Stay fit and pain-free with the right back pain exercises.

Back pain doesn't have to keep you sidelined on the bench or out of the gym. In fact, exercise can offer back pain relief by strengthening your core muscles. And it might actually prevent back pain as well.

Regular exercise and a healthy lifestyle can even offset some of the damage that causes back pain, says William O. Witt, MD, a University of Kentucky pain specialist and director of UK HealthCare's Interventional Pain Associates. "As we age, the intervertebral disks that are the primary weight-bearing structures in the back, along with the vertebral bodies themselves, dry out and lose height," Dr. Witt says. "This process is accelerated by excess weight, smoking, and poor muscle and bone health often due to lack of exercise and poor diet."

Back Pain Exercises: Staying Safe

There are plenty of activities and exercises that you can incorporate into an exercise routine that will keep you fit while still protecting your back and providing you some back pain relief. Remember that you should always ease into exercise and properly warm up your muscles. Here are some suggestions:

• Low-impact sports and activities. Look for things that don't jar the back, and activities or sports without risk of impact or injury. These include walking, swimming, biking, and using aerobic exercise machines, such as elliptical trainers.
• Get on the ball. "Many people find an exercise ball to be an effective assist when training the trunk muscles," says Thomas J. Herrmann, EdD, PT, a physical therapist and assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati's College of Allied Health Sciences. Sitting on an exercise ball while exercising the upper body with free weights can be a great option. "The inherent instability of sitting on the ball activates more muscle tissue," Herrmann notes.

Back Pain: Exercises to Avoid

You do need to be careful when exercising with back pain, however, because not all activities and sports are safe to do when your back has been injured.

"For people with back pain, or a history of back pain, what to avoid is specific to their condition," Herrmann advises. "In general, though, activities that reproduce the motion that injured the back will not make the back better." Some others to avoid in your quest for back pain relief:

• High-impact sports. Avoid any sports that might cause stress or sudden impact to your back, or sports that involve twisting or jumping. Sports you should avoid includes volleyball, football, soccer, weight lifting (at least for heavy weights), and many snow sports. You should also avoid activities that jar the back, such as jumping on a trampoline.
• Certain stretches and other exercises. Don't do stretches or exercises that involve raising the legs and keeping them straight and together, touching the toes, twisting the hips, or arching the back backward. You should also avoid doing sit-ups with your legs out straight in front of you.
• Exercises that require drastic movements. "Activities or exercises to avoid are those that require large movements of the trunk, such as bending all the way forward and backward," Herrmann says.

Signs You've Done Too Much

Listen to your body. After exercise, you should feel good, a little tired, as if your body was challenged, Herrmann says. If you feel a bit tired or sore doing daily activities, that's okay.

What's not okay is "not being able to sleep, not standing up straight, and having to alter your posture in sitting and standing to be comfortable after exercise," Herrmann says. Exercise that makes you feel that way may actually be counterproductive to the health of your back and your body, he adds.

"The simplest way to assess the pain of a 'good workout' [versus] 'too much work' is whether there is discomfort at rest," Herrmann says. He notes that though it is typical for tissue that has been vigorously exercised to feel tired, stiff, or even sore, this should go away within two or three days. If it doesn't, you probably overdid it.

"It is not typical of a muscle to be tender to touch, to be sore at rest, or to be excessively sore for longer than 2 days," Herrmann says. "If this happens, the training was too vigorous, and the tissue was not challenged, it was injured."