Core strengthening can help with back pain, but in this case it’s different. Walking on soft or variable surfaces causes less impact pain to sensitive nerves. People with poor flexibility or damaged discs in their back feel more pain from walking on hard, flat surfaces. The quality of shoe support / insoles can help with this too. If you have back pain when you walk, you start to compensate for it with an uneven gait, turning your pelvis inward or outward or tightening your hips. Over time this will cause tight muscles that will pull your spine out of alignment and exacerbate pain. Uneven terrain will force a break in these habits and encourage mobility and stretching in tight hips, hams and back muscles. This can be improved off a trail by doing mobility exercises like 3d lunge matrix, kinetic hip flexor and hamstring stretches. I would add that while you can prevent most back pain by doing core strengthening, wearing supportive footwear and doing these kinds of flexibility/mobility practices, it is always better for your body to have variability in how it exerts itself, than doing the same exercises over and over. Hiking is great for this because the terrain and the way you tackle it changes a lot each time you hike.
Oh yeah and a chiropractor will not resolve issues like this. Find a physical therapist that works with athletes and kinetic mobility/recovery stuff. Most PTs work with old people, post op, or chemo patients and are too gentle/slow in their approach to younger folks who need to retain their bodies.
My chiropractor made a small suggestion that a walk in the forest could help, and I discarded it because I was already “walking in the forest” a lot. Except I kept to the well-trodden paths. And I walked on asphalt to get to the forest. And it didnt really help. And the exercises he told me to do at home didnt really do much.
If you’re rough on your body, they can be an absolute godsend.
I’m at the point where I can’t always get my skeleton to go back to where it ought to be, and a good chiro can find exactly which bones aren’t.
Last one I went to was during a bicycle tour. The campsite wasn’t ideal, and I awoke not being able to look left. Like at all. Turn to the right, ow that hurts, try to turn left, head stops straight forward, sharp spike of pain and no further movement.
Well whatever. Break camp, mount up, ride a couple miles. Now I’m warm and loose, right? Do some stretches. Go through as much of the routine as I can, get some pops and creaks, but still can’t turn my fucking head. Slightly better.
Pedaling like this is a fucking bastard, because it’s not just my neck, I’m all fucked up, but the road lies ahead and we go.
Get into town some hours later, have some lunch, a couple beers, still can’t move for shit, see a sign for a chiro. Guy does walk-ins, thank god. Gets what we’re doing, says ‘well, I’m never gonna see you again, so I’ll do the best I can in one go’
I think that motherfucker popped every goddamn vertebrae in the whole spine, and some of em twice.
Felt like a new man. Finally felt those beers. Rest of the tour went fine
Is that just to work out your core muscles? Because these easier ways to work them out.
Core strengthening can help with back pain, but in this case it’s different. Walking on soft or variable surfaces causes less impact pain to sensitive nerves. People with poor flexibility or damaged discs in their back feel more pain from walking on hard, flat surfaces. The quality of shoe support / insoles can help with this too. If you have back pain when you walk, you start to compensate for it with an uneven gait, turning your pelvis inward or outward or tightening your hips. Over time this will cause tight muscles that will pull your spine out of alignment and exacerbate pain. Uneven terrain will force a break in these habits and encourage mobility and stretching in tight hips, hams and back muscles. This can be improved off a trail by doing mobility exercises like 3d lunge matrix, kinetic hip flexor and hamstring stretches. I would add that while you can prevent most back pain by doing core strengthening, wearing supportive footwear and doing these kinds of flexibility/mobility practices, it is always better for your body to have variability in how it exerts itself, than doing the same exercises over and over. Hiking is great for this because the terrain and the way you tackle it changes a lot each time you hike.
Oh yeah and a chiropractor will not resolve issues like this. Find a physical therapist that works with athletes and kinetic mobility/recovery stuff. Most PTs work with old people, post op, or chemo patients and are too gentle/slow in their approach to younger folks who need to retain their bodies.
Im no physician, I dont know.
My chiropractor made a small suggestion that a walk in the forest could help, and I discarded it because I was already “walking in the forest” a lot. Except I kept to the well-trodden paths. And I walked on asphalt to get to the forest. And it didnt really help. And the exercises he told me to do at home didnt really do much.
Probably was from getting away from the chiropractor, ngl
Don’t let a couple kooks spook you.
If you’re rough on your body, they can be an absolute godsend.
I’m at the point where I can’t always get my skeleton to go back to where it ought to be, and a good chiro can find exactly which bones aren’t.
Last one I went to was during a bicycle tour. The campsite wasn’t ideal, and I awoke not being able to look left. Like at all. Turn to the right, ow that hurts, try to turn left, head stops straight forward, sharp spike of pain and no further movement.
Well whatever. Break camp, mount up, ride a couple miles. Now I’m warm and loose, right? Do some stretches. Go through as much of the routine as I can, get some pops and creaks, but still can’t turn my fucking head. Slightly better.
Pedaling like this is a fucking bastard, because it’s not just my neck, I’m all fucked up, but the road lies ahead and we go.
Get into town some hours later, have some lunch, a couple beers, still can’t move for shit, see a sign for a chiro. Guy does walk-ins, thank god. Gets what we’re doing, says ‘well, I’m never gonna see you again, so I’ll do the best I can in one go’
I think that motherfucker popped every goddamn vertebrae in the whole spine, and some of em twice.
Felt like a new man. Finally felt those beers. Rest of the tour went fine
My man, you need a better bed. I get this whenever I sleep on a shit bed somewhere.
If you’re camping take a cot
When I’m camping I take a memory foam mattress topped with a sheepskin.
Which is what we were sleeping on during that story.
Which is approximately 10,000% more comfortable than any cot I’ve ever used
Sounds comfy. Could depend on the spinal support and alignment though. A cot keeps you off uneven ground. FWIW