Do You Need to Strengthen Your Core to Protect Your Back?
About the Author: Hannah Breal, PT, DPT is the co-owner of Made 2 Move Physical Therapy in Charleston and Charlotte. She helps athletes and active adults rebuild strength, mobility, and confidence so they can move pain-free for life.
Made 2 Move Physical Therapy – Charleston | Daniel Island | Mount Pleasant | Charlotte
“I have back pain. Do I need to strengthen my core to protect my back from injuries?”
As a physical therapist I get this question a LOT (precisely 3 times just last week) and it’s a tricky one to answer, because it’s both yes AND no.
Let’s get into it:
1. NO.
Most people think their “core” just involves their abs. In that case, no, strengthening your abs does not “protect” your back.
(tbh, when I say core work, I usually mean ab exercises. So I’m guilty here too LOL. But ACTUALLY, our core is our entiiiire core - front and back. Not just abs!!)
If you want your back to be strong, prepared, and resilient to injury (what most people mean by “protect” - then you need to train your BACK.
Side bending, flexion, extension, hinging, rotation - are all motions our back muscles (ahem, the back of our cores) were designed to do.
But if our whole core training is just a couple of planks and sit ups, we’re not actually training our BACKS.
And we have SO many back muscles - if we neglect them, we can’t be surprised when they are weak, stiff, and vulnerable to being overloaded.
You wouldn’t do tricep exercises to train your biceps.
You wouldn’t do tricep exercises to train your biceps. You’d do bicep exercises.
Tricep exercises (and ab exercises) are fine, but they have different purposes.
Like… are your “weak abs” causing your back pain?
Or do you have a weak back because you never move or load it?
If people put half the energy towards training their backs that they put towards their glutes or abs.... I bet there would be less back injuries.
You can quote me on that.
2. YES, if...
If by “core” you mean your entire core - front AND back - then yes, strengthening and training your back to be prepared for different forces, positions, and stressors WILL decrease your injury risk.
Our backs are involved in literally everything we do and they deserve to be trained and prepared just like any other muscle group!
Train your back with a free guide
And that’s why I made you a full guide of allll the back movements you need to be training.
It has all the movements, videos, modifications, progressions, and a sample 10 week plan to actually build back training into your routine.
You can download it here! → https://share.hsforms.com/1Bo6UGCJvRSGJEEB4qTRTlQnpyim
If you have back pain, a weak/stiff back, or you just want to build a more resilient back...
You probably don’t need to do more crunches.
You probably need to do more back exercises.
