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Lower back pain from cycling: try these 3 simple techniques to prevent it

Reduce the chance of low back pain with some simple exercises – and a tin of rice pudding

Many riders are troubled by low back pain, and it seems common that it has become an accepted 'just part of being a cyclist'. Three hours into a group ride and you can see a bit of squirming and sitting upright going on.

The low back area is a bit of a nightmare when it comes to muscles, tendons, nerves and bones. Take, for example, the hamstring muscles. They cross the knee joint, and also the hip joint. They help bring your heel to your backside from straight leg to flexed leg, and also help push your knee from raised to straight. Which should be an indicator of why it can be rather hard to get an accurate diagnosis of why it hurts here or there.

As a crazy little way to illustrate how connections between muscle, nerve and tendon can be beyond what we think is rational, try this little exercise.

Take your shoes off, stand up and touch your toes. Make a note of how far down your legs the tip of your fingers can reach. Now stand up and, using a tennis ball, rolling pin, or can of rice pudding, roll the soles of your feet 5-6 times, pressing hard so it’s a bit ‘ouchy’. 

Now try to touch your toes again – see how much further you can reach? But that’s an exercise in hamstring and low back flexibility! You haven’t done anything to them directly. You just rolled your feet. Now can you see how complex back pain can be?

Prevention, not cure

If you suffer from low back pain, the purpose of this article is not to diagnose why: it could be from a childhood injury, a single tight muscle, a wonky knee or a nerve being pinched. If you wish to know why your back hurts, you need a diagnosis and rehab programme from an established and credible injury specialist.

Rather, I want to address what you can do to minimise the likelihood of incurring back pain while riding and in normal life. I’m going to assume that you don’t have low back pain from a single injury incident that needs treatment but that you simply get some aching on rides.

Look down. Are you sitting on a chair with your legs bent at the hips? If you do this rather a lot, your hip flexor muscles will most likely be tighter than is good. As a result, when riding, there will be a tendency for your pelvis to rotate forward on the saddle. 

Now, this might not be an issue, if it wasn’t for the fact that you’ve probably got tight glutes and hamstrings which will be trying to rotating your pelvis in the other direction. Something will complain.

You may also find that slamming the stem, just like Adam Hansen, not only looks ‘proper pro’, but causes your pelvis to rotate forwards as you haven’t got the same core strength and flexibility that Mr Hansen has through numerous hours of off-bike conditioning.

What to do?

There are three steps to take that I believe will eliminate back pain for the majority of riders – if they don’t work you should seek a diagnosis from a credible injury specialist. This is not an exhaustive list of all the possible ways to eliminate backache, but it’s the most likely fix for the majority of riders.

Firstly, before you get out of bed, do some easy range of movement exercises.

Bring your knees to your chest, pull them in until you feel a stretch, then gently rock in and out of the stretched position for 20-30 seconds. Now put your feet back on the mattress but with knees bent. Drop your knees as far as possible to one side, hold the stretched position for 20-30 seconds, then do the same for the other side. Do this every day. Seriously.

OK, now on to more proactive exercises.

  1. Enhance the flexibility of your hip flexor muscles. 
  2. Enhance the flexibility of your hamstring muscles.
  3. Strengthen the muscles that form the main support for the pelvic area and lower back.

You can do this simply by protecting your genitals and head from an imaginary electric fence and then swinging a big heavy ball. What?

Two exercises, around 5 minutes a day – got to be worth trying?

Imagine an electric fence just under crotch height and pretend to step over it one leg at a time, lifting your feet high and rotating as you move. Then duck under another wire at belly button height, then turn around and back to the starting point leading with the other leg. High swing of the leg, low duck back under.

If you feel really stupid doing this in a dark room with no one watching you’ll probably be doing it right. Do 12 in total, rest for a minute, then 12 more.

Demonstrations here, and here.

Kettlebell Swing

Now for the big weight thing. The Kettlebell Swing is an excellent way to develop core strength and it will also add power to your pedalling. Find a kettlebell. Or fill a dry bag with sand. Or put a watermelon in a carrier bag (don’t do this really!). Then swing it.

Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, toes straight ahead like your riding position, crouched with knees slightly bent, looking straight ahead. Hold the kettlebell between your legs using a two-handed grip.

Keeping the arch in your lower back, bend your hips back until the kettlebell is between and behind your legs, then squeeze your glutes and snap your hips forward to extend your hips and swing the weight up. Don’t raise it with your arms, keep them straight and let the hips swing it up.

Then, control the swing back down with your arms, still keeping them straight, let the weight swing back between your legs as you bend your hips and slightly bend your knees, then hit it again.

