Back Pain – Gone

“I can’t run because I have a bad back.”

This is why you should run barefoot.

All my life I have had this strange concave curve in my lower back called Lordosis. It was so bad, that growing up my doctor couldn’t decide if I had scoliosis or not. Going back to the 70’s I can’t remember sleeping through a night where I didn’t have to change positions every ten minutes because my back would become uncomfortable. Plus no matter how good of shape I was in, I always looked like I had a big beer belly because the curve in my spine made me push my stomach out.

This condition caused me to throw my back out all the time. One week before my wedding, I worked for a mud-jacking company and messed up my back so bad that I couldn’t stand up straight, couldn’t sit in a chair, and couldn’t lay in on position for more than five minutes. This meant I did not sleep well all night long. I did recover from this particular injury quickly because my soon-to-be wife told me I would be better in time for our wedding.

After some forty years of not knowing what to do about this condition, I decided to start a stretching routine that focused on my lower back and building up my abs. I saw positive results just after a few weeks and I started sleeping better. But, I couldn’t completely get rid of the curve even after several months of stretching and crunches. My abs did begin to show some definition at this point and that was cool.

Without thinking this would have any effect on my Lordosis, the barefoot running came along. I noticed after the first week a dramatic improvement in my posture, plus my lower abs were sore (meaning I was pushing my hips forward making my back straight). As I ran, I thought I could feel my back straightening up but wrote it off to my imagination.

After the second week of running barefoot, I noticed my lower back now rested flat on the mat when I did my crunches. The curve in my lower back never allowed this to happen before. I ran through the math in my head as to why this would happen all of a sudden. Several months of crunches and stretching produced some change but what variable came along to make such a dramatic difference in just two weeks. Oh yeah, I started running barefoot.



1)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lordosis
2)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lordosis#Treatment