The Importance of Stretching Your Calf for the Prevention of Back Pain

In the modern-day world, back pains are considered quite common. In fact, experts believe that most people will have to deal with it at some point in their lives. Indeed, a number of different factors may contribute to the risk of experiencing back pain. These include prolonged periods of sitting, stress, as well as poor posture. Moreover, you are more prone to experience back pain if you have any pre-existing medical conditions such as arthritis. As a result, prevention is key in order to avoid this type of discomfort in the long run. Stretching your calf may not be something that crosses your mind on a regular basis; however, it can do wonders for preventing the risk of developing back pain.

Stretching Your Calf is Vital for Back Pain

There are two grounds for this. When we refer to muscles, we usually refer to them individually: calf muscles, quadriceps, biceps, and so on. In reality, all muscles are interconnected, especially those in the back.

Muscles connect from the toes to the arch, the calf, the hamstring, the glutes, the piriformis, and all the thoracic extensor muscles. All those muscles are intertwined and connected, and when you have back pain, everything tightens up in order to protect the back and prevent further damage from occurring, resulting in additional tension in the back. We want to reduce the tension in these muscles in order to lower the amount of tension they create on the back, therefore we must stretch them all. The importance of handling back pain is apparent.

When you suffer from back pain, it's often difficult to pinpoint the source right away. We can start working on the back and if we can do anything to help the back that will reduce pain when the back is affected, those are the two grounds why we prefer to concentrate on the calf. That's it.

Two Grounds:

1. Excess stress is being put on the back by the calf muscles, which are part of the back muscles. We want to reduce the stress on the back by lengthening and stretching your calf muscles out.
2. In some cases, it is difficult to treat lower back pain right away, and we can continue to function without issues.

In order to stretch out the calf muscles, I recommend two exercises.

Two Recommended Exercises:

1. Self massage
2. Calf stretch

SELF MASSAGE 

                                                     Self Massage

I’m going to sit down on my trusty chair and self-massage my calf. It’s usually easier on the back to be standing up rather than sitting down, so I’m standing upright. I’ll pull my knee up and massage it myself. The foot should be relaxed, and the toes should be pointed, which helps me massage my calf better.

In addition to massaging the muscle to relieve tension, I rub it back and forth, side to side, or in circles. I aim to improve blood flow to the muscle by massaging it and breaking up any knots. I repeat this on 10 different spots on the muscle, taking 15-30 seconds each time.

CALF STRETCH

After I self-massage that muscle, I will move on to a calf stretch. I will stand with my feet together against the wall and then take a big step back, keeping my toes straight and my feet flat.  Then I will put all of my weight on the back of my heels on my back foot and then lean forward to get a light stretch in my calf area and then relax it.

I do stretching for 20 seconds forwards and 20 seconds on the sides. There, I have answered it for you, so you know why stretching your calf is so important when it comes to back pain.

Now you know, make sure to give those two exercises a go and that’s about it.