Should I Run with Lower Back Pain?

5 causes of lower back pain when running

Lower back pain when running can come from various causes. Each affects the body’s mechanics and stability differently.

1. Hip Inflexibility

Your hips ideally should allow a full range of motion without restriction. This ensures that your hip joint stays healthy. Your hips need to be strong and stable throughout the full range of motion into flexion, extension, internal rotation, external rotation, hip abduction, and adduction.

If you lose the ability to move through one of those ranges while you are running, your body will adapt, but over time that adaptation can strain your back.

For instance, let’s say that you have difficulty lifting your knee to your chest or even to 90 degrees. Then you go running. You will either limit how high your knee comes off the ground, or your lower back will have to tuck under to help give you the range you want.

Or let’s say you have limited hip extension. Then every time you advance your leg, your lower back has to extend or arch to give you the range of motion you need to propel yourself forward.

Both of these adaptations add stresses to your back that are not typically there, which will lead to pain.

2. Poor Trunk Stability

Unlike your hips that need to be very flexible, your trunk needs to be very stable. While doing all things, your trunk is supposed to resist all motions such as rotating, bending, and twisting.

Think about how weird it would be if you could not sit up in a chair without slumping forward or to the side. Or if you walked down the street, every time you wanted to turn your head, your whole body would turn with you. Our ability to move as freely as we do is because our trunk has the ability to be stable.

Now to running…When you run, you add additional forces to the mix compared to simply sitting or walking. Your muscles have to be able to resist the impact of you pushing yourself forward and landing on the ground.

This adds additional stress to your upper back from your neck and shoulders moving and to your abdominal muscles as they try to stabilize your lower back and pelvis.

When your upper back or your abdominal muscles get tired and are no longer able to hold your bones steady, you will notice side to side trunk motion, and that your shoulders will slump down or rotate more.

All these motions add stress to your spine, which will lead to back pain.

3. Impaired Posture

Ideal posture is created by maintaining the natural slight curves in the spine. Due to sitting and other aspects of modern life, we tend to have an increased curve in our thoracic spine, the upper back or shoulder blades area, and the lower back.

By increasing the angle of these curves, we are inadvertently compressing one part of our spine bones more than the other. Over time this uneven pressure can cause permanent changes to our spine alignment and health.

This change to the lower back posture can happen over time in several ways. Two common ways are from tight muscles either on the lower spine or front of the hips pulling the bones in your spine closer together. Whether the tight muscles are in the front or the back, both cause your lower back into an exaggerated lordotic position, commonly called anteriorly rotated.

The thoracic spine changes typically happen from having our head forward, causing the muscles in the upper back to get stretched and weaken over time from trying to hold our heads up.

Back to running. If you start with a shortened joint space, caused by these changes in posture, then you add compression forces from the impact of landing while running, you further shorten this space. Over time this can lead to muscle spasms, fractures in the spine or disc bulges.

4. Weak muscles

Since running is an endurance sport, we tend to forget that we need a baseline amount of strength to run with good mechanics.

Strength is what allows your muscles the ability to continually absorb the impact of landing then quickly propel you forward. And running is a full-body sport. Your upper back works to hold your shoulders during arm swing, your abdominal muscles help you breathe efficiently while keeping your pelvis stable, and your legs are completing single-leg hops for however many miles you are running.

It doesn’t take but one muscle to be weaker than the rest for this whole system to start making adaptations.

For example, if your hip flexor muscles are weak, then you will have to change how you lift your knee up. One way to get around using your hip flexor is to bring your knee out to the side versus straight forward. This uses a different muscle. Unfortunately, that different muscle is supposed to help you not shift from side to side. Over time this shifting left to right makes it hard to stabilize your pelvis when you are on one foot, which leads to lower back pain.

As a side note: Weak muscles can come from overtraining. It is important to make sure you recover between runs, to ensure you don’t break down your muscle strength.

5. Poor Shock Absorption

The moment your foot hits the ground, you’re supposed to be absorbing shocks. Proper shock absorption starts with your feet, then moves to the muscles in your legs up to your hips.

Weakness or poor coordination in your feet and hips can lead to hard impacts with the ground, sending the shock all the way up your legs into the back.

