I started suffering with lower back pain about a year ago. I did a bit of research and decided that I need to do more core work. But it has now got to the point that when I get off my bike I struggle to stand up straight because I feel so stiff.

I changed my bike frame to a bigger one a few months back as a result of my old one being too small, but this has not helped the situation.

The lower back always play me up as well if I have to stand up for a period of time. For example in a queue.

Now I feel that I should go and see someone as it really starting to nag now.

There are so many options.

Physio
Osteo
Chiro
Massage Therapist
Bike fit

Just wondered whether anyone has had the same and been to see someone and seen any improvements

Thanks

Pilates. I find it great for staying on top of SIJ and hip issues + osteopath the the odd tweak + swimming

As someone who suffers unspeakably with a bad back, to the point where I spent almost two weeks in hospital two summers ago, I would say that a combination of

physio/massage therapy/NSAIDs/heating pad at night/concentrating on your posture/pilates and/or core training

will work. I am dead serious.

One thing I would urge you to avoid (and I know there will be many who disagree) is the chiropractic route. I hate those quacks for a whole host of reasons.

Regardless of whether you decide to agree with that last statement, though, please trust me on the list I gave you.

I’d go to a physio first. Get a recommendation from someone, Facebook is good for this….

It’s likely to be an issue down the chain rather than your actual back. Get someone who can see where this is (for me it was tight glutes) and see if there is a quick and obvious fix.

If it starts getting more weird and wonderful them move on to a back specialist.

That’s my 2p worth anyway! I’m sure many will disagree and one or two may even agree because without knowing the diagnosis up front the right course can only be made with hindsight.

I should ask: where are you located?

Had bad back / knees for a long time, finally sought out an osteo who was also a keen cyclist. Turns out what I thought was terminal was all related to tight ITB and hamstrings. Stretching twice per day, foam roller and monthly osteo massage sessions and I now feel much much better. Not 100% but getting there.

If you are near southampton I can give you the number of my osteo

I have seen a 2 different chiros in the past for non back issues, and they all resorted to the winding the neck up to get it to crack and the same with the back. I don’t felt it helped and was just a show piece. I imagine there are some good chiros out there, but my first impressions were not great

I am in Dorset, but someone in Central London would be ideal. In the past I have never been any good at stretching and I suspect it could be tight hamstrings / hip flexors.

I started stretching more, but like you say I think you need to do this daily.

I am in salisbury and interested in an osteopath recommendation . Could you email me the number please dt78?

If the pilates is making your back pain worse OP, have you thought about yoga? I had similar issues and yoga is definitely better for me than pilates as it’s less dynamic . Obviously that depends on the teacher though. After a year off the bike, 6 weeks of yoga have seen me cycle 10 miles this evening 🙂

had your feet checked by a podiatrist?

excessive pronantion (or flat feet) can sometimes be the cause of lower back pain and is often overlooked by other professionals.

always worth a shot seems as though you mention that standing for long periods of time causes pain.

dt 78 i’d have that checked too.

-1 chiropractors. from experience blagges doing more harm than good. All about the money and not about the patient.
+1 for a getting a proper diagnosis. For me seeing an orthopaedic surgeon and getting an MRI

Had bad back / knees for a long time, finally sought out an osteo who was also a keen cyclist. Turns out what I thought was terminal was all related to tight ITB and hamstrings. Stretching twice per day, foam roller and monthly osteo massage sessions and I now feel much much better. Not 100% but getting there.

If you are near southampton I can give you the number of my osteo

Snap from Southampton.

Ended up doing a term of pilates, my Osteopath (could be the same woman) also runs pilates classes, and my back is a lot better now.

Check out some of the stuff on MobilityWod as well.

The guy’s love/hate. Personally I have a man crush on him.

If you’re in East Dorset go see George at http://www.thepracticeatferndown.com/ . Without him and my pilates teacher cycling is nothing but a dream.

I suffered for a while, not as bad as some thankfully, I found that when I started volleyball again it went away. Tight hamstrings were pointed out as the cause of my issues too

with old age (and mtbing, keep fit and hockey) I started geting probs esp after hockey (*which apparently along with mtb shortens hamstrigs – gave up footie after two major failures during full power kicks), anyway I now find post sport stretching (esp hockey) makes the difference between walking and hobbling the next day
(I do 5 mins or so back stretches and leg stretches whilst ‘cooling down’ and it works for me)
yoga is also meant to be good for backs

RichPenny – sent you this link to Nicky’s website

http://www.carltonroadclinic.co.uk/Home.html

Oh, I forgot to mention, yes I also was recommended to have orthotics too which I wear day to day. Use specialised footbeds on the bike.

