I hurt my back a few years back. Went through the whole thing with the Ortho surgeon and the rehab. The PT told me things I didn't like:1. My posture is messed up. 2. Contrary to what I thought, my back muscles were WEAK. How so?, I asked. She said I might have been strong in the pulling exercises in the gym but I was only strong in the extended range. She said from the look of my hunched over posture, I couldn't possibly have been strong in the close range.
I remember being so eager for big numbers in the pulling exercises when I started out that I almost never cared about completely pulling the resistance all the way in at the end of the movement. It was always 90% in but not completely in. And that's was where the weakness occurred. The close range strength of the back muscles is needed to pull the shoulder blades back against the pull of the pecs. So that when you stand relaxed, your chest heaves out and your arms fall straight down, not causing tension in your shoulders and your upper back muscles. You'll notice that in this position, your stomach will stick out if you have a weak traversus abdominus (sp) - the muscle beneath the 6 pack that pulls the gut in.
Anyways, she took me over to the Swiss ball, and gave me a set of 5lbs dumb bells. I looked at her funny. She had me lay down on the ball with my arms 45 deg with my head and shoulders, lower the dumb bells and lift them up as far as I can past my back with the rate of 2 seconds up, 2 seconds down. To my surprise, I could not do more than 10 reps of that funky movement.
So now I work on that particular exercise at the end of every session and make sure that I go in all the way with the pulling movements at a lower weight setting.
I also work on my traversus abdominus, the only ab muscle that is connected to the spine. This one holds in your gut, stabilizes the spine and can not be strengthened with traditional abs exercises. You can look around for books on it. But the common exercise for it is called the draw-in. You basically suck in your gut, let it go out and suck it in again. But it's hard to provide resistance when you stand so they recommend you get down on all 4 to do it.
Furthermore, if you're interested, there is a book called "Pain Free". It has 2 very good stretching exercises to correct the posture that I often do. But if you really want to do it right, go see an ortho surgeon and rehab like I did. It won't be cheap though.
