This episode is entitled is “5 things you must do to fix chronic low back pain”, and they are:

• Understand your back to fix chronic low back pain
• Understand how pain works
• Get a tailor-made plan to fix chronic low back pain
• Set an ambitious goal
• Stick to the plan to fix chronic low back pain

Understand your back to fix chronic low back pain

You might think you don’t need to understand your back, as someone else can do that for you. You’re quite right, but make sure that other person does indeed understand it. There’s a big difference between someone who polishes engines and someone who is capable of servicing and completely replacing the engine. If you want to fix long-term low back pain, you need to understand how backs work.

Understand how pain works

Again, no point going on Google, you won’t get a cohesive understanding of how pain works, and you really need that. If you’re going to address chronic low back pain, you have to understand how pain works. There are some simple principles you can use, but pain is complex, especially when you’ve had it for a long time. The physiological purpose of pain is an alarm system that’s there to tell you to stop doing something, but it’s not just that. Unfortunately, the longer the pain goes on, the more complex it becomes. It becomes a very poor indicator of the need for alarm or alert. You can essentially learn pain.

Get a tailor-made plan to fix chronic low back pain

Going back to Google or YouTube, you won’t get a tailor-made plan by asking people or the internet on a kind of ad-hoc basis. It’s super important that your plan is tailored to you. Your back is unique. Your pain experiences is unique to you during the session. You have to get exercises and other advice tailor-made for you.

Set an ambitious goal

Why is it not good enough just to get out of pain? Imagine yourself bumbling through life, quite happy on the planes. Then, all of a sudden, you fall off the edge of that cliff, you’re in pain, you go up and down that cliff edge for years before ending up stuck permanently in the sea of pain. The problem is they’ve only ever been focused on getting back up onto the cliff top. If that’s all you do, you’re just on the edge of the next episode. Your ambitious goal ties into the idea of getting as far back from the edge, as far up the maintenance you possibly can. Your best defense against long-term pain is to set an ambitious goal, not just to get out of pain.

Stick to the plan to fix chronic low back pain

There’s no good in having a tailor-made plan and understanding how your back works and how pain works and setting an ambitious school if you don’t stick to the plan, but it’s where most people fall down, they don’t stick to the plan.