Low Back Disorders, Second Edition
by Stuart McGill
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Book Summary Information
Author: Stuart McGillBrand: Human Kinetics
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-08-13
ISBN: 0736066926
Number of pages: 328
Publisher: Human Kinetics
Product features:
- Author(s): Stuart Mcgill
- Published: 8-13-2007
- SHK00903
Book Reviews of Low Back Disorders, Second Edition
Book Review: A MUST FOR ANY PHYSICAL FITNESS FANATIC CONCERNED ABOUT HIS BACK & A COMPANION FOR "ULTIMATE BACK FITNESS & PERFORMANCE" 4Th ED.
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a vital book concerning one of the major problems of our modern life.
Prof. Stuart McGill is a professor in the Dep't of Kinesiology at the University of Waterloo, Ontario. He is the director of its Spine Biomechanics Laboratory.
This is his famous textbook, "Low Back Disorders", which examines back injuries in the light of biomechanics' scientific knowledge, and prescribes exercises and tests for the rehabilitation of injured backs and the prevention of future injuries.
The book has 241 pages of solid, dense text and extremely valuable information, with a great number of pictures and tables. And it comes in a superb hard cover. You get full value for the money.
"Low Back Disorders" is primarily geared to professionals in back treatment and rehabilitation, who want to become more sophisticated practitioners and learn the scientific facts underlying rehab techniques.
But, in the same light, this book is also essential for any member of the 3F club (Physical Fitness Fanatics) concerned about the impact on the back of fitness training and athletic practices.
Saving one's back from injury is vital, the more so that most physical fitness fanatics are urban professionals who tend to spend a large portion of their lives sitting, not a natural posture for the architecture of the back, and as they grow older, when the back becomes more fragile and vulnerable.
Stuart McGill assumes that most readers are not familiar with the full scientific facts of back architecture and function. So, he starts with the very basics and gives us a primer on "Essentials of the Back 101".
Central to Stuart McGill's tenets is insisting on the importance of maintaining the "neutral posture" of the spine, respecting the natural lower-back curvature, and not imposing extra flexion to the natural curvature of the upper spine.
This leads to the debunking of traditional training exercises, such as the classic sit-ups and all varieties of crunches, which create extreme flexion and high levels of compression in the spine, and undermine back stability.
He insists on tensing all the abdominal muscles in an isometric bracing of the abdominal girdle as the fundamental principle of providing stability and protection to the back, and using a stable torso solidly linked to the pelvis as a relay of force generated by the hips and shoulders, and not by the back.
In the same vein, the good professor warns against the use of most machines offered in commercial gyms, such as the Roman chair, back twisting machines, leg press-up machines. He objects to the permanent sitting required for these machines, and the fact that they limit joint motion to a strict mechanical pattern, depriving all the soft passive tissues of their natural range.
He deplores the perversion introduced by bodybuilding in the current trends of physical training. Very strong men have only hypertrophied muscles, and no overall fitness. Just pull sideways on his sleeve, and the strongman may well lose his balance. Prof. Stuart McGill's famous motto is "Groove the motion, train the movement, not the muscle".
Prof. Stuart McGill is famous for his preferred "Big 3" exercises for the back: the curl-up, the side bridge, and the birddog, all of them with stages of increasing challenge and complexity. There are quite a few more, if not so basic as the "Big Three", all detailed throughout the book, with an abundance of good pictures. For warm-up of the spine, nothing better than the cat/camel exercice.
Stuart McGill shows how to achieve back stability and spare the low back by maximizing the fundamental use of hips (the "hip hinge") and recruiting the use of the powerful gluteal muscles (with the clam and one-leg squats).
In general, he recommends use of free weights, dumbbells, cables, stretch bands and resistance tubes, and prefers one-armed and one-leg exercises as being more challenging than symmetrical exercises. He recommends avoiding the extreme end range of motion in exercises. And he criticizes a misguided conception of "flexibility" for the back, and the overuse of "stretching" exercises for their only sake. He is very skeptical of many practices of the fashionable vogues, such as yoga, or Pilates.
He insists on learning correct motions, grooving them to obtain perfect form, and then only cultivate endurance by a series of short sets, instead of increasing the number of reps in one long set. Endurance comes before strength, which is developed only once endurance is established.