Try 25 swings, rest, then 25 more. When you can do 75 in one set, up the weight. A good starting point tends to be 8kg for women and 12 kg for men.

There’s a good demonstration here

And that’s it! Try these two exercises three times a week for a few weeks and see if you notice a reduction in low back pain. 

 

Dave Smith has been involved in coaching cyclists in all disciplines for more than 25 years. A former GB national and Olympic road coach, Dave has trained Tour stage winners and Olympic medallists, world champions and numerous national champions. In addition he has applied his quirky and counter intuitive thinking to help dozens of regular cyclists, polo players and F1 drivers. He rides 250 miles a week on and off-road in all weathers.

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34 comments

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wtjs | 3 years ago
0 likes

Most, but undoubtedly not all, back pain in cyclists who don't do any back work like carrying heavy buckets etc., is due to back weakness. Cycling is useless for back 'core' strength- your back muscles are doing sod all. I don't know anything about yoga, and I'm not intending to find out, but it sounds to me like exercises for nutters although it could come out to be the same thing as proper exercises- which are what you need! I do recommend people with back pain doing kettleball swings, but it's sensible to work up to them with this (and also as a warm up before a kettleball session) for a few days:

Stand with legs slightly apart for stability, one arm straight out ahead from the shoulder, and the other straight out behind. Swing them backwards and forwards simultaneously, so that they reverse position, 20 or so times.Then graduate to doing these with the excellent Aldi 5 kg dumb-bells. Also 'the plank' as recommended below, but I spend some of the time with alternate legs lifted off the ground. All done every day, initially.

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leisurist replied to wtjs | 3 years ago
5 likes

Yoga is just exerise, not exercises for nutters. Many people would say cycling is for nutters. You belittle something that 300 million people in the world practice because you don't know anyting about it. I'm not sure I would take advice from someone so insecure they feel the need to make fun of something they don't understand.

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IanEdward replied to leisurist | 3 years ago
1 like

Plus there's only so strong your lower back can usefully be according to my physio, as she put it, if you can sit up unsupported then your lower back is strong enough!

Problem is, those muscles protest when they get overworked, either because they're in constant tension due to tight quads and hip flexors, or because your glutes aren't working when you pedal and you're having to use your lower back to stabilise your body.

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SacramentoFanBoy replied to leisurist | 2 years ago
0 likes

... Nicely said, you stole my thunder.

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leisurist | 3 years ago
1 like

I used to have terrible back pain as a runner. Once I switched to cycling, it went away completely! haha.

Also doing basic yoga (lots of sun salutations) helped. Overall spine mobility is really important.

I wouldn't recommend anyone with back pain start doing kettle ball swings!

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Steve K | 3 years ago
7 likes

Personally, I've got to the stage when about the only time my back doesn't hurt is when I'm riding my bike.

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IanEdward | 3 years ago
1 like

I've been switching between a cut out saddle (Bontrager Aeolus) and non cut-out saddle at the moment (Charge Spoon) as I try to resolve a saddle sore type issue.

I've noticed my lower back is usually more painful after a couple of hours on the non cut-out saddle, I guess because I'm subconsciously trying to rotate my pelvis backwards slightly to take pressure away from the perineum. 

Whereas with the cut-out saddle I can let my pelvis rotate to exactly where it wants to be, so the lower back muscles aren't having to engage as much to hold it in an unnatural position.

Not saying this is a solution for everyone, but worth considering.

As general life conditioning goes, I stretch quads and hip-flexors every morning now, so that my lower back muscles aren't constantly fighting them to maintain a natural curve in the spine.

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Eton Rifle | 3 years ago
4 likes

"using a tennis ball, rolling pin, or can of rice pudding".
I'm probably focusing on the wrong thing here but why rice pudding specifically? Can I expect the same results from a tin of beans?

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hawkinspeter | 4 years ago
0 likes

I get issues more with my upper back/shoulders than my lower back - I've taken to doing upper trapesius stretches in an attempt to fix it. Luckily, the current political situation means that I have lots of excuses to do exaggerated shoulder shrugs which helps loosen the traps.

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IanEdward | 4 years ago
0 likes

I feel something that doesn't get stressed enough in training type articles is the idea of building solid foundations first.

I didn't realise that lots of time on the turbo would be putting strain on muscles such as the piriformis that doesn't otherwise get strengthened by cycling.

Cue enormous spasm which has left me with some pretty serious sciatica. No more turbo and bye-bye cyclocross season!

Basically, if you're embarking on a new training regime, don't neglect your glutes and core! Your legs will be putting out more power and putting more stress through your glutes but they will be ill-equipped to deal with it.

