“Overdo” things recently and aggravate your chronic low back pain? Do you think the solution is to live the rest of your life “taking it easy”?
This is the worst thing you can do for your low back troubles.
“Dorothene” appears to be in her 50s. She walked in one day at the charity organization where she has a desk job – using a cane and leaning forward as she tentatively made it to her office.
She explained that she “overdid things” and hurt her back. She didn’t give details, but said due to the “overdoing,” she was going to take it easy for a while.
Dorothene said she had something going on with the discs in her low back and that it wasn’t from any injury or accident.
Settling into her chair, she said, in a resigning kind of voice, “I just need to take things easy for a while.”
I’m 63 and have a bullet proof back – low, mid and upper – and would be devastated if I ever had to use a cane due to back troubles. I’d be crushed if I had to spend the rest of my life on the disabled list: taking it easy.
I asked Dorothene if she might have future surgery.
She was adamant, shaking her head, as she affirmed she’d never have surgery. Never, ever. “I’m too old,” she stated.
I asked if she’d seen any doctors to discuss surgery, and again, she insisted, “No way am I having surgery; I’m just too old. I just have to take it easy, that’s all.”
Wow, how can anyone be this complacent, this accepting, of spending the rest of their life on the disabled list?
Dorothene isn’t young, but she isn’t old, either. I wanted to spend more time telling her that throngs of people way older have back surgery all the time.
I wanted to talk about epidural steroid injections as a more conservative management, but she said she didn’t want to get injections.
How can this middle age woman be so resigned to having to live her life always taking it easy?
When I began having a stubbornly aching low back many years ago, I decided to fix the problem by finding some sort of exercise to strengthen the soft tissue in that area.
The irony was that I’d been lifting weights and doing cardio for years, yet here I was, feeling a lumbar ache from sitting, and it’d linger once I got out of the chair.
So I began doing various exercises that targeted the low back. The weightlifting exercises (e.g., lat pull-down, seated row) that I’d been doing for years didn’t target the lumbar area.
I tried calisthenics-like movements and weighted back extensions using a device at the gym; nothing worked.
I was 45, and reflected, “I have to find something that works. This is how chronic low back pain starts. It lightly taps on the door at first; nothing major, but it then insidiously starts getting worse and worse. I’m NOT going to let that happen to me.”
Dorothene, and millions like her, once had this light door-tapping introduction to low back discomfort. But they had made a decision completely different from the one that I had ultimately made.
At 45, having strength trained since 15, continuing to feel that lumbar ache (I was fine when exercising; it was just when I was seated and sometimes just lingering when I was up and about), I asked myself: “What exercise have I NOT tried?”
Don’t Take It Easy to Treat Low Back Pain
The volume of studies that shows that inactivity, a sedentary lifestyle, is the worst thing you can do for chronic low back pain can sink a battleship.
Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (Hayden et al, September 2021). This large systematic review analyzed 249 randomized controlled trials evaluating exercise interventions for chronic low back pain.
The review found that exercise significantly reduces pain and improves functional limitations compared with no treatment, usual care (taking it easy) or placebo.
Disability and Rehabilitation (Rodríguez-Domínguez et al, March 2026). This systematic review and meta-analysis examined randomized controlled trials studying strength training for treating nonspecific low back pain.
Across 10 trials involving 434 participants, lifting weights significantly reduced pain intensity and disability while improving quality of life compared with other treatments or being sedentary.
Journal of Geriatric Physical Therapy (Syroyid et al, July-September 2022). This systematic review and meta-analysis evaluated studies examining resistance training in older adults with chronic low back pain.
Strength training was found to significantly improve pain control and physical function, and reduce disability, across multiple trials, when compared to control groups.
I can go on and on here. It’s super easy to find studies such as these that denounce the sedentary approach and show overt evidence that exercise is a potent tool for managing and even eliminating back pain.
Dorothene won’t do it. Her obesity (most of the weight is in her middle) won’t help, either.
- Does she not care about what kind of future awaits her?
- Or is she incredibly misinformed by her doctor?
- How does one resign themselves to such a dismal road ahead?
As time goes on, Dorothene will become increasingly mobility impaired. In just two years, that cane could be her constant companion, if not a walker.
She’ll reach a point of no return, in which taking it easy no longer provides relief, and she’ll then have no choice but to either pursue surgery or accept life in a wheelchair.
Can middle age be too old for back surgery?
Age alone is not considered a contraindication for lumbar spine surgery when treating chronic low back pain.
A multicenter outcomes study in JAMA Surgery (Madsbu et al, 2017) found that patients 65 and older achieved functional improvement after lumbar microdiscectomy comparable to younger patients.
A systematic review and meta-analysis in Global Spine Journal (Wadhwa et al, 2020), concluded that advanced age by itself should not exclude patients from lumbar surgery when they are properly selected.
Research in Spine (Carreon, et al, 2020) reported meaningful postoperative improvement across age groups, including patients over 80.
Dorothene is not too old. Not by a long shot. So what should she, and those in similar situations, do?
How about not take the resignation approach? How about aggressively pursuing a treatment that will restore an acceptable quality of life rather than one where she must live tiptoeing on eggshells?
How about a life where a cane can be retired to the back of a closet instead of used to help one walk even a short distance?
Dorothene hasn’t yet reached that point of no return. But the path she’s on, with her mindset, is a beeline to that destination.
As for the answer to the question of, “What exercise have I still not tried?” There was only one answer: the deadlift.
I decided, come hell or high water, I’m going to deadlift three times a week:
- Free barbell one day
- Holding weight plates on either side of my body another day
- Holding dumbbells before my body the third day
And lo and behold, within 30 days, my backache was GONE! Gone, gone, gone – never to return, even after I eventually downgraded to just the barbell deadlift once per week.
Yes, just once a week of deadlifting has proven to keep my low back in bullet proof condition. However, I eventually added back in the dumbbell version of deadlifting – because it’s a great exercise for building overall strength.
Does this mean I recommend that Dorothene start deadlifting? Of course not. She needs a full assessment, a comprehensive evaluation, to see just what kind of exercises she can safely do.
But one thing’s for sure: Taking it easy will expedite the degeneration in her lower back and cripple her.
Deadlifts for Relieving Low Back Pain: Comprehensive Research Review
