Barre training typically involves every part of the body but one recurring issue is back pain. This lower back pain is a very serious one and is a common type of chronic pain. It is experienced by a wide range of people ranging from physical fitness fanatics to regular individuals who do not care so much for workouts.
Statistics show that 80 percent of adults experience back pain, so at some point as a trainer, you are bound to meet clients who are experiencing these pains. In certain cases, they should be referred to medical professionals while in others, altering lifestyle and certain workouts would provide the necessary relief.
For female clients, calisthenics offers a lot of benefits and is guaranteed to help them out with the lower back pain while ensuring that they remain fit. However, before you go ahead to make any further suggestions, here are a number of other tips you can try to ease lower back pain.
There is simply no back pain without a root cause. Most of the time, people do not even know what they are doing wrong. In order to help your clients get better, you need to, first of all, identify the actual cause of the back pain.
You would be surprised at how much more effective you as a trainer can be than a medical professional. For instance, common causes are poor posture and aging & wear and tear. But there’s also something you gain from the experience as a trainer – you know better how to handle sports injuries and put people back on track instead of opting for surgeries.
Golfing is a great example. People who do it are mostly seniors, and they have that ‘swing’ movement that engages their whole body. The lower back injuries related to this swing are numerous and can be prevented with barre training – In some cases, it can also help alleviate the already present pain but in that case the training needs to be done with much lower intensity. A fantastic resource for upping your golf swing is this wonderful post on How to improve golf swing tempo and balance.
Also, there is the off chance that it may have something to do with their body weight. Determining their body fat and lean body mass is an essential step.
However, if your client is experiencing severe pain and training doesn’t seem to be making it any better, then a chiropractor’s visit is likely in order. The pain could be caused by a medical condition that would need to be diagnosed and treated immediately. You can click here to learn more.
1. Help Them Identify the Cause
2. Proffer Working Solutions
After identifying a problem, the next step.that usually follows is finding an appropriate solution. Upon identifying the problem or cause of the lower back pain in the client, you can easily come up with great solutions that would work.
Provided that the back pain is not as a result of some medical condition, then you can go ahead with physical therapy. For instance, stretches and other exercises that are designed to strengthen the lower back muscles and help them relax is one that they should definitely try out.
Similarly, ensure that whatever they are doing is closely in line with the final result that you want.
There are various exercises, all aimed at strengthening the back muscles and getting them to function optimally. Being very sedentary could actually heighten pain. So you should have them exercise at any opportunity that they get, a simple stretch over and over again is very beneficial. Similarly, there are triggers for their pain.
You need to help them identify these triggers and school them on how to avoid them or countermeasures to use. This is because back pain has specific motions, loads or postures that serve to exacerbate it. In turn, there are postures, loads and motions that can either make the pain a lot worse or help your clients tolerate and manage it a lot better.
Once you identify these, have them exercise in line with it – workouts aimed at improving their posture and strengthening muscle function.
3. Have them Exercise Regularly
4. Watch Their Progress Closely
You may end up having to modify certain workouts especially if they aren’t working great for your client or if your client is getting better. In this case, you are serving as their “doctor” so you need to know all the right questions to ask in order to properly detect how much progress they are making.
It is also possible for your client not to notice any changes, therefore, you would need to be very observant. Also, you need to ensure that your clients do not skip any part of the solutions that you have prescribed for them.
You could do this by ensuring that they set reminders or find some other way to have them continuously remember.
More often than not, when people experience back pain, they believe that workouts or a lifestyle change are all they need. While this may be correct in certain cases, this is not altogether true.
There are cases when your client may have a condition but he doesn’t know about it. In this case, providing just physical therapy may not cut it. As a matter of fact, they may actually be exacerbating the pain with bad posture or bad sleeping habit but the root cause may be an ailment that they do not know about.
This is why you need to be very observant. If you notice that the workouts you have prescribed are not effective or it seems to be making the pain worse, then you need to refer them to a medical professional.
Chronic or mild back pain is experienced by most adults however, you can help your clients manage it very effectively. Applying these tips is a great way to start!
