Back injury prevention

I believe that most back injury is self-inflicted; that is, we do something to cause our pain and injury.  By the same token, if we are to ever have a  healthy back and musculoskeletal system again, it is largely up to us to do it!  Imagine if you were a kid on summer vacation and had nothing to do all day but run and play outdoors, what is the likelihood you would have back problems?  Not much.  But as we age we take on serious pursuits such as strenuous exercise and sports, long hours at a desk making a living, long hours on the couch recovering from long hours making a living.  We may walk around on cement floors all day.  We may drive a taxi, a transport truck, a police car!  We may sit on our butts all day or we may hurt ourselves standing or walking too much.

The overriding reason I perform The 8-Minute Wonder first thing every morning and before I go to bed at night is because I want to prevent catastrophic back injury such as I have suffered before.  I know the injury will come back if I don’t do something, and The Wonder is the best solution I have been able to come up with.  My doctors provided some very boring back exercises that I was supposed to do, but I must say I was never able to make myself do them more than two consecutive days.  Plus, I never really knew exactly how many to do or what would I do if one exercise actually caused pain, which several of them did.  When could I stop doing the exercises?  Well, there were a lot of questions and I didn’t see the exercises helping, so I quit.  Then, there was always yoga.  I really believe in yoga and have off and on done yoga videos for decades.  Stretching has to be good for you, and that, of course, is what yoga is—stretching.   But there were yoga postures that I knew were hurting me and probably contributing to my back pain.  Salutations to the Sun created pain that lasted all day.  Any forward bends were not good for me.  I will probably go back to doing some yoga postures that I felt were good for the legs and back, but I will avoid the ones that hurt.  So, yoga was not a total solution.                                                               

The key to my back injury prevention is two-fold:  1.  Avoid behaviors that lead to back pain as much as possible.  2.  Perform The 8-Minute Wonder as needed to counteract the effects of at-risk activities I have to do or want to do.