As the season changes, it’s time to prioritize the health of your spine

Say goodbye to the winter slog- it’s time to freshen up your routine. Along with spring cleaning, you should always focus on the health of your spine. A great way to limit the impact of back pain on your life is by focusing on adding stability into your lower back. Your core and associated stabilizing muscles should be much more than a set of muscles developed for appearance’s sake; let’s look at the muscles which contribute to spinal stability and what they do for you:

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With so much focus on how to workout, we need to make sure we aren’t working out the wrong way! 

For many of us, working out is the first part of our routine to go out the window. Outside of work, working out is the activity that requires the most energy input and therefore it is the easiest to set aside on a day when you are feeling lazy. Let’s change our attitudes toward working out and avoid these common mistakes.

Are you actively practicing any of these workout pitfalls? 

• Working out for the mirror: mirror muscles are chests, shoulders, abs, biceps, triceps and traps; the ones that make you look great. Looking great is a part of feeling good, but by focusing on only these muscles, you are foregoing the strengthening of muscles that matter for the longevity of your body. 
• Working out is a chore: if you dread the hour of your day you have carved out for working out, chances are you are due for a change of activity. Focus on muscle building and cardio conditioning activities that you actually enjoy. 
• Taking short cuts on your warm up: This is the most important part of your work out. If you are going to take short cuts, make them in the actual exercise. Falling short on the warm up leaves you susceptible to injury and actually harms your chances of building muscle effectively. 
• Cardio before strength training: choosing cardio first can sap your energy levels that you need for muscle building. Try alternating days between the two or doing cardio after weights. 

When it comes to spinal health, posture is king

Unless you are constantly changing your position throughout the day, you are likely to settle in to some kind of posture that is putting undue pressure on some part of the body. Because “proper posture” involves a lot of positioning of the upper body, slumping and slouching causes a lot of the problems to filter down to the lower back, which is responsible for bearing the weight of the upper body. Read on to find out how you can make “good posture,” second nature. 

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