Past Tense

Your spinal column is possibly the most vital structure in your body, therefore it is important to look after it. Your backbone gets voluminous compression from day-to-day activities, gravity and general life. In addition, the supplementary compression you give it with strength training and you better start decompressing it.

Spine health is very important, and I’m willing to bet that the majority of you have backache at this time. I myself hurt my lower back roughly a year ago, and this is one of the methods I enjoyed to take it back to 99% (even at times becomes tight or aching). I’ll do an extensive post on why you have backache and how to resolve it later on, however read this right now.

What you want to do is follow a trouble-free decompression technique that helps to keep your backbone strong and mobile by helping it decompress to its original length.

Here’s all you need to know…

How To Perform Spine Decompressions

You’ll need a pull-up bar to perform your decompressions. As soon as you have that piece of equipment, there’s two ways to do this:

1. Get Gravity Boots: This is the method that I use. These are boots that you strap onto your ankles and have hooks on them so you can hang upside down from your pullup bar safely and allow your spine to decompress. I use Teeter Hang Ups Gravity Boots. An added bonus is that with these boots I can do inverted sit ups for my abs and other cool “upside down” exercises.

2. Hang With Your Hands: This is simple. Basically hang from your pull-up bar and loosen all your muscles-hold it for as long as possible. The longer you hang the better shoot for no less than 5 minutes and build up from there. You most likely can’t hang that long, so here’s

How To Hang Longer Using Your Hands

The longer you hang the better, though your grip will most likely give out. While I would never suggest making use of lifting straps for your usual lifting, I recommend them for decompressions since it will allow you to grip longer. Prefer nylon-type lifting straps or lifting hook straps since they’re extra strong.

How To Loosen Your Muscles So Your Spinal Column Decompresses

Your muscles need to be calm in order for your spinal column to decompress (staying tight won’t help). Here’s what to do whether you’re making use of the gravity boots method or the hanging from your hands method:

* Come down the pull-up bar

* Take a deep breath and hold it

* Tighten your entire body (target abs, glutes and make fists)

* Hold your entire body stiff for 5 seconds

* Let it all out, your breath and all the tension. Relax

When you do this you’ll feel your whole body relaxing and you’ll probably “drop” down a little bit. You’ll probably feel your back decompressing, especially the first few times.

How Often You Should Decompress

Daily is best. I must admit, I don’t do it every day consistently. But you really should try to do it as much as possible. If you get bored hanging upside down you can read a book or something. It’s best to do these right after your strength training sessions, right after your cooldown-think of it as a part of your cooldown.