Dancing & Low Back Pain
Whether it be ballet, hip hop, jazz, tap, contemporary, or even your local Zumba class, they all can leave you reaching for pain killers the next morning. All that repetitive motion certainly takes a toll on your body; and, while dancing is definitely great for your overall health, sometimes you just wake up with a sore back.
If you do in fact find yourself in constant low back pain after dancing, you should consider chiropractic. Because if you’re like most dancers with low back pain, it’s usually one of the following three things that results in chronic back pain for dancers. With that said, we’ve seen great results for dancers who are under chiropractic care for the following reasons:
1. Lumbar/Pelvic/Sacral Restrictions
With all the repetitive motions with dance, it puts a lot of strain on the low back. More specifically, leg extensions are the most likely culprit. When you kick your leg backwards forcefully, it causes your entire lower back to go into abrupt extension. This not only creates an excessive curvature in the low back over time, but this also puts excessive force on what are called the facet joints in the lower back, and ultimately results in restrictions in the low back and pelvis. These restrictions in the low back and pelvis can result in severe low back pain.
In treatment, we adjust these restrictions in your low back but we also do a lot of stretching for your low back so that you get the appropriate movement. Essentially, we try to undo what the repetitive motions have done to your body. This not only relieves low back pain but also helps prevent future back pain as your body is able to move and function more efficiently.
2. Muscle Imbalances
One of the biggest muscle imbalances we see in dancers is one that results in extreme hyperlordosis of the lumbar spine. This is the excessive curvature in the low back which can result in low back pain. Stretching and strengthening the correct muscles can go a long way into the improvement of your low back pain.
One other thing we sometimes notice with dancers is that they tend to favor one side over the other. Whether the particular routine calls for it, or they are dominant with one side, the repetition results in muscle imbalances in the low back and pelvis. In fact, sometimes one side of the low back becomes so strong that it can create a scoliosis. This is called a functional scoliosis and is something that responds very well to chiropractic care. We actually have a table that is unequally designed to bend from side to side, so that we can stretch out the side of the back that is causing the scoliosis/back pain.
To supplement the adjustment, we will also give the dancer some exercises to do at home to help correct their muscle imbalance in the low back and pelvis.
3. Knee Pain
If you are a dancer and are beginning to notice worsening of knee pain, along with low back pain, then you most likely have number 1 and number 2 mentioned above going on at the same time. Often times, knee pain is the result of lower back/pelvic instability. The muscles that connect to the pelvis also connect into the knees. When you have restrictions in your pelvis and low back, this directly effects these muscles that connect into your knees. Therefore, if your low back and pelvis are not moving correctly, it results in unnecessary stress on your knees.
One of the things we will do in treatment for knee pain is adjust the knee if it needs it. But, we will also adjust the lower back and pelvis along with some stretching of the muscles in the low back and pelvis. This gives your knees a break and takes the stress off of them so they no longer bother you all day and every day.
In conclusion, a lot of what we talked about today applies to anyone with low back pain. If you have low back pain, it is your body’s way of letting you know that something isn’t right. That something that isn’t right is often restrictions and instability in your low back and pelvis.
Most patient’s notice immediate relief after their first visit, but sometimes it does take a series of visits to correct an imbalance that has taken years to develop. Keep that in mind, but definitely give us a call if you have low back pain as chiropractic is extremely effective in treating low back pain.