If you’re dealing with chronic back pain or recovering from an injury, a certified post-rehab exercise specialist can assist with back pain recovery and guide you through post-injury fitness. At Basics and Beyond fitness & nutrition in Nashville, certified rehab exercise trainers use different exercises and techniques to help clients regain strength, increase mobility, and get back to their normal daily activities pain-free. When you’re looking for a personal trainer for lower back pain, you can’t just lay off all exercise until your pain (hopefully) subsides. Training should be adjusted to your current abilities, orthopedic condition, movement limitations, recovery situation, and any guidelines from your physicians or other health professionals.
Corrective exercise can be a great tool for clients who have finished a physical therapy program or who feel the time is right to return to workouts after an injury. It helps them get from recovery mode to improvement mode. Dan DeFigo personalizes his services by assessing each client’s condition and movement, and prescribing gentle exercises that can enhance your range of motion, stabilize your body, increase your strength, and optimize movement, as well as help you minimize unnecessary strain.
Corrective exercise focuses on returning your body to optimal balance and function. It is an approach that focuses on identifying movement problems and muscle dysfunction, movement restrictions, stability problems, and inefficient or faulty movement patterns.
Back pain has several potential causes, and not everyone with lower back pain will benefit from the same type of exercises and stretches. Sorry, physical therapy clip art handouts! Spinal disc damage, limitations with hip mobility, poor core stabilisation, or a past injury that is causing compensation are just a few possibilities. You need a post-injury program that is tailored to your specific situation and your specific body, not page 36 in the patient handout booklet.
We customize corrective exercise programs for each client. After your free assessment, the training for lower back pain may include mobility work, core exercises, glute strengthening, balance work, manual therapy, flexibility homework, or progressive strength work. The goal is to relieve pain, improve movement, and increase stability and control before increasing the difficulty of any workouts. This is what sets corrective exercise apart from a general weight-training program, as the exercises are tailored towards improving the weakest link in the chain vs doing a workout for all body parts.
At Basics and Beyond fitness & nutrition, your sessions are customized for you after a detailed discussion of your medical history, current fitness level, desired goals, and recovery. Corrective exercises address individual needs, and Dan DeFigio will assess your movement patterns to identify areas where you may have limited mobility, poor stability, or reduced strength and function.
For example, your strength training for lower back pain may begin with simple, low-movement exercises that help build core strength and stability. As you get stronger, you can slowly add more real-life exercises such as squats, hip hinges, carrying, pushing, pulling, and rotating.
If you consider doing strength training for lower back pain, it helps to start off slowly. The term ‘strength training’ does not automatically mean that you should lift heavy weights. Starting your strength work with bodyweight movements or resistance band exercises is common. As you become stronger and more comfortable, you can slowly increase the difficulty of the exercises.
The corrective exercise program is also about how you experience your body during the workout. We’ll modify or skip a movement if it feels uncomfortable or causes you pain, as your workout plan is tailored to your personal needs. This way, you will feel confident while continuing to progress through your exercises, instead of being stuck in workout plans that are not the right fit for you.
The first session is designed to understand your needs and abilities, not to make you do a lot of work right away. Dan will go over your current troubles, injuries you have had, how physically capable you are, and your end-game goals. You can also tell him if you have a doctor or physical therapist involved, and what treatment you have had. This information will help guide your training plan.
During your first session, you may do simple exercises with very light resistance, which are comfortable and painless. The first time or two is an experiment. We need to find out where you are on the rehab spectrum, what your body awareness and control is like, and how your body responds to a particular amount of work.
Dan DeFigio is certified as a Post-Rehab Conditioning Specialist, a Personal Trainer, and a Health Coach (among other certifications). Dan offers decades of expertise in post-injury training, strength and conditioning, and corrective exercise in his work with clients in Nashville. His strong background in corrective exercise along with his education history and certifications give him the ability to effectively analyze movement patterns and create tailored exercise programs for your specific situation.
Corrective exercise is a series of simple, specific exercises designed to improve movement, strength, balance, posture, flexibility, body awareness, and stability. It can help correct muscle imbalances and movement dysfunction, and greatly reduce pain.
Yes, a qualified personal trainer for lower back pain can be helpful if you are rewady to exercise and have medical clearance if needed. A trainer can guide you through exercise but cannot medically diagnose or treat any medical conditions.
It depends on your current condition. If you have a recent injury, surgery, severe pain, or numbness, check with your doctor or physical therapist first.
Training is often goal-specific, such as for strength, fitness, or weight loss. Corrective exercise is more about improving posture, movement, mobility, stability, and function so that you can get back to more comprehensive exercise.
Your trainer will ask about your medical and orthopedic history, and will also check your movement, balance, flexibility, and stability. This allows them to choose suitable exercises and start you at the right level.
Results are different for all of us. Your condition, fitness level, and training routine can affect how fast your body will recover. Most people report feeling better after just a few sessions.
Yes, but only if approved by your physician or physical therapist. Your trainer should also be aware of any exercise restrictions you have. Typically, the best order of operations is
Yes, but only if approved by your physician or physical therapist. Your trainer should also be aware of any exercise restrictions you have. Typically, the best order of operations is
Not always. Corrective exercise is personalized to each person. Your exercises will be based on your current abilities, goals, and any movement limitations or restrictions. You may do some ‘standard’ training exercises like rows, planks, and squats, or you may not. That’s why it’s PERSONAL training!
Tell your trainer immediately. The exercise can be modified, limited, or replaced. Serious or unusual pain should not be ignored.
No exercise program can guarantee that you’ll never have a future injury, but the right corrective exercise for back pain can help build endurance, strength, mobility, flexibility, balance, and better movement. All those improvements, along with your new and improved movement skills, generally lead to fewer problems in the future.
When you have back pain or restrictions from an injury, it can be difficult to get out of bed, let alone exercise regularly. But the right training regimen can provide a structured path to regain strength and improve movement after sufficient medical assessment or physical therapy. Basics and Beyond fitness & nutrition in Nashville takes a corrective exercise approach to creating customized training programs that start where you are and progress as your pain diminishes and your abilities grow.
If you suffer from lower back pain and want to build strength safely, Basics and Beyond fitness & nutrition can help you select an appropriate personal trainer to develop an exercise program tailored to your condition, goals, and current abilities. Contact us for a free assessment.