Cheers dude, will give them a call when i’m ready for it. Like the look of the cycle position stuff as well, have you done that?

My lower back pain and sciatica is caused by tight hamstrings also. I’ve been doing stretches twice a day, plus extra before and after riding for the last month or so since seeing my osteopath. Pains pretty much gone now, only came back over the weekend after a 7 hour drive to anglesea to visit family and i didn’t do any stretches for a few days.

RP – yes I did the osteo assessment / bike fit. Worth the money imo.

Do it sooner rather than later.

And you need to keep the stretching up, couple of days off and I’m in pain again too. Had to make it part of the morning routine to guarantee I do it (though morning isn’t the best time to be stretching)

Hamstring stretches, and if you can get out to Crystal Palace, try Crystal Palace Sports Injury Centre – physios, podiatrist and bike fit all in the same place.

Got me back on the bike after a broken ankle, and threw in some advice about lower back pain at the same time.

I skimmed through this post, but having had a slipped disc made much worse by Pilates (probably caused by it as well) and having seen a chiro at the time who seemed to make matters worse, I would look for a good physio (get a recommendation) and start from there.

When exercising don’t do anything that hurts (as I did) unlike a cardio work out, the pain is your body telling you to stop – listen to it.

Good luck

See a specialist not a personal trainer, yoga teacher or whatever, but someone with true medical knowledge before you start looking for exercises to strengthen your core

My chiro has been excellent and has not only sorted out a chronic neck problem from years of bad posture and a chronic shoulder problem from years of bass playing but also hugely helped with the rehab of my seriously messed up broken ankle. However she does seem much more oriented towards modern medicine than new age hippy bs…

Get your GP to recommend a proper physiotherapist. Anything less is a waste of time and may even exacerbate the condition.

Get your GP to recommend a proper physiotherapist. Anything less is a waste of time and may even exacerbate the condition.

only go to a physio that someone you know strongly recommends as many seem to be a waste of time. Don’t bother going to a GP for recommendations.

In London I would try this osteopath:

http://www.ec4osteopath.co.uk/

A guy named Mike Vassiliou – I haven’t been to him but a friend who seems to have loads of hip flexor/hamstring issues has and he helped a lot – although my friend has now moved on to someone more specialist.

He is an over-50s runner with good times (I believe – I only jog), and seems to know a lot about muscle conditioning/recovery. See here:

http://www.highgateharriers.org.uk/hh_aa_interviews.php?i=109

An interesting newer name was Mike Vassiliou, who only started running in 2006, after taking his children down to join the local running club. He won the ‘Over 50’ 100 in 12.43 and the 200 in 24.73 but often tends to run the 400, which he won a European Masters silver medal for in the Over 45’s

Personally I have always had lower back pain and get the same stiffness you mention when having to stand around when shopping with the wife and having to stand around, and used to on the bike.

My hamstrings are very tight and in a flexibility test at the gym I scored -20 on a scale of 0 to 100 🙁

I found it started to get better when I used this stretch – keep your whole back straight and in-line whilst bending at the hips to try and touch your toes – this will stretch your gluts rather than your hamstrings.

Women bend like this when touching their toes, men tend to bend the upper back and end up like a question mark in profile.

Also look for people doing stretches for piriformis syndrome on youtube, which is something that gives you sciatica type symptoms, but the stretches are very relevant.

See your GP first? I spent years trying allsorts of different treatments to finally get an MRi showing 2 prolapses and 2 degenerative discs. A combination of stretching and keeping mobile works for me most of the time then strong painkillers when it doesn’t (careful if they give you dihydrocodeine as they are a bit moreish!).

The other one I found to be excellent were sports rehabilitation who realised my hips were out of level and worked on that with me which solved a lot of the back pain.

A woman I worked with had similar symptoms to me and it turned out to be cancer so always worth getting the diagnosis correct in the first place.

TurnerGuy – Member

only go to a physio that someone you know strongly recommends as many seem to be a waste of time. Don’t bother going to a GP for recommendations.

Words fail me.

I had exactly the same symptoms as the OP (again in Southampton – something in the water?). Went to GP. Had back scan – nothing. Got recommended physio (under private health scheme through work to speed up process) and have been much better.

15 mins each morning stretching and doing core exercises, concentrate on posture (not easy when sitting for 12+ hours a day!) and balance ball exercises.

As long as I keep these up, i’m not too bad. Stop, and its hell again after a short period.

