AMPLIFY: News + Discussion

  In this series, we’re going deep into the theory of bracing muscles and their role in body stabilization, and in doing so we’ve departed from the received wisdom of the scientific community, which has a poor (though developing) understanding of back pain.  I wrote my book, UPRISE, to push

In my preceeding column in this series, we discussed the gap between the way we’ve learned to move throughout our lives and the ability of our bracing muscles to stabilize us enough to execute those movements. As we grow, stability leads to coordination.  If we get injured or become sedentary, however,

Many patients who suffer from chronic pain, particularly in cases involving the lower back, do so because they have developed a condition I label “Bracing Deficiency”, in which the body’s network of bracing muscles no longer provides the underlying stability to move in the ways in which we’ve grown accustomed.

The simple exercises that target the small gluteus bracing muscles from the STABILITY Series No. 1 and No. 2, may at first appear as exercises meant for the very old or very weak, or as exercises done only until one is ready to go back to the gym for a

Spine stability is an inherent component in the design of our bodies. We gain spinal stability throughout childhood and early adulthood. As infants, we can only stand once we achieve the stability to do so.  As toddlers, we crawl until we gain the strength in our bracing muscles to walk and then

I have seen some strong patients in my twenty years of practicing medicine: bodybuilders, professional athletes, Pilates instructors, laborers and others who depend on strength for their work. “Weak” is not a term we would associate with them, but the longstanding back pain they suffer is the result of a