Relieve Lumbar Pain Once and For All With These 11 Stretches

What causes lower back pain to begin with?

Like all pain, lower back pain is multifaceted and may be attributed to more than one cause. Commonly, lumbar pain is brought on by sprains, strains, fractures, herniated discs, sciatica, traumatic injury, osteoarthritis, scoliosis, and lumbar spinal stenosis, according to the American Association of Neurological Surgeons.

In many cases, though, lower back pain often boils down to a sedentary lifestyle, Wickham says. When you spend most of your time sitting in a chair with your hips and knees bent at about 90 degrees, your hip flexor and hamstring muscles gradually adapt to this position and ultimately shorten (read: tighten), he explains.

By constantly using a backrest, your core musculature doesn’t need to work and, over time, weakens. So your ability to activate those muscles when you need them—like when you’re lifting a heavy object—also declines, he says. Plus, the movement you do engage in may lack variety; you might be running, walking, or performing push-ups, squats, and lunges, activities that all take place in the sagittal plane of motion and neglect rotation or side-to-side movement.

In turn, you can end up with a combination of poor core stability and activation, tight (and often weak) hips and hamstrings, and tight, unstable joints that aren’t used to moving in all planes of motion, Wickham says. Then, when you reach to the side and try to pick a heavy box or your child off the ground, you lack the hip mobility and hamstring flexibility necessary to get into a safe starting position and the core stability to protect your spine.

“Now, another joint has to compensate for your tight hips, and that’s typically the low back,” Wickham says. “You’re basically picking up objects using your low back in a rounded position, which isn’t a great position for the back for most people.” Cue: Lower back pain and discomfort.

Lower back pain may also be influenced by how you move. Folks who worry about hurting their back may move with rigidity and stiffness throughout their spine, which can do more harm than good, says Andy Fata-Chan, PT, DPT, a physical therapist and the founder of Moment Physical Therapy and Performance in New York City.

“If we try to guard everything, we try to keep as much tension as possible, we end up moving like robots, which is not sustainable,” he notes. “So we [as physical therapists] spend a lot of time unteaching that tension by getting the spine to move through flexion, extension, side to side, [and] rotation.”

Similarly, lower back pain may develop if you’re creating movement from one segment of your spine rather than the entire structure, Fata-Chan says. When extending your back, for instance, the movement may stem solely from the lumbar spine, increasing stress on this area, rather than the lumbar, thoracic, and cervical sections.

How to relieve lower back pain

Working on maintaining healthy posture and standing throughout the day can help relieve and prevent lower back pain. But regularly performing an active stretching routine—an antidote to the lack of varied movement in your everyday life—is key, Wickham says.

At the beginning of the rehab process, Wickham generally recommends muscle and fascia release techniques, targeting your glutes, obliques, and quadratus lumborum (a deep back muscle) to acutely decrease pain. Then, he suggests moving onto active stretching and muscle activation exercises that get to the root cause of your lower back pain; focus on working to improve hip and ankle mobility, core stability and activation, and the flexibility and strength of the hips, hamstrings, glutes, quads, adductors, and spinal erector muscles through a full range of motion.

Being dynamic with your spinal movement throughout the day and your stretch routine is also important, Fata-Chan says.

“If I keep my back in this very neutral position, it’s really, really tough to feel comfortable and relaxed because you’re not dynamic like you normally should be,” he says. “I utilize a lot of different [overhead or lateral] reaches in different angles in order to influence different parts of the spinal column.”

Consider treating your spine to one rotation and one side-to-side movement and exploring flexion and extension, he adds.

TL;DR: “Find two to four movements that feel tight, a little bit restricted, and just keep working on them daily until they feel normal. Then, add them back into the routine as needed,” Fata-Chan suggests.

The definitive best stretches for lumbar pain

Try some of Wickham’s go-to stretches for lumbar pain, which he demonstrates below. Start with the muscle and fascia release techniques to address acute pain before moving on to a few of the active stretches and muscle activation exercises, he recommends.

“It’s important with all of these active stretches to get as deep into the stretch as possible without pain and then contract the stretched-out muscles,” he notes.

Remember to move with control, and if you need to modify any of the stretches for lumbar pain, decrease your range of motion.

“Listen to your body and be able to pull back if you need to,” Fata-Chan says. “If you move slowly, you can explore it more safely.”