This repeated force can aggravate the muscles around your spine and/or the joints in your spine.

How do I stop my lower back from hurting when I run?

Here are seven tips that will help you stop having lower back pain and get you back to running without limitation.

1. Good Running Shoes

Make sure you are running with the correct equipment.

For this sport, the shoes you wear are very important for reducing the stresses on your body. You need proper support and cushion depending on the surfaces you’re running on and the number of miles you are running.

Running shoes are designed to last for about 500 miles. If you are running 9-15 miles every week, then you need a new pair every year. But if you are running about 20 miles a week, then you should replace them every 6 months.

To find out more about proper shoe fit, please check these articles & videos and read the one appropriate for your foot position:

• What Are the Best Types of Running Shoes for Neutral Feet?
• What Are the Best Types of Running Shoes for Pronated Feet?
• What Are the Best Types of Running Shoes for Supinated Feet?

2. Warm Up

When you’re a kid, you just run for fun; you don’t get sore. Your body is used to ramping up quickly and then shutting down just as quickly.

Welcome to adulthood – your body needs a transition.

Just like when you put on music to get your mind pumped up for your run, your body needs 5-10 minutes to get ready for the run (warming up).

If you are looking for ideas on how to warm up for a run. I personally like Active stretches, high knees, butt kicks, lateral lunges. These can be done at a lower intensity than running but they use the same muscles. By the time you get down with 30 sec to a minute of these exercises your body is warm and muscles have been prepared for your run.

Once you get into the habit of warming up your body will thank you.

3. Stretch

Stretching is like the medication everyone knows they should take but don’t.

After running, I always suggest stretching. First, it is a great cool-down activity; it prevents muscle soreness by improving recovery time. Not to mention helping joint health throughout your body.

To cool down, my go-to stretches are passive stretching (so you hold these for 30-60 seconds) hamstring, hip flexor, quad, piriformis, and calves.

Stretching is vital for everyone but especially for runners. Stretching helps your muscles and joints maintain the balance and resilience needed to run for years.

As a side note: Any running program I design has a day of active recovery, which consists of a long stretching program 15 to 20 minutes of stretching. When you take the time to stretch, it helps you become more in tune with your body.

4. Strengthening

Running is an endurance sport. However, it takes a lot of strength to maintain the proper body mechanics to run properly.

Your whole body is challenged while running; which is what makes it such a good thing for your health and wellness.

I know that most runners have a hard time with the idea of not running for a day. However, all professional runs follow a strengthening program. This tells you the importance of strength training. Taking the time to strengthen your body with weights or at least body weight activities will not take away from your running; it will only add to your pace and distance while improving your recovery time.

Exercises like lunges, squats, and heel raises are foundational movements for runners.

5. Plyometric training

Back to being a kid…when you are 5 years old, jumping was part of your everyday life. As an adult, most of us don’t have a daily reason to jump.

Like everything in life, jumping and landing is a skill that we lose over time if we don’t practice. Plyometric training is a way to practice the skill of absorbing the impact of landing.

Start plyometric training by jumping rope or just small hops on the ground. When you land, you should not hear a loud thud as you hit the ground. By learning to absorb the impact, you will be reducing the stress on your back and other joints while you run.

6. Ice and Heat

Apply ice for 10 minutes. If that doesn’t relieve your symptoms, apply heat for 10 minutes. Whichever one helps your pain is the right one for you. But you shouldn’t feel the need to constantly have ice or heat on your body to make it through the day.

After applying ice or heat, you should have less or no pain for at least 30 minutes.

7. See a physical therapist that specializes in runners

As a runner, if you’ve suffered nagging back pain for more than 2-3 weeks, please see a physical therapist that specializes with runners to find the root cause.

Why let discomfort steal the joy of running and being active for any longer than necessary?

There are various reasons for back pain while running. A physical therapist – especially one who helps active adults – should work hands-on with you to:

1. Help you learn the root cause of your pain
2. Create a plan to stop the pain
3. Fix the problem
4. Make your body resilient against the same injury.

If you’re in the Cypress, Texas area, and you need help with your pain, don’t keep waiting. Call us now or request an appointment.

If you’re unsure, read reviews and testimonials of Your Goals PT from runners like yourself.