Hello Peeps.  Interesting theory regarding back pain from one Physical Therapist on television yesterday (the Dr. OZ show)!

He was saying that for back pain you should "strengthen" your hip flexor muscles instead of "stretching" them.

He goes on to say "strengthening exercises prior to your workout for the hip flexor muscles" causes "your brain" to signal the hamstring muscles to "relax" therefore putting "less stress on the spine" and decreasing injury/pain to the spine while exercising.

Back pain!! Pain during running 3 miles yesterday, slowed me way down. But I did it and no one can take that away from me :)

After that I stretched, took some Tylenol and applied two Salonpas patches on me.  It brought the pain from 8/10 to about a 4/10 (tolerable).

BUT I woke up with the pain this morning :o  Not going to let it stop me from my "everyday in May workouts" so I will only do a slow mile today and I will stretch stretch stretch, before, during and after.

Need to work on my abs and stretch my hip flexors.  Maybe I will try this method out, who knows.  I know one thing I need to work on my abs!

I am going to look for this study or for studies regarding this theory, in my ACSM medical article data base.

I was taught "stretch" hip flexors and hamstrings and lower back then "strengthen" the abs for back pain/injury prevention.  So his theory is a whole new twist.