How to Feed and Water Your Spine

The first time my back went out, I was twenty-seven, taking a step aerobics class. The next time, four years later, I slid an ottoman across the living room. The third time, I was plugging in a vacuum cleaner. Each time, I was twisting while flexing forward and not thinking about good form. And each time, I had been sitting and driving a ton and under a lot of stress.

My training as a biomechanist (a kinesiologist specializing in levers and pulleys, forces and injury) taught me a lot about corrective exercise and anatomy, but I didn’t really understand just how proactive I needed to be until I went through my own injury. I’ve since learned to take much better care of my spine. While there are a handful of exercises I do regularly, I also focus on carrying my spine better all day long. I use early signs—feeling weak and unstable in my middle, or mentally overwhelmed—as cues to get my back-act together.

Caring for your back is less about finding the perfect exercise or posture and more about building a spine that is adaptable, resilient, and ready for the physical and positional demands of everyday life. I call this care feeding and watering your spine.

Feed Your Spine a “Rainbow of Movements”—Not Just “Good Posture”

Ergonomics can help us set up our desks so that hours of sitting are easier on our bodies, but sitting beautifully at your desk all day isn’t necessarily good back care. The spine needs to flex, extend, bend to the right and left side, and twist throughout the day; each of these movements provides a different set of mechanical nutrients to the cells that make up your vertebrae and intervertebral discs.

There’s nothing wrong with finding a comfortable, well-supported position when standing and sitting, but it’s not the only “food” the spine needs. One of my favorite reminders is: The best position for your spine is the next one.

Said another way, don’t just work on sitting better. Get up regularly, sit in different ways, and reach in different directions. Take your spine for a daily walk. Let your spine carry something! Good alignment should be the foundation of a spinal care plan, not the end goal.

The Goal Isn’t to Protect Your Spine. It’s to Prepare It.

When your back hurts, resting can feel like the obvious answer. And during an acute flare-up, backing off and modifying what you do certainly makes sense. But the activities of daily living require a lot of movement. Even turning over in bed can hurt when you have back pain!

It's tempting to prune your life to match your pain, but another approach is to focus on building up your movement capacity. Eventually, life is going to ask you to bend over to pick something up, twist to look behind you while driving, and carry groceries. Maybe you want to get back into the garden, play with your kids or grandkids, or swing a golf club.

Think of the activities you want to be able to do again with comfort and build a routine of simple exercises that build strength and stability for those particular motions. Almost anything we want to do takes some amount of upright locomotion, and walking is a simple place to start.

Regular walking has been shown to keep low back pain away, even in people who’ve already had spine issues! You can also practice simple balance exercises (e.g., standing on one leg without holding on to anything), as well as getting down to the floor and back up a few times in a row.

Together, all of these different movements are like a vitamin and mineral infusion for your spine.

The Thing That Hurt Your Back May Not Be What Caused the Problem

When your back hurts, the first question is usually, “What did I do?” We tend to look for something recent. Was it that workout? Did I hurt a disc moving furniture? Did I sleep funny? Maybe I reached for something and felt that sudden twinge. It makes sense to assume that the thing you point to caused the problem. But chronic back pain is often more about the “whole meal” than it is about the last bite.

Your spine is influenced by the way you move and by the ways you don’t move. Leg stiffness, how much you sit, your walking pattern, your strength and balance, your shoulder tension, and the variety of movements you’ve experienced throughout your life can overly pull on certain areas of your spine, creating repetitive wear patterns that affect how your back functions and feels.

For my body, moving the ottoman, plugging in the vacuum cleaner, and even that one high kick wasn’t the whole story. They were the last straw.

When the back hurts, we ice our back. We massage the back. We stretch our back and look up “exercises to strengthen my back” on YouTube. But there are many other parts, like the shoulders, hamstrings, and calves, that can be pushing or pulling your spine around—and these need to be dealt with. For example, if your hips are particularly stiff (maybe you sit a lot, or, your favorite mode of exercise, like cycling or rowing, leaves your muscles very tight) you might have an extra twist to every step you take to accommodate for the tension. This lets you walk despite tight quads or hamstrings (thank goodness!), but it means your back is picking up the burden of hips that don’t move. Your back problem is just weakness in the spine, your back issue is the symptom of a whole-body movement issue.

My point is, don’t hyperfocus on “what’s wrong with my back.” Pay attention to what’s happening around it and plan your approach to resolving the issue accordingly.

Back pain has less to do with “failed anatomy” and more to do with the loads created by your all-day movement habits. So, the solution to back pain will be much more holistic than a few corrective exercises. Your spine needs more than a quick fix—it needs to be fed and watered regularly, with a variety of movements and loads that help it stay adaptable and resilient.