Arching your back is common amongst cave divers... Doing so contributes exponentially to our trim.
-Tony DC
I am fully aware of this technique since I have been a cave diver since 1996, and now have the back problems to prove it. Whether cave diving caused it or not, it does aggravate my back if I do not modify my position.
Again, reference the Alert Diver article written by a physician cautioning divers arching their backs and the adverse effects it has on your back, sometimes permanently.
I've pasted the article below, but it can also be accessed if you are a DAN member at ....
http://www.diversalertnetwork.org/membership/alert-diver/article.asp?ArticleID=884
Alert Diver Article
Fixing Mystery Lower Back Pain from Scuba and Swimming
July / August 2008 Issue
By: Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed., Ph.D., FAWM
As divers, none of us are strangers to back pain. It comes with the territory, whether we are weekend warriors or regular exercise machines who workout daily. Back pain may be a fact of life, but it's what we do about it that counts.
Let's talk about back pain for watersports enthusiasts. For scuba divers, lifting and carrying heavy dive gear with bad lifting habits is a common and obvious cause of lower back pain. But lower back pain after scuba diving in which no gear lifting was involved is also a consideration. Plus, a swimmer can experience the same type of lower back pain after swimming.
With no heavy lifting involved, what's the cause?
A second major cause of lower back pain after diving and swimming is often overlooked. It's called hyperlordosis.
Hyperlordosis
When swimming or finning face down and horizontally through the water, many divers allow their lower back to increase in arch. They look like they are facedown in a hammock, as shown in Figure 1.
A small inward curve belongs in the lower back, but when the normal inward curve (normal lordosis) increases, the result is hyperlordosis or overarching (swayback).
For most people, hyperlordosis is most common when a person is upright, standing, walking and running. Swimmers and divers who allow their backs to overarch when swimming face down often notice the pain once they are topside, after their time in the water (Figure 2).
How hyperlordosis causes lower back pain
Hyperlordosis pinches the facets - the joints of the vertebrae - and the surrounding soft tissue. When someone with hyperlordosis swims and dives, the facets become the fulcrum of the kick instead of the muscles of the abdominals and hip. When someone stands with a hyperlordotic lower spine instead of a neutral spine, the weight of the upper body presses down on the overly pinched-backward lower back. Running with hyperlordosis causes more of the banging and pressing.
People with lower back pain from hyperlordosis usually feel they need to bend over forward, or sit, or raise one leg to relieve it. Often nothing shows up on X-rays and scans. Eventually, hyperlordosis can damage structures enough to show. Until then, it just aches a great deal.
The cause of this kind of pain is often unrecognized, and people may be told they have a condition called sacroiliac - or SI joint dysfunction - nonspecific back pain or other names.
Stop pain from hyperlordosis
Common prescriptions for relief of hyperlordotic pain call for any of the following measures:
injection into the facet joints
taking anti-inflammatory medications (such as NSAIDs)
a regimen of physical therapies
surgeries for damage to the facet joints
There may be alternative solutions, however. To begin, be conscious of your posture as often as you can. Try to maintain a neutral spine alignment: Simply, stop overarching when walking, running, swimming and diving. Remind yourself to assume normal posture. It is easy enough, and by using a healthy and normal spine, you'll be able to work out those kinks in your daily routine.
Until you switch to your new regimen, you may find it helpful to use a strengthening program and an occasional pain medication. Soon, however, you'll be on your way to a healthier back.
To see if you stand in hyperlordosis, check yourself in the following three ways:
Stand up and look sideways in a mirror. Your belt should be level-green line in left neutral drawing. The side seam in dress or trousers should be vertical from leg to waist not tilted forward at the hip. Back up slowly and gently into a wall. If your backside touches first, this may indicate that you lean forward at the hip. If your upper back touches first, it is usually a good indicator that you lean the upper body backward, which increases a second kind of hyperlordosis.
Stand with your back against a wall, with heels, hips, upper back and back of your head touching. There should be a small space between your lower back and the wall, but not a large space. See if you increase the space to get the back of your head touching. Then raise both arms overhead to touch your fingers to the wall behind you. See if the lumbar curve increases further. You should be able to stand with the back of your head touching the wall without increasing your lordosis, and you should be able to raise your arms without increasing it.
To reduce an overly large arch, try the following:
Stand with your back against a wall, with heels, hips, upper back and back of your head touching.
Put your hands on your hips, thumbs facing the back.
Roll your hip under so that your thumbs come downward in back.
Feel the large space between lower back and the wall become a smaller space.
Keep your heels, hips, upper back and the back of your head touching the wall, and stand tall and straight. Lower back pain that is caused by hyperlordosis should ease right away.
Keep the good neutral spine when you walk away from the wall and all the time. Apply it to when you are swimming and scuba diving.
Muscle use is not automatic
Your abdominal muscles are the muscles that hold a neutral spine. They do not do this automatically; that is why strengthening programs alone do little to stop back pain. Someone may have strong abdominals but stand and swim in arched posture, with continuing lower back pain.
Heavy scuba tanks don't make you arch your back or have bad posture. The problem occurs when you don't use your abdominal muscles to counter the pull and allow your back to arch.
When you stand up while wearing tanks, straighten your body against the pull of the load and maintain a neutral spine. Do not tighten your abdominals; just move your pelvis. If you notice yourself arching while wearing tanks, straighten your body as if you have begun to do a crunch but don't curl forward. Only straighten to a neutral spine. Don't tuck so much that you lean back or push your hips forward.
No more lower back pain
Transfer this neutral spine skill to your daily life for carrying gear, putting cargo up on racks, heavy packages on counters and whenever you lift and reach. Use a neutral spine when you stand, walk, run, reach overhead, swim and dive.
To prevent hyperlordotic pain, use a neutral spine. Use good bending form to prevent another kind of pain that comes from bending over incorrectly to lift gear. When you bend the knees in half-squat to pick up something, keep both heels down and the torso upright. When you swim and dive, your gear can become a built-in abdominal, back and leg muscle exercise for lifting and helping you maintain a neutral spine.
Back pain is complex and has multiple potential causes. The self-care concepts presented here may be helpful for some divers but are, in no way, meant to substitute for diagnosis, treatment and follow-up reassessments by an appropriate healthcare professional.
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About the Author
DR. Jolie Bookspan, a longtime scuba diver and instructor, has lived and dived with the Ama-San diving women of Japan. She is a researcher in extreme physiology. She is the author of Fix Your Own Pain With Drugs or Surgery (
www.Dr.Bookspan.com).
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Ž© Alert Diver July / August 2008
almtree: Bob
