Discover Why You Have To Do Spinal Decompressions

Your spine is arguably the most important structure in your body, so it’s important to take care of it. Your spine gets a lot of compression from daily activities, gravity and general life. Add to that the extra compression you give it with strength training and you better start decompressing it.

Back health is extremely important, and I’m willing to bet most of you have back pain currently. I myself hurt my lower back about a year ago, and this is one of the methods I used to get it back to 99% (still sometimes gets tight or painful). I’ll do a complete post on why you have back pain and how to fix it later, but read this now.

What you want to do is follow a simple decompression method that helps to keep your spine healthy and mobile by helping it decompress to its original length.

Here’s the whole thing you need to …

How To Do Spine Decompressions

You’ll need a pull-up bar to execute your decompressions. Once you have that piece of equipment, there’s two ways to get on with this:

1. Take Gravity Boots: This is the technique that I employ. These are boots that you tie onto your ankles and have hooks on them so you can hang upside down from your pullup bar without harm and let your spinal column to decompress. I utilize Teeter Hang Ups Gravity Boots. An additional bonus is that with these boots I can execute reversed sit ups for my abs and other hip “upside down” exercises.

2. Hang With Your Hands: This is easy. Simply hang from your pull-up bar and relax all your muscles-hold it for as long as possible. The longer you hang the better shoot for at least 5 minutes and build up from there. You probably can’t hang that long, so here’s

How To Hang On Longer With Your Hands

The longer you hang the better, though your grip will most likely give out. While I would never suggest making use of lifting straps for your usual lifting, I recommend them for decompressions since it will allow you to grip longer. Prefer nylon-type lifting straps or lifting hook straps since they’re extra strong.

How To Loosen Your Muscles So Your Spinal Column Decompresses

Your muscles need to be calm in order for your spinal column to decompress (staying tight won’t help). Here’s what to do whether you’re making use of the gravity boots method or the hanging from your hands method:

* Hang off the pull-up bar

* Take a deep breath and keep hold of it

* Stiffen your whole body (concentrate on abs, glutes and make fists)

* Hold your entire body stiff for 5 seconds

* Let it all out, your breath and all the tension. Relax

When you do this you’ll feel your whole body relaxing and you’ll probably “drop” down a little bit. You’ll probably feel your back decompressing, especially the first few times.

How Often You Should Decompress

Daily is best. I must admit, I don’t do it every day consistently. But you really should try to do it as much as possible. If you get bored hanging upside down you can read a book or something. It’s best to do these right after your strength training sessions, right after your cooldown-think of it as a part of your cooldown.