- Pinpoint Your Unique Pain Pattern: Find out why a one-size-fits-all approach often fails and how to tailor solutions specifically for your back.
- Take a 30-Second Self-Test: Learn a quick, simple check to reveal whether your back pain is caused by excessive arching (extension) or (flat spine) flexion.
- Avoid Common Exercise Traps: Discover why popular back pain relief routines might worsen your discomfort—and what to do instead.
- Embrace a Systems-Thinking Approach: Understand how foot, hip, and even posture habits interact to create or solve your back pain.
- Access Actionable Next Steps: Get concrete tips, recommended stretches, and resources for immediate and long-term back pain relief.
You Can’t Think Straight When You Have Back Pain.
“If your back is [expletive] up, everything’s [expletive] up,” Joe Rogan declared during a recent episode of The Joe Rogan Experience with Mel Gibson. “No matter how strong your arms and legs are, if your back is messed up, you’re in trouble,” he added. Gibson agreed, quoting Hippocrates, the father of medicine: “In any ailment, look first to the spine.” For anyone who has lived with back pain, those words hit uncomfortably close to home.
Back pain impacts nearly 619 million individuals around the globe. It is the leading cause of disability. Most people with back pain have tried treatments that didn’t work. This shows that our current medical approach doesn’t fully understand how to solve this tricky problem.
About 80% of U.S. adults have back pain at some point. Chronic back pain frustrates both patients and doctors. After many treatments, it can feel impossible to find answers.
To fix lower back pain, people seek help from experts such as chiropractors, physical therapists, massage therapists, and acupuncturists. Unfortunately, many traditional approaches fall short of solving chronic low back pain.
MSPT Discovers New Path to Pain-Relief Living After Chronic Back Pain
Rick Olderman, MSPT, believes modern medicine misunderstands the root causes of back pain. With over 25 years of clinical experience and firsthand struggles with chronic pain in his twenties, Olderman is driven to uncover new answers to old questions—like what really causes chronic lower back pain.
He says, “Well-meaning and popular articles on back pain from reputable institutions like US Davis Health or WebMD often provide generic or unhelpful information.”
Olderman encourages patients and the medical world to look at back pain differently. This article examines why treating back pain is so challenging and offers new answers to treating unrelenting back pain.
Olderman says, “Traditional medicine often treats pain at the location of discomfort. In my clinical practice, I focused on uncovering the root cause often found further from the site of pain.”
He calls the traditional approach “component thinking” and his new approach “systems thinking.”
Why Is Back Pain So Common and Persistent?
Despite countless treatments, chronic back pain often lingers – ebbing and flowing in intensity. Traditional approaches usually address structural elements—like discs or ligaments—without considering whole-body interactions, such as how an old foot injury winds through the body to create sciatic pain. This is where Olderman’s approach differs.
Systems Thinking vs. Component Thinking when Solving Back Pain.
Many healthcare providers rely on component thinking—focusing on isolated structural elements like discs, ligaments, or muscles. You may have had X-rays or MRIs that show various potential structural problems, such as:
- Disc Bulges: When the soft cushion between the back bones (vertebrae) starts to push outward but hasn’t torn.
- Disc Herniations: A more severe version of a bulge, where the cushion tears and leaks, often pressing on nearby nerves.
- Facet Joint Arthritis: Wear-and-tear damage to the small joints that help your spine move, leading to stiffness and pain.
- Ligament Tears: Tears in the rugged bands holding your spine together can weaken stability and cause pain.
- Degenerative Disc Disease: Age-related wearing down of the discs that act as shock absorbers between your spine’s bones.
- Spinal Stenosis: Narrowing the spaces in your spine that can press on the spinal cord or nerves.
- Foraminal Stenosis: Narrowing openings where nerves leave the spine, causing nerve pain.
- Facet Joint Arthropathy: A degenerative condition affecting the joints at the back of the spine.
- Spondylolisthesis: When one vertebra slips forward over another, which can cause instability and nerve pain.
- Spondylolysis: A crack or stress fracture in one of the spine’s bones, often linked to overuse or injury.
Understanding structural issues like those mentioned above can help identify and treat acute pain (lasting less than three months). However, this approach often fails to address chronic pain, which is now widely accepted as a multi-factorial condition involving physical, neuro-physiological, psychological, and social factors (O’Sullivan, 2005).
As Peter O’Sullivan explains, “Eighty-five percent of chronic low back pain (CLBP) disorders have no known diagnosis, leading to a classification of ‘non-specific CLBP’ that leaves a diagnostic and management vacuum.” This underscores the importance of moving beyond isolated structural diagnoses and adopting a systems-thinking approach that considers the whole body and the interplay of various factors contributing to chronic pain.
Systems thinking is essential for addressing chronic pain (lasting over three months) because it looks beyond the back itself, considering how other body areas—such as the hips or feet—may contribute to or intensify the pain.
Understanding Back Pain Pain Patterns
Olderman’s extensive clinical experience has led him to identify three fundamental back or sciatic pain patterns:
- Extension Problems: Excessive spinal arching.
- Flexion Problems: A flattened spine.
- Sidebending Problems: Asymmetry in the pelvis and rib cage, often linked to scoliosis.
Movement-based physical therapy, fascia, and neurophysiology research (in the form of reflex patterns) support these patterns. Most people experience one primary pattern or a combination of two. Knowing your pain patterns helps determine which treatments and back pain exercises will work best.
