Swimming Helps Back Pain

Swimming helps back pain and walking does too first with a simple mean which is to stop your thoughts, to clear your mind, and stop you concentrating on pain. Swimming acts faster than walking because water's first effect is to get you rid of your own weight.

The best swim to help back pain is breaststroke because it calls on all muscles and train all of them, the only care you must take is to swim breaststroke keeping your head well in the line of your back. Do not swim unless you are used and at ease with getting your head underwater to breathout and not bending your head back as you could hurt you neck muscles.

Many time back pain is due to a lack of abdominal muscles strenght which leads you let your back curve too much because your spine is held straight by the muscles of your back and your abdominal muscles. To train yourself to keep your abdominal muscles tensed as much as possible and as long as possible you could try this trick which is used by professionnal dancers : tie a piece of strong wool directly on your skin around your waist. Anytime you will stop tensing your abdominal muscles and let your tummy go soft you will feel the piece of wool thread hurting your skin a little bit and you will remember to keep your abdominal muscles tensed to do not feel the wool thread anymore.

Give yourself a margin of one or two centimeters the first time and then tie the wool thread closer to your skin when your feel that you are making progress.
Until your abdominal muscles are strong enough, do not swim backstroke using movements of the legs, becaue if your abdominal muscles are not strong enough to keep your back straight the movement of your arms will make your back wave like a snake and you can badly hurt the vertebrae disks . Instead do the same training as professionnal swimmers put one foot above the other at the ankle level, keep the muscles of your leg tensed and press strongly your feet one on top of each other. Start moving your arms and use your abdominal muscles to keep your back in a straight line, to stop the snake movement and to keep your legs from hips to feet on the surface of water. Only then backstroke will help you train, the muscles of your shoulder, of your back and your abdominal muscles without any risk for your back.