Getting Out of Back Pain
AWA and Anselm’s History
Anselm is a setter for Trinity Western Men’s Volleyball team and hales from Germany. He’s a really cool athlete but unfortunately was plagued with back pain for most of his first year. Throughout the off-season I had the pleasure of getting to work more closely with Anselm to figure out what was going on.
Anselm had lots of range of motion (or mobility) in all of the common areas that typically get tight with back pain. And the areas that were tight he was usually able to change in a matter of minutes. But the back pain was constant.
So in the off-season our main focus was to fill out his cylinder. Wait… what’s his “cylinder”?
If you look at Anselm’s mid-section in the photos below, you will see in the “before” photos the sides of his body have significant creases or “indents”.
Why is this important?
Let’s look at nature for the answer :). If you look at some of the oldest trees in the world, one thing you’ll see they have in common is a really wide trunk. They have this common feature because wider trunks can handle the stresses of the environment better (wind, storms, etc.) and therefore they’re able to survive for LONG periods of time. Now thinking about trees… what happens when you take an axe and chop out the sides of the tree, it becomes more susceptible to the stressors in the environment.
Before
After
When our trunk or “cylinder” is expanded in all directions we are able to distribute and handle more stress throughout the whole body, especially through the spine. Anselm had significant indentations on the sides of his body between his rib cage and hips, like a tree that has been chopped by an axe on it’s sides. So all summer we attempted to give him exercises that reflexively expanded his cylinder. This means we didn’t really cue Anselm to expand into the area but put him in positions, exercises and manipulated where the external load was in order to allow his body to organize itself.
The Result?
Now Anselm is back in year 2 with TWU and is playing pain free. He was able to make huge changes to the shape of his cylinder and with that pain steadily decreased. He had a bout of pain recently but we are able to overcome things much quicker now that his foundation is so strong.
Are we done? No because he still has some more filling out to do and more upgrades we can make to his body that will should continue to make back pain a thing of the past. But we are SUPER excited with his progress so far and we can’t wait to see him on the court this season.
Interested in how we work with athletes to improve velocity,
jump higher and play pain free?
