By Elena Voropay

Consisting of bones, muscles, fascia, nerves, ligaments and tendons, your back is one of the most amazing living structures of the human body. It is hard and strong enough to keep your upper and lower body together, yet soft and flexible enough to let you bend, twist, rotate and turn in all directions. A healthy back is the core of free movement. As the centre of all your bodybuilding skills and abilities, sturdy back is your gateway to muscle-growing addiction and fat-melting perfection. At least until you damage it.

Consisting of 33 vertebrae forming the spine, there are many muscles, tendons and ligaments that keep your back and body together producing movement of all body parts. The main muscle groups of the back are the bending flexors and the straightening extensors.

If you can see your belly, at least in the mirror, you can see your flexors. And if you are like most of us, you probably pay way too much attention to your abdominal perfection. When it comes to training back parts you can't see, chances are that you concentrate on the bulk of your lats, or the Lattissimus Dorsi muscles, and disregard the small thin long extensors. As a matter of fact, these least superficial rods are the ones that support your spine and counterbalance the forces of flexors.

Endless crunches and sit-ups, leg raisers and spine twists may overwhelm your back from its front and contribute to your back pain. The complexity of the back structure makes the issue of the back pain not an easy subject to explore. The pain can come from the low, middle and upper parts, and bodybuilders know the Mother Nature's loud, clear signals of body damage in any of these parts.

If your body cannot function as a whole despite all your healthy muscle-building hours in the gym, you must be doing something wrong. Or not doing something right. Remember, the goal of bodybuilding isn't to get as big as you can, but to build a balanced body that is strong in every way.

Most fitness enthusiasts can get the pain from improper conditioning, insufficient warm-up before activities, excessive loads of weight, wrong exercise executions and spine twisting exercises. Experienced bodybuilders are expected to know all the back-protective measures, and many of them actually take these to heart. However, many size-obsessed lifters have their honorable reserved place in the clinic among the regular Low Back Pain patients.

Here, the reasons for Low Back Pain are most likely to be certain exercises forced out of the buffed and ripped systems day in and day out. The most common inducers of these are:

1. Squat

2. Dead Lift

3. Bench Press

4. Bend-over Rows

5. Loaded Back Extensions

6. Ab Curls

7. Oblique Crunches

Symptoms of Low Back Pain

First, it is important to figure out whether the pain is acute or chronic. Chronic pain bugs your waist area with annoyingly deep and dull sensation, possibly numbing your legs for a few weeks. Acute pain cuts your back in different places like a sharp butcher's knife occasionally. If chronic pain may have many causes, acute is usually the result of injury or trauma. Each of these require different treatments, so you've got to figure out what is it that you feel.

If you feel pain or stiffness in your back or legs when you sit, stand, cough, sneeze, or simply if you cannot fully move in all directions like you used to, pay attention to where it really hurts. Your body is a natural self-balancing system. When one part is weak, another tries to compensate for it and discomfort in one place can trigger pain in an entirely different part of the body.

The site of pain is not always the source of the problem, and back pain particularly falls into that category. If the pain is above the knee, then it may be a Low Back Strain. Any weaknesses in the calf or foot comes from a herniated spinal disk, pinched nerve.

Treatment of Low Back Pain

So, if Low Back Pain is the first thing that winks in the morning before you even roll out of bed, proper diagnosis and treatment must be your top priority. Even if you have mastered the art of tolerating aching back for years, now is the time to take action. The sooner you do it, the better. You may even have to choose visiting your doctor instead of going to the gym, but it's something that has to be done. skip your workout and squeeze the doctor's available time into your busy schedule.

After examining your complains and reviewing medical history, your GP may order X-rays, a EMG (electromyogram), CT scan, or MRI to identify the underlying problem and rule out other suspected triggers.

If your Low Back Pain is not too bad, muscle relaxants or painkillers may temprorarily ease it, but may cause dependency and are not recommended for long term use. In case of herniated disk, your doc would probably suggest an injection of corticosteroids to calm inflammation of the nerves.

Physiotherapist will show better ways of lifting weights, and may even surprise you with innovative bodybuilding techniques to ease your chronic Low Back Pain and prevent future flare-ups. By activating new neuro-muscular connections, these exercises may help you strengthen your back structures and wake-up all over-trained muscles giving them a stimulate to grow. Isn't that your ultimate healthy living direction?

Massage therapy, acupuncture, chiropractic treatments can help as well as long as these are done by qualified specialists with Low Back Pain focus. If your doctor revealed the unfortunate news of herniated or 'slipped' disc, then surgery may be needed.

Prevention

Being in-and-out of the gym for decades may make you stronger in some parts and weaker in other. Sometimes you may even have to give up certain exercises if sitting in the wheelchair doesn't sound appealing. The better solution is to take the boring preventive actions seriously. Best solution is to write these down and force yourself to follow the directions just like you follow your workout schedule:

* Warm-up for 10 minutes before any physical activity

* When performing squats, look slightly down with chest forward, align the knees with big toes, and keep abdominals contracted

* Bring the bar to the belly, not to the chest in bent-over rows

* Keep your spine in neutral alignment (or as close to it as possible) at all times

* Balance strength and flexibility of your spine flexors and extensors

* Double check the form before you lift any weight

* Substitute and interchange exercises to prevent overuse injuries

* Take occasional breaks from training of back, abs, legs

* Stop twisting your spine and pressuring spinal discs

* Gradualy cool down and stretch all muscles after vigorous activities

* Rest and sleep is just as important as exercise for all pain prevention and management. This is the only time when your back can actually relax from gravity and cruel pressure of bodybuilding.

* Sleep on your side or your back allowing natural curves of the spine

* Invest in a firm mattress and pillow that fully support your head and neck without letting your shoulders collapse forward dipping the chest back

* Unless you are hugging someone while you sleep, try a body pillow to keep your body naturally open and take the stress off your back and knees.