Low Back Pain in Athletes

LOW BACK PAIN IN ATHLETES

• After twenty one years of practice, I have come to the conclusion that low back problems occurring in athletes require more than the usual amount of attention. The symptoms of low back pain occurring in athletes can often behave in an extremely mystifying and confusing fashion. A combination of several factors add to this confusion.
• First, athletes are highly motivated to participate in their treatment and sometimes carry to excess the advice given to the min an attempt to speed recovery. 
• This over exuberant participation in the rehabilitation of their back problem very often delays rather than accelerates the healing process. A second point to be noted is that the athlete's or sportsman's enthusiasm to participate in their favorite pastime or sport leads them to return to full participation, often long before sufficient time has passed to allow for complete healing.
• The third and certainly the most common source of confusion can stern from the frequent belief of athletes that the sole cause of their problem lies in their frequent participation in a particular sporting activity. Subsequently, this belief is reinforced by a health provider who all too often comes to the same conclusion. It is not difficult to reach this conclusion, for probably three out of five athletes who experience low back pain state that their pain appears after they have participated in sport or indulged in some equally vigorous activity.
• The belief that pain appearing shortly after activity must be caused by the activity itself is widespread and understandable but unfortunately frequently mistaken.
• The true cause of pain in these individuals is frequently the adoption of a slouched position following the thorough exercising of their joints . After exertion we usually sit down and relax:as we are tired, the relaxed sitting posture is adopted almost immediately. In other words, after vigorous exercising we collapse in a heap and slouch badly. Joints of the spine during the process of vigorous exercise are moved rapidly in many directions over an extended period of time. 
• This process causes a thorough stretching in all directions of the soft tissues surrounding the joints. In addition, the fluid gel content of the spinal discs is loosened, and it seems that distortion or displacement can occur if an exercised joint is subsequently placed in an extreme posture. 

This is so often the cause of back pain in athletes and can be proven rather easily. 

• If low back pain has in fact occurred as a result of participation in a sport, then recommending rest from activity would be appropriate advice. However, if the pain has appeared after the activity has been completed and has occurred as a result of adopting a slouched sitting posture, such advice would be entirely inappropriate. 
• To advise an athlete to cease participation in his favourite pastime can have serious consequences, both emotional and physical .
•  If you are an athlete, or if you participate in vigorous activity sand have recently developed low back pain, it is necessary to expose the true cause of this problem in order to treat your condition correctly and successfully: we must determine whether your pain appeared during the particular activity or whether it developed afterward. 
• If the pain appeared during the activity itself, then your sport may well be the cause of the present problems. 
• You may remember something which happened at the time of the activity and can describe what you felt at that moment. But a very large number of people who have back pain and participate in a sport never feel discomfort or pain while they are participating or competing; their pain appears after the activity.It is easy to determine if your low back problems are the result of slouched sitting. 
• From now on,immediately after activity you should watch your posture closely and sit correctly with the low back in moderate lordosis supported by a lumbar roll For example, if you have completed a few sets of tennis, if you have finished a round of golf, or competed in a football game,you must not then sink into a comfortable lounge chair or slouch in the car when you drive home. 
• You must sit correctly with posture maintained meticulously  Should no pain eventuate as a result of this extra postural care, the answer to your problem is clear and the responsibility for preventing further trouble is entirely your own. 
• If you fall into the group of people who develop pain only after activity, it is undesirable for you to begin the exercises at the same time as commencing the postural correction. If the exercises are performed in conjunction with postural correction, it is impossible to determine from which source the improvement was derived. If your pain continues to appear after activity in spite of correcting your posture, it is possible that you have weakened or damaged some of the soft tissues in your low back.
• Poor posture is often seen in athletes during intervals of non participation: for example when waiting their tum to high jump,throw the discus or bat at baseball. It is necessary to maintain good posture during these intervals as well as after completion of the activity.