Only Ch. 13, the last one, analyzes "Advanced Exercises", those for high-performance workers and athletes, putting the accent on low-back exercises to be practiced only by athletes who already have established a solid base of fitness and overall strength.
He wisely warns that Olympic lifting is an expert specialty that should be left to the professionals in this sport. He bemoans the fact that many young lifters, even though aware of his warnings, still manage to damage their backs.
He insists that regular 3F members, ordinary urban physical fitness fanatics, should be very cautious in trying to imitate too eagerly the training programs of professional competitors before they have established enough advanced fitness and strength.
Top professional competitors are not in sports and athletic pursuits for fitness, or good looks, or losing weight, but they enter an arena as modern Samurai or heroic warriors engaged in intense fights where the only goal is pulverizing an opponent and "winning," as a step to gaining fame and riches. In this picture, "back fitness" is a secondary consideration, and "back injuries" a professional hazard that's par for the game.
This last chapter is revisited and vastly amplified in Prof. Stuart McGill's other book, "Ultimate Back Fitness & Performance", especially geared to performers in sports and athletic competitions. This fitness manual is indeed another essential book for any member of the 3F club (Physical Fitness Fanatics) concerned about his/her back.
Warning! You will find the 4th edition of this Back Fitnessmanual, the last one, listed on Amazon as "Ultimate Back Fitness & Performance 4th Ed", with an "&" and not "and", bizarrely not in the "Books" section, but in "All Departments". In the "Books" only the 3d edition is mentioned.
You can also get two DVDs produced by Stuart McGill, which are also helpful, as live illustrations of the two books.
The great value of "Low Back Disorders" is that it is based on a scientific understanding of the basic facts in the anatomy, physiology, and biomechanics of the back.
In spite of some readers' objections, I feel it is extremely valuable to exactly understand how the back works -- basic facts about which most people have not the faintest idea --, and Prof. Stuart McGill does a first-class job in giving us the fundamentals.
We discover our neglected extension muscles, "Longissimus," "Iliocostalis," and "Multifidus". We regain acquaintance with our familiar "Rectus Abdominis", which happens to be one and not a family of six. We get a full picture of the Abdominal Wall, with the famous "External and Internal Obliques" and do not try to isolate "Transverse Abdominis." We get to meet our new friend, "Quadratus Lumborum", and acknowledge the vital importance of "Psoas" and "Iliacus" in hip flexion and stabilization, while greeting the key contributions of "Gluteus Medius" and "Gluteus Maximus".
Surrounded by all the members of this new family, we are in good shape to absorb Prof. Stuart McGill's instruction. This kind of knowledge should be taught in high school to all children. Knowledge of the musculoskeletal system is fundamental and vital for all sports and the conduct of our daily lives.
Sadly, most people know nothing about the biomechanics of the back beyond the simplistic and popular myths spread by school coaches and commercial fitness trainers for whom the primary interest is making money by joining fads and vogues, and not providing basic scientific information, which they often don't even have.
In that sense, "Low Back Disorders" is an indispensable primer to any fitness enthusiast.
This book is also a joy to use and study. It has been superbly edited by a full technical team at Human Kinetics, which unfortunately was not in charge of producing the companion book, "Ultimate Back Fitness & Performance," which does not enjoy the same kind of professional presentation.
The critically useful features of "Low Back Disorders" are: 1) a completely detailed table of contents describing all the material and concepts; 2) a complete list of all the exercises mentioned in the book; and 3) an extensive index at the end allowing the reader to zero in immediately on any item of interest.
All this increases the usefulness and effectiveness of the book, and becomes extremely helpful when you start digging seriously in the text. For instance, you can find where the variations of "cable exercises" are mentioned and illustrated. Or all the instances of analyzing and illustrating the "abdominal bracing", and " the "neutral spine position", two key concepts of Stuart McGill's doctrine. Same for any other kind of research: "Learning to activate the gluteus" or the "hip hinge," and "hip flexion". You don't have to waste precious time leafing through the chapters. To any professional book user, the three editing features mentioned above are a major convenience.
The self-references inside the book itself could be slightly improved, however.
So, all in all, this is a must have, deserving five stars without any restriction or reservation.
There is just nothing else like it on the market.
ROO.BOOKAROO
Backache Books
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