Although I've learned this the hard way at least I now know what I need to do for next season, e.g. focus on building strong foundations before I start tearing my legs off on turbo!

 

Edit: I think my back is spasming just watching that kettlebell swing video! Think I'll be leaving that exercise well alone...

 

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Paul__M | 4 years ago
0 likes

Despite being pretty disciplined about yoga practice I suffer from this.

 

I solve it completely by switching bikes if I'm going to be out for a longish ride - onto the recumbent.

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BehindTheBikesheds | 4 years ago
0 likes

The one thing I've never suffered with but have shoulders that whilst not like biscuits can ache like crazy sometimes due to old injuries. Back was one of the things we always had to warm up with and stretch for rugby and you get bent around a fair bit as well as lots of pressure from being tackled/tackling. F

Yoga can help and is a good thing generally anyways but if you do suffer, something like Shiatsu can help and maybe find out if there's an underlying problem too.

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Legs_Eleven_Wor... | 4 years ago
1 like

Splendid.  I thought I'd saved this article last time around, but it went AWOL.  Making sure I bookmark it this time.  

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alotronic | 6 years ago
0 likes

First of all have an age appropriate bike position not based on your racing past <- note to self

Secondly this book has really sorted me out; written by a London cyclist/sports science type. Has an absolutely terrible title but the exercises in (and the descriptions about exactly why to do each one) are simple and actually work...  I took the rather large book to the gym with me for a couple of weeks and got some strange looks; who cares, it works! 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ride-Strong-Essential-Conditioning-Cyclists/dp/...

Thirdly consider not riding with a backpack... I loathe panniers do I use a large saddle bag a couple of times a week on the comutte just to get a load off.

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Eg3ftp1 | 7 years ago
0 likes

I've been doing the two proactive exercises every morning after cycling to work for a month now, and my fairly mild lower back pain is fixed. Have to hope no-one walks in on me in the changing room, but it's made a real difference, thanks.

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ydrol | 7 years ago
1 like

My tip: Keep well hydrated all the time.  Thats the stuff that helps the discs absorb shock. If you every experience back discomfort the day after  'a bender', that'll be a likely reason.

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pockstone replied to ydrol | 3 years ago
0 likes

Waking up in a skip doesn't help either.

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gunswick | 7 years ago
1 like

10 mins of yoga every morning will do it

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gunswick | 7 years ago
1 like

10 mins of yoga every morning will do it

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cdamian replied to gunswick | 6 years ago
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gunswick wrote:

10 mins of yoga every morning will do it

I agree, yoga includes a lot of useful stretching and rarely used muscle exercises.

There are some good yoga videos on YouTube which are cycling and lower back specific.

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Tjuice replied to cdamian | 6 years ago
0 likes

cdamian][quote=gunswick wrote:

There are some good yoga videos on YouTube which are cycling and lower back specific.

Any that you'd particularly recommend?

 

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timscottellis replied to Tjuice | 3 years ago
0 likes

I have tried many of them but the best ones for me are those included iwith the Sufferfest app.  You have to buy Sufferfest though.

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ConcordeCX | 7 years ago
1 like

A bike that fits would probably help that guy in the photo. They look comically mismatched

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Yorkshire wallet | 7 years ago
0 likes

Plank seems to work for me. That and glute exercises. 

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Vili Er replied to Yorkshire wallet | 6 years ago
0 likes

Yorkshire wallet wrote:

Plank seems to work for me. That and glute exercises. 

 

Yip. 2 mins of plank before bed each night does wonders for the core.

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Simontuck replied to Vili Er | 6 years ago
0 likes

alan loves froome wrote:

Yorkshire wallet wrote:

Plank seems to work for me. That and glute exercises. 

 

Yip. 2 mins of plank before bed each night does wonders for the core.

 

 

If She lets me

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De Sisti replied to Yorkshire wallet | 4 years ago
0 likes

Yorkshire wallet wrote:

Plank seems to work for me. That and glute exercises. 

Regularly stretching my glutes got rid of my back pain (that I only experienced when climbing).

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Colin Peyresourde | 7 years ago
1 like

Dangling your balls over an electric fence? You'd soon convince yourself that wasn't back pain you were feeling.

Sounds like you're describing the common groin openers that footballers favour.

Applying pressure on the psoas is also useful as it's all tied in with an anterior pull on the pelvis.

strengthening hammies can help with that issue too.

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curdins | 8 years ago
1 like

Nice stuff Dave. I'll give it a go - it's all about routine and a bit of discipline IMO - both of which I suffer a lack of.

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Dave Smith | 8 years ago
2 likes

It was nice to meet someone last week who has already found relief by doing the morning exercises while in bed, after years of niggles  1

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