The Reason Your Back Tightness Won’t Go Away

Hey, it’s Dr. Jake Berman! Welcome to my blog!

One of the most common things I hear on the first phone call with new clients is,

“My back has been bothering me for X amount of time…my MRI/X-rays say that I have degeneration, herniation, bulging, etc…”

Many of those people have tried core strengthening, back stretches, pain meds, and even injections with no lasting relief. WHY?!?!

Because the focus has been on your SYMPTOMS, not the underlying PROBLEM! Chances are that up until this point, nobody qualified has actually put their hands on you to figure out what is CAUSING your symptoms.

You’ve waited at the doctor’s office for hours for him to come in for 2 minutes, just enough time to halfway listen to your story and then write you a prescription for pain meds and order an X-ray. Nothing “definitive” has come back on X-ray, so now here’s another Rx for more pain meds and now an MRI. The MRI shows (above) so either get scheduled for surgery OR just take it easy and keep up with the pain meds…

99% of the clients I’ve worked with suffering from back pain have had some type of pelvis/hip issue. A very simple thing to try right now is when sitting nice and tall on a firm surface, cross your right leg over the left as a man would sit cross-legged (right ankle on left thigh area). Now press gently on your right knee down towards the floor until you feel a stretch in the right hip/glute area.

Take note of how that feels and then do the exact opposite with the left leg and see if there is any discrepancy between the sides.

IF you found one hip is tighter than the other, guess what? That is now your new homework! Just do that simple stretch whenever sitting for as long as you can comfortably—shoot for AT LEAST 3 minutes. DO NOT continue if paresthesia (numbness/tingling) begins. Just relax the foot back on the ground, take a break, then repeat this process until the discrepancy dissipates.