Incline Push-Ups: A Great Alternative for Lower Back Pain Sufferers

Keep the Pressure Off Your Lower Back While Getting an All-around Great Upper Body Work Out

Push-ups are one of those exercises that never go out of style. It’s one of those exercises I have always done. Perhaps I never enjoyed doing them at the time, but I always appreciated the results later. You don’t need to pay monthly dues to perform a push-up. They can be done anywhere, anytime and done correctly; they’ll impact your biceps, triceps and chest more than lifting any amount of weight.

Push-ups have always found their way into the regimens of amateur and professional boxers as well as amateur wrestlers, and who knows how many other sports.

But it wasn’t until I hurt my back several months ago that a chiropractor friend of mine showed me a new method of doing push ups that has absolutely “done a number” on my arms, my shoulders and my pectoral muscles. Even more so than conventional push-ups. And the great thing is that these push-ups keep the pressure off my lower back, while at the same time I continue to build up my overall muscle strength in my back.

But a first a little information on lower back pain. According to the American Fitness Association, “LBP” as it is affectionately known, is estimated to afflict nearly 80 percent of adults at some point in their lives. Further more, lower back pain cause almost as much problems in men and women under the age of 45 than it does in men and women over the same age. But it’s in the 30 -50 age group where most of the problems occur.

My lower back pain was the end-game of too many years of carrying heavy objects. Heavy is heavy. Whether it’s a piano, a couch or a small child. The repetition of supporting heavy objects goes against what the spine and lower back were made for. The pain in my lower back was aggravated apparently by the very exercise many doctors recommend to prevent lower back pain in the first place - push-ups!

But that’s misleading. By arching my back somewhat while doing push-ups on the ground I was putting pressure on the disks in the lower back. That’s all it took.

Now what?