Treat Your Own Back: A Simple Guide To Managing Back Pain

If you suffer from lower back pain and are looking for a proven method to get relief and manage it for best results, Treat Your Own Back is a world wide best selling book for self-treatment featuring exercises you can do at home for back pain and sciatica.

Written by the great physiotherapist Robin McKenzie, Treat Your Own Back has helped thousands with do it yourself relief through postural modification, ergonomics and easy to do exercises. It illustrates a clear understanding of both the cause and treatment of back pain.

This is the newly formatted and revised edition with easy to read, updated content, new pictures, instructions and education with clinically proven specific exercises utilizing the author’s renowned method.

Robin McKenzie has been called the most influential person in Orthopedic Physical Therapy. The goal is to be able to treat your own back pain as well as prevent reoccurrence. If you have a disc herniation and felt the pain when you bent over, this may indicate there is a mechanical disturbance or derangement in the back which may respond to the detailed and well illustrated method of coaching in the book.

The key to the method is centralization; moving the pain from the extremities – leg, hip, gluteal and side regions to the center of the back. Responding to specific exercises means there can be a reduction in the disc bulge and less pressure on the nerve.

As the pressure decreases through centralization, an increase in the intensity or frequency of the exercises can further stabilize and help prevent disc problems. A good response means in about a month, your pain can be significantly relieved and function restored, thereby providing an alternative means to surgery for some, and relief at last for others who may not be familiar with this method.

The methods reverse the overstretching and damage caused by sitting in a slouched posture, the number one predisposing factor to back pain according to Dr. McKenzie. He insist in having proper lower back support when sitting to prevent loss of the normal lumbar curve.

The method supports extension exercises, but also the introduction of flexion when appropriate. An analogy he uses is if you have a cut on the front of the knuckle of your finger. If you flex it or bend it like making a fist, the wound opens, but if you keep it tight and straight (good posture), it heals. Once it is healed, you can bend it again to help regain function.

This is the basis of our back pain exercises and you can try these initially to see how you respond and become familiar with centralization. If you obtain positive results, the information in this Treat Your Own Back book can be invaluable.

Used by professionals for years known as Mechanical Diagnosis and Therapy, it a widely used classification system to diagnosis and treat lower back pain. The McKenzie exercises have been associated with back extension exercises, as opposed to Williams exercises which have been associated with back flexion exercises. This method has wide acceptance and use as an effective program to manage back pain. In this book, you will learn self treatment through posture correction and repeated end-range exercises performed with high frequency.

The treatment is guided to a “derangement syndrome” and the repeated movements in a particular direction causes a gradual reduction in pain. This is the centralization and is prevalent in between 58 – 91 percent of lower back pain cases.[1] Between 67 – 85 percent of those who centralize pain have a specific directional preference in extension.[2] Thus, this is a method used to treat your own neck as well.

1. Journal of Physical Therapy Science. 2018 Aug;30(8):1103-1107
2. Journal of Rehabilitation Medicine. 2002 Jul;34(4):183-90