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Having a Spine 101

    You’ve got a spine. You should know how it works.

    The most vital organs for sustaining life are your brain and spinal cord. Even your heart and lungs need to receive directives from these structures in order to function.

    The vertebral bones that make up the spine provide protection to the spinal cord and are an essential load-bearing component of your skeleton.

    Cervical Vertebrae

    7 bones above the ribcage
    that supports the head

    neutral curve rounds slightly
    forward (lordosis)

    Thoracic Vertebrae

    12 bones with attachments to ribs to form the ribcage

    neutral curve rounds slightly
    backward (kyphosis)

    Lumbar Vertebrae

    5 bones below the ribcage
    that attach to the pelvis

    neutral curve rounds slightly
    forward (lordosis)

    Sacrum

    5 bones below the lumbar spine
    fuse together between the
    ages of 18 and 30

    attaches to the pelvic
    bones to form the
    sacroiliac joints (SIJs)

    Coccyx

    3-5 bones below the sacrum
    that may or may not fuse
    together by the age of 30

    also referred to as the tailbone

    When laying down, gravity places about 45-67 lbs of force on your spine. When standing and rounding your spine forward (ie. bending from the waist and not the hips), your spine is exposed to around 315 lbs of compressive force. Without muscular support, the lumbar spine buckles under about 20 lbs of force.

    We’ll spare you the physics 101 lesson, but consult your engineering friends or see this source for a more in-depth and mathematical explination: biomechanics of the spine

    You are simultaneously stronger than you think when you’re in a healthy functional state and also require much more strength than you think when you’re in a dysfunctional or painful state.

    Science of The Back Spasm

    Vertebrae = protector of the spinal cord. Spinal cord = essential life-sustaining organ. Your body must protect your spinal cord at all costs. Without muscular support, your spine can’t even handle half the gravitational load of laying down without buckling. Buckling = threat to the spinal cord.

    If it’s a choice between a painful muscle spasm or a threat to the spinal cord, your body will choose a painful muscle spasm every time. However, those peripheral nerves that branch out of the spinal cord are a bit less VIP. It’s possible to be aligned or to move in a way that doesn’t quite threaten the spinal cord but impinges on those branching nerves, giving rise to neural symptoms such as burning, numbness, and tingling.

    The good news: you can easily recover from even the worst most excruciating back spasm and be back to normal within 5-10 minutes. It’s even possible to immediately eliminate or prevent a back spasm altogether and never end up locked up in agony on the floor.

    The secret is in distinguishing your deep and superficial spinal muscles and in the strength of your brain-body connection.

    Superficial Spinal Muscles

    Movers: big muscles that cause
    the spine to bend forward,
    sideways, backward, and rotate

    Deep Spinal Muscles

    Stabilizers: small muscles closest to
    the spine that create space between
    vertebrae and prevent spinal motion

    The bigger superficial muscles can’t sustain activation for very long and the small deep muscles aren’t as strong. Spasm (maxing out a muscle’s activation ability) is the body’s way of powerfully stabilizing a spine under threat. Spasm is also the only way to maintain this protective mechanism as the bigger muscles start to run out of gas.

    When not under threat and well-aligned, the deep stabilizer muscles have the endurance to stabilize your spine 24/7 without pain. Their activity often flies under the radar of your consciousness. Dysfunction in these muscles often isn’t due to a lack of strength, but rather being inhibited into the “off” state. No strength can be accessed from a muscle that won’t turn on.

    Your ability to navigate yourself through a back spasm, or cut one off altogether, lies in your ability to calm down your mover-muscles and re-engage your stabilizer-muscles.

    Of course, this is easier said than done. Subscribe to our monthly newsletter to learn all the tips and tricks to become the master of your own body.

    You can also read more about the common sitting mistakes that lead to pain and poor posture.

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