in a bulge in the disc, which applies pressure to the spinal nerves.

This is actually why this condition is so painful and debilitating – the spinal nerves control everything in the body, so when they have pressure applied to them, not only is it painful, but whatever they control in the body will begin to malfunction.

One of the most frustrating things about healing a herniated disc is the fact that the discs of the spine do not receive a good amount of blood flow. The body normally depends on the blood to supply oxygen and nutrients to an injured area for faster healing.

However, because the discs of the spine do not receive a lot of blood flow, they can be very difficult and frustrating to heal properly.

This is actually a very important point to discuss when talking about exercises for a herniated disc, because the discs of the spine receive their oxygen and nutrients in a very different way. Remember how we were talking about the fact that each spinal disc has a jelly center?

Well, this jelly center is very important, because the disc will actually store oxygen and nutrients in this jelly for proper healing. So, one of the exercises we’ll be covering will be helping to refresh this oxygen and nutrient supply so you can experience faster healing.

Alright – now that we have that background, it’s time to talk about some specific back exercises for disc problems you can do. I’m actually going to give you a routine that you can do, which I use in my clinic for the fastest and best results.

The first exercise I will recommend will require the use of a mini-trampoline, which is a small trampoline that’s about 4 feet wide. They’re very reasonably priced, and you can find one at most sports stores.

However, you will not be using the trampoline in the way you may imagine – in other words, you will not be jumping on the trampoline. Basically, I’m going to recommend that you simply stand in the center of the trampoline and march in place. This needs to be a very controlled movement, and you want to make sure you keep your head looking straight ahead and your arms at your side while you are marching.

This exercise should be done for 5 minutes each day. The goal of this exercises for a herniated disc is to improve your balance, which strengthens the smallest muscles around the spine. When you strengthen these muscles, it not only balances the spine, but it removes pressure from the discs, allowing them to heal more quickly.

The next exercise I’ll recommend involves the use of a therapy ball, which is one of those large balls you see in health clubs or physical therapy clinics. Basically, you just want to sit on the ball, and gently bounce up and down, keeping your head looking forward and your arms to your side.

This exercise should be done for 5 minutes each day, and it’s best that you do it immediately following the trampoline exercise we just mentioned. This exercise is actually the most important one I’ll be covering today, because this is the one that’s going to help bring new oxygen and nutrients to the injured disc for faster healing.

Basically, when you bounce on the ball, you are pumping every disc in the spine. This pumping action (called imbibition) is literally pumping new oxygen and nutrients into the disc, and pumping toxins from the injury out of the disc.

Finally, we need to talk about stretching and strengthening exercises for a herniated disc. Stretching should also be done each day, but I recommend that you do your stretches immediately after you do the trampoline and ball exercise. These exercises combined will act as an excellent warm-up and prepare your muscles for your daily activity (which reduces the risk that you will re-injure your herniated disc).

Strengthening exercises, on the other hand, should be done just 3 days per week. These exercises are a little more aggressive, so I don’t recommend you begin these until you’ve been doing the stretches for two weeks. The stretches will prepare you for the strengthening exercises, and you should always stretch before strengthening.

In other words, I would recommend that you start with the trampoline exercise, then the ball exercise, then stretch, and finally strengthen. This routine will gradually warm up the area around the herniated disc, which ensures the fastest result.

There isn’t enough room in this article to provide you with specific stretching and strengthening exercises, but if you click here (herniated disc exercises), you can find more information about specific stretches and strengthening exercises, as well as additional information about what you can do for relief.

Did you find this article helpful? Here are some other related articles and resources you may also find useful:

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• Exercises For A Herniated Disc – Basic Guidelines For Lasting Results
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