I had my first back issues as an eighth grader while training in the Summer for football and playing baseball. Periodically my lower back would lock up and it would be very difficult to move for a day or more at a time. Later as a college football player, I had some hip and back issues, and in my late 20’s I was down for a couple of days on a handful of occasions. Several visits to athletic trainers, primary care physicians, chiropractor, and an orthopedic specialist didn’t seem to give me any answers or effectively treat my pain. The orthopedic doctor could only tell me that I had some compressed discs and my hips were out of line, and he gave me prescriptions for some non-steroidal anti- inflammatory drugs.
Throughout these years I was very active, and upon finishing my football career I began marathon training and completed three in three years. My training was well-balanced with strength training and distance running, and all the while I was attaining greater flexibility than at any other time in my life. In spite of all this, the problems that began as a teenager would continue to plague me.
Finally after many years of pain and frustration I went back to another primary care doc to get a referral to another orthopedic specialist. To my surprise he recommended I try a podiatrist. Foot doctor? I said, questionably, but at this point I was willing to try anything. So I went and lo and behold the podiatrist tells me I have a significant leg length discrepancy. He looks me and my x-rays over and tells me that one leg is an inch longer than the other. I’m amazed that at 28 no one, even the orthopedic doctors I had seen hadn’t been able to diagnose something that simple. Anyway, to finish up this long, painful background story I got fitted for some orthodics and they helped quite a bit.
Since discovering kettlebells my back issues have drastically improved. The independence they give you to work on movements not allowed by other implements is tremendous for hip girdle, lower back, and abdominal strength. Alternate single snatches, see saw cleans, double swings, double cleans and jerks and their one handed counterparts are fantastic movements that put your body in binds that require skill and practice but when mastered can change your body in great ways. Below the chest to mid thigh will get taxed and have to work together to balance and compensate like no other. Forget about endless crunches for minutes a day. Incorporate swings, cleans, snatches, high pulls, jerks. Choose one of these movements and get more done for your core strength than an entire ab class. Keep in mind that complex multi-joint lifts are far superior to focused attention to single body parts. Your musculo-skeletal, central nervous and cardiovascular systems are amazingly complex creations from God that are best exercised and trained in concert. Twenty minutes of swings and snatches is a much more beneficial choice than a 20 minute ab routine no matter what your ailment or training goal.