Getting back - exercises to ease or prevent back pain

Men's Fitness, Nov, 1998 by Michael DiGregorio

After years of abusing his spine across the globe, this writer and cyclist found out how painful a back injury can be. His only cure was exercise - a program that can help your back, too.

Himachal Pradesh, India: I'm bicycling over slushy, winding footpaths in the Himalayas at 16,000 feet. Wending around villagers tending yaks, I feel a strange throb in my backside. But then the appearance of a wild-eyed Mongolian boy riding bareback ahead of me takes my mind off the ache. He seems to be stalking me, and then he begins to waif at the top of his lungs, a sound forever etched into my psyche as a reminder of my pain. Only back in New Delhi do I learn what the kid was yelling about: I had stumbled across Salman Rushdie's hideaway.

In 1995 and '96, I compiled some 80,000 air miles, crossing continents like Phileas Fogg trying to get around the world in 80 days. I wasn't trying to set any records; it was just a matter of completing assignments for two mountain-bike magazines that featured exotic locales. And I was determined not to let the physical strain get to me.

Knysna Forest, South Africa: Hoisting a bike over my shoulder while fording a cold streambed fringed by otherworldly 20-foot ferns, I feel a sharp knife-like jab just above my buttock. I ignore the feeling and go on to my next assignment.

Each place I traveled, I overlooked the pains that resulted from what could best be described as an abusive relationship with my back. I mixed long hours shoehorned into the back of an airbus with regular launchings over carbon-fiber handlebars. My weight-room practice was characterized by incorrect technique, too-heavy weights and too little stretching. And yet I managed to ignore the subtle, nagging aches ... for a while.

Salmon River, Idaho: on a sinewy outfitter trail crowned by a magnificent, wide-spreading canopy of old growth, I ride past a female moose and calf, a bull elk, an osprey on a low-level hunt, a wild turkey performing its mating dance. All in all, a beautiful trip - until I catapault headlong into a deep hole. This time, the pain cannot be ignored.

The upshot of that incident turned out to be seven months of my life spent in a long, black tunnel, with emergency surgeries and aftercare eclipsing $75,000 (of which my insurance provider paid about half). I had ruptured a lumbar disc and chipped a vertebra, which then thumbnailed itself into a nerve - all of which left me with something called complex regional pain syndrome. Initially, my right leg felt as though it was exploding. Then, for months, my right foot would seize violently, surging nearly nonstop with electric shocks.

Laid up and out for seven months on a panoply of barbiturates, steroid epidural blocks, muscle relaxants, antidepressants and anti-inflammatories, I basically turned into Gumby. Yet nothing helped; marijuana actually increased the pain. I could barely crawl into an MRI or onto a white-draped table for my every-other-day series of cocktails ferried into my spine by long needles.

But the accident's ultimate impact wouldn't become clear until post-surgery. That's when my surgeon's personal aide told me I would never be able to mountain-bike again.

A search for healing

Trying to find a way out of this bottomless morass, I began my own vision quest. From Third World to First, Asia to Russia, I dabbled through the spectrum: traditional Chinese herbs. Flower essences suggested by a white witch. Acupuncture. Pricey deep-tissue massage. Ancient Russo-Sino cupping. Modern electro-stimulus (not only to the back but to the brain). Not to mention a year of physical therapy. All, however, garnered nothing but short-lived results.

Eventually, I even came under the aegis of Rich Martinelli, a physiotherapist who, to make ends meet while building a career as a competitive bodybuilder, worked the graveyard shift - literally - as an embalmer for the city of New York. And when he led me to a former colleague, Ike "Kage" Njaka, I found myself going back to the drawing board: Remedial Gym 101. Amazingly, it was a workout that put me back on the path to recovery.

"Back problems are by far the most common ailment we deal with," says Njaka, the 33-year-old owner of Total Fitness Sports Therapy in West Los Angeles. "Chronic lower-back conditions can seem almost hopeless. Yet we've experienced a high rate of success in rehabbing back maladies."

The program Njaka designed (presented here) begins by shoring up the back's infrastructure. His experience showed that the body can withstand abnormalities in the lumbar spine as long as the muscles controlling the spine and hips are very well trained for strength and flexibility.

I took his advice to heart and devoted myself to the plan - after all, when a cut 200-pound Nigerian looks you in the eye and tells you to do something, you generally follow suit. After about four weeks on the program, my mobility began to increase. And with the help of a few pills - the anti-inflammatory nutrient pycnogenol, and the cartilage-promoting supplements glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate - these exercises even got me back on the bike again. Although I still need to work to manage my pain, I can and do ride whenever I get a chance.