THE BACK REPAIR MANUAL

Simple fixes for your chronic discomfort.

IF YOU’VE EVER, like me, relied on a bottle of Advil to get you through a weekend project, you know how frustrating back pain can be. And you don’t need to be a bricklayer to feel beat up. Being handy is tough on the body.

I’ve learned to be good to my back now and can work as hard as ever. But it took some painful lessons. In 2002, years of ignoring lower-back aches and shooting pains came home to roost at 2 am on a Saturday morning. I was woken by a sudden shooting pain in my hip so severe, I thought someone had broken in and stabbed me with an ice pick. I was practically paralysed.

The physical therapist I went to told me that intense physical labour, combined with a poor posture, long hours at a desk, and subpar body mechanics had bulged and ruptured the disc between my lowest two vertebrae, the L4 and L5. A year of physical therapy followed to increase the flexibility and strength of my back, hip, glute, and hamstring muscles so they would stop pulling my spine out of alignment and, in so doing, restore its natural curve.

Since that painful day, I’ve become a student of my own body and a committed caretaker. But even following my physical therapist’s stretching and strength orders, I wasn’t immune to flareups. Two years ago, a combination of fieldwork and overhauling a rental property literally put me on my back again.

This past year, however, has been different. I started working with Chicago physical therapist David Reavy, who has helped me fill in the gaps of my back-maintenance routine. He clued me in to two things no PT had touched on in the last 16 years: building the specific strength a handyman needs ( see the next page) and training my muscles and spine to constantly be in a position to perform like an athlete’s, even if I’ll never make a run, a catch, or a pass.

I tend to let my shoulders roll forward and hunch my upper back (sound familiar?). This sets off a cascading effect of pulling muscles out of alignment, so that when I go to pick up a chop saw or a stack of planks, my body isn’t properly braced to carry the weight, opening me up to more pain.

Reavy’s biggest piece of advice is to pull my shoulder blades back and downwards – to where they’re supposed to be – before doing any work in my workshop or yard. Then, when I pick up a steel toolbox of ratchets and sockets my back muscles can properly fire, which tells my stomach muscles to engage, and suddenly that 15-kilo box is a lot easier to lift onto my workbench.

Reavy’s routine isn’t going to give you a beach body – I didn’t have a beach body when I was a young man hauling two loads of shingles up a ladder, and at 59, I still don’t have one. But it will give you a body that’s prepared to do the physical work we handy people will find ourselves doing throughout our lives. We give constant attention to our bakkies and houses to keep them working. Our bodies deserve the same. – Roy Berendsohn

IT’S NOT JUST physical work that strains your back, though: it’s all work. ‘Everything we do is in front of us, whether it’s at a desk or manual work, and gravity is always pulling down, making our back work to keep us balanced front to back,’ says David Reavy, proprietor of Chicago’s React Physical Therapy, whose routine of body maintenance helped Alshon Jeffery, receiver for the Philadelphia Eagles NFL team, play all of last season with a torn rotator cuff.

As our work pulls us forwards and downwards, the body responds with a coordinated effort by the lats (the mid-back muscles that help you pull a lawn-mower starter), the abs and the glutes to stabilise the spine and reduce the stress on the back and arms. It’s an effective response, but it requires upkeep.

When your back rounds forward, it pulls your shoulder blades and lats out of place so they can’t do their job. Because the back-support muscles fire together reflexively, if your lats aren’t firing, your abs and glutes won’t get a signal to turn on, says Reavy. In Roy’s case (p34), his muscles were turned off by his posture, which meant they weren’t balancing the front-to-back stress on his spine – and that’s why Reavy’s first advice to Roy was to pull his shoulder blades back and down. By rounding forward while he worked, he was pinching the front of his L4 –L5 disc. Eventually, it gave out.

The good news, says Reavy, is that even if you’ve herniated a disc, it’s not too late to balance the forces on your spine and return to your old activities, or, if you’re in better shape, simply reduce aches and pains. When your muscles work together, they not only protect you, but make you noticeably stronger when it’s time to haul tools or building supplies, says Reavy.

Add these three moves to your morning or evening routine to better train and maintain your lats, abs, and glutes. They shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes, and, as Roy attests, it’s well worth your time.