Show Notes
Your lower back rehabilitation works in three distinct stages, and the first one — protecting the injury — can start working within minutes, not months. Whether you're dealing with a slipped disc, a disc bulge, spondylolisthesis or sciatica, the exact term on your scan matters far less than you've been told. This session breaks down the three stages your rehabilitation has to go through to heal a lower back injury, using a real case from the comments to show why the same disc bulge can be a bigger problem for one person than another.
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We explain why getting off the symptoms and onto the injury changes the whole conversation, why the scary-sounding terms on your MRI report usually describe one problem rather than several, and why no adjustment, injection or surgery alone fixes anything. Then we walk through the three stages in order: protecting a neutral spine, which can improve within a single session; building muscle to a genuinely challenging intensity over weeks; and loading the spine itself for months until the structure gets stronger.
🔑 Key Topics Covered 🧩 One injury, many labels: spondylolisthesis, a disc bulge, facet joint hypertrophy, stenosis and ligamentum flavum thickening usually describe the same injury, not separate problems to fix one by one. ⏱️ Stage one happens in minutes: holding a neutral spine with the Core 6 is a skill that improves within a single session. 🛑 Why "get it moving" backfires: windscreen wipers, pelvic tucks and nerve flossing treat your spine like a knee or shoulder, when you can't see or control how much it's actually moving. 💪 Stages two and three: muscles adapt in weeks at the right intensity, but the spine itself only gets stronger after months of consistently applied load. 🏠 Who's looking after the injury matters: a real example showing why the same disc bulge can be far harder to recover from depending on skills, time pressures and support.
Prefer to read it? We've turned this live into a full written article. Read it here: https://backinshapeprogram.com/2026/10/how-rehab-works-lower-back-injury/
Chapters 00:00 Why your treatment should be able to explain itself 01:55 Get off the symptoms, focus on the injury 04:35 A case in point: no guidance, no progress 07:10 One injury, many labels 08:55 Why you can't target one spinal segment 10:55 The leaky roof: why chasing symptoms fails 11:55 Stage one: the Core 6 and a neutral spine 17:35 Why "get it moving" is wrong for an injured spine 19:55 Adapting rehab around knee pain and hip tightness 24:05 Stage two: finding the right training intensity 29:40 How the stages compound into real progress 31:55 The best sitting position for a bad back 34:50 Why pelvic tucks don't help spondylolisthesis 36:55 Stage three: why the spine takes months to strengthen 37:20 The most dangerous "comfortable" sitting position 38:55 Why nerve flossing is a mistake 46:00 Breaking through a training plateau 54:05 Why most people don't do their prescribed exercises 1:01:00 It's not about your injury — it's about who's looking after it
#LowerBackPain #HerniatedDisc #BackInShape #Spondylolisthesis #Sciatica #DiscBulge #BackPainRelief #SpinalRehab
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