Here is an actual patient story with lifelong back pain due to an overarching
(Extension) pain pattern.
Classical pianist suffered for decades from chronic back pain.
Karen, a gifted classical pianist, lived with chronic back pain for nearly 40 years—a burden she believed was simply part of her life. Then she met Rick Olderman, MSPT, a clinician specializing in uncovering pain’s root causes. Olderman quickly identified the culprit: Karen’s excessively arched back, a condition he calls an “Extension Problem.”
Her pain wasn’t just a mystery of aging or overuse; it stemmed from her military-style posture, ingrained through decades of piano training. While elegant on stage, this rigid position placed an unnatural strain on her body.
Once Karen understood this fundamental pain pattern and how it affected her daily habits, everything changed. By applying Olderman’s insights, her pain began to ease—and within three weeks, it was gone entirely. The key was recognizing how her posture was working against her and making simple, targeted adjustments to bring her body back into balance. For Karen, this wasn’t just relief; it was a revelation.
The first step to solving your back or sciatic pain is to understand why it is happening in the first place. The simple test below will help you identify one of your pain patterns.
The Easy Test to Identify One of Your Back Pain Patterns
Try this test to uncover whether an Extension or Flexion Problem contributes to your pain:
- Lie flat on a firm surface for 30 seconds. Note your discomfort.
- Bend your knees so your feet rest flat for another 30 seconds. Note any relief.
Interpretation:
- If bending your knees reduces back pain, you likely have an Extension Problem (excessive spinal arching).
- If straightening your legs helps minimize pain, you likely have a Flexion Problem (a flattened spine).
Extension Problems: Too Much Arch in Your Lower Back
Too Much Arching in the lower back arises in people who maintain a “military erect” posture or have excessive forces from tight or weak muscles or poor habits that contribute to the arching.
- Tight leg muscles that lock the spine into an arched position.
- Movement habits that continually over-extend the spine
- Anxiety or stress that causes a chronic “alert” posture
An overly arched spine compresses vertebrae and can lead to chronic issues like sciatica or facet joint pain. Rick clinically observed that most chronic low back pain involves this Extension Problem. You can learn more about overarching pain problems and fixes at rickolderman.com.
Flexion Problems: Your Lower Back Is Too Flat
Back pain caused by a flat lower back occurs when people slouch or round their lower backs too soon or for too long during daily activities. Flattened spines often cause more wear and tear on discs, contributing to problems such as degenerative disc disease, disc bulges, and disc herniations.
Flexion( Flatten spin) Problems are typically not associated with chronic low back pain. Instead, this pain pattern contributes to acute back pain.
Sidebending Problems: A Side Curve in the Back
The lower back often bends to one side (referred to as scoliosis). This happens when the pelvis and rib cage are uneven. Typically, this occurs due to older injuries in one leg and is easily correctable.
A Sidebending Problem commonly leads to one-sided back pain, single-leg sciatic pain, or SI joint pain. The pain typically occurs on the side where the pelvis is higher.
Finding Relief from Back Pain with a Personalized Plan
Extension Problems (Too Much Curve in Your Lower Back)
- Avoid workouts like deadlifts, backbends, or bridging because they make your back arch too much.
- Modify exercises to help your back stay flatter, like sitting with a relaxed back or bending forward gently.
Flat Lower Back (Flexion) Problems (Not Enough Curve in Your Lower Back)
- Avoid sitting in low chairs where your knees are too high.
- Try gentle back-bending moves like the cobra pose to add a little curve.
- Try achieving a taller, more erect posture.
Important Note: Many online exercises focus on making the back more flexible, but in Olderman’s clinical experience, too much arching causes most long-term lower back pain. A systems approach simplifies and accelerates understanding and solving back or sciatic pain. Knowing your type of back pain helps you pick the right advice and skip what won’t help.
Looking for More Help?
For those seeking additional guidance or practical exercises, Pain Patterns: Why You Are in Pain and How to Stop It offers further insights. This resource includes videos and step-by-step instructions for testing and correcting your pain patterns behind your back or sciatic pain.
5 Warning Signs: It’s Time to See a Doctor for Back Pain
- You lose feeling in one or both legs or feel weak.
- You have trouble with your bowels or bladder.
- Your pain keeps you from sleeping.
- Your pain stays the same or gets worse, no matter what you try.
Always talk to a healthcare professional if you notice these warning signs.
Final Thoughts for Your Back Pain Relief
You are not broken; you haven’t found the correct information yet. By testing and learning the patterns behind your pain, you can stop guessing which treatments will help you and quickly take control to move toward lasting relief.
You deserve to feel strong and pain-free. Start your journey today. Try this secret stretch that will make a big difference.
Common Questions About Back Pain
Most people’s pressing questions about low back pain fall into these types of queries:
- What exercise will relieve my back pain?
- What is the fastest way to heal a lower back strain?
- Is sitting or lying down better when you have lower back pain?
These questions assume a universal cause for back pain, but there isn’t one. Back pain stems from patterns of problems, so specific, testing-based solutions are essential. This article teaches back pain sufferers how to find their unique pain patterns and solutions.
References
- Vos, T., et al. (2020). Global burden of low back pain. The Lancet.
Disclaimer
This article is for informational purposes only and does not substitute for professional medical advice. Always consult a healthcare professional for individualized guidance on diagnosing or treating back pain.