I saw Suzanna Cretney, a abck specialist, who has just moved here in Hythe

Definitely worth seeing your GP

First port of call – gp

Osteopath not chiropractor IMO / IME

Core strength and flexibility is key

Posture on bike could well be an issue

I’ve had/got similar symptoms but not quite as bad by the sounds of it.

I know a local sports massage lady who is very good in diagnosing issues like this – very similar to what a physio does but more than a basic sports massage.

Mine is due to too much cycling 🙂 and a desk job causing tightness in some core muscles which pulls the lower back.
Saw her 3 days ago and she painfully stretched the muscles – hip flexor and some in my stomach. Made a remarkable difference.

I now have a regular stretching regime which has helped and this week it has been better than normal.

Also worth having regular massages to address tightness/pulls before they become apparent. I thought it was a bit of a scam at first but it really does help – I used to go every 8 weeks and could tell when there was something wrong by the amount of pain I endured – one leg fine with nothing wrong, the other excruciating as she did the same on it.
Not real surprise to me that I got a bad back as I’ve not been for 9 months.

Words fail me.

Why? The physios I have been to have been pretty useless, the friend I mentioned above wasted a year seeing physios and not making progress, and there was another physio enthusiast on this forum who changed his tune a bit when he actually went to one with a problem.

Fair enough going to one with a track record, hence why you should look for recommendations, not blindly go to a name provided by your GP, which is what I did.

My mother had some back problems, GP sent her to consultant who recommended an OP to do something severe (remove a disc or something horrific like that) with a pretty high chance of failure and paralysis. In the end an osteo fixed the pain in 3 visits…

Osteopath not chiropractor IMO / IME

Osteo that does deep tissue massage as well before any manipulation would be best – much more effective.

Indeed turner guy – personal recommendations are a good idea

See a physio, find out what the problem is before doing pilates stretching, massages etc.

I had bad lower back pain for years, told to do various stretches on my IT band and legs, chiro back snapping,etc. Finaly went to see a consultant and he was very good in explaining what a complicated piece of machinery one’s back is and how it can be very difficult to identify the underlying problems just through MRI scans he refered me to a physio who quickly found out what the route cause was and it was a problem with in my ribs resulting in postural imbalance and nothing to do with i.t bands hamstrings.

Doctor 1st

A more up right position on the bike might help? Getting a larger bike would not help as you would be bent more. Change stem length and spacers.

+1 for gym and core it works for me. I never stretch 🙂 and I do about 200 miles a week on average. I also include 2 – 3 gym sessions as these are essential for core stability to balance leg strength.

It took me till I was 19 at an army medical to find out I had a curved spine. “Face the wall, bend over, spread your arsecheeks. Ooh, he’s got Scoliosis!” Facing a lot of lower back pain I have to do specific exercise to prevent injury/pain. If I lapse, I suffer. Situps for me are with my knees bent and my hands in front of me. The traditional way actually causes me injury almost straight away..

My GP once thought my neck bones were crumbling after a long period of inactivity as I ended up with limited movement and in constant pain. One of the legs on my pc chair had broken and I had started using a cheap chair I had in storage which caused bad posture.

See your GP, see specialists, but also follow peoples recommended physios. Don’t just stop at one diagnosis if you don’t feel happy. And keep good records of everything. My current medical records for a major (recoverable) disability are now missing which is leading to a complete nightmare for me.

Scoliosis

the osteo I go to converted someone from this:

to this:

I assume you are worse?

Here you can see him working on his pregnant wife.

I think it’s very difficult to label all professionals the same. The term Physio, chiropractor or osteopath gives you nothing apart from the training they initially did. It gives you no indication of the experience, interests or post grad courses that individual has undertaken.
I know some shockingly bad examples of all of the above but also (thankfully) many talented, dedicated manual therapists.
This is where personal recommendation is essential. From experience, glossy websites etc are not always indicative of medical talent.
Cycling is relatively unique in that it is a sport where your body is held in a fixed position for long periods of time. Any therapist should be aware of the importance of this and be capable of challenging the bike fit themselves (or work with a bike fitter). They must also understand the biomechanics of cycling to be able to diagnose correctly what is going wrong. The pain is very rarely where the problem is as the body compensates making diagnosis challenging. Hence why so many of you have had bad experiences with therapists who may not understand this.
Its not what the therapist is called but what they are able to do which really counts. So ask what their experience with cyclists is and be prepared to move to a different one if you are not happy.
Ps I’m a Physio who works with cyclists so the above info is accurate. 🙂

Ps I’m a Physio who works with cyclists so the above info is accurate.

who keeps falling off their bike?