Lower back pain and sailors

Fit For Sailing

Back pain is common among sailors but we can minimise the risks, says Andrew Verdon.

There is a much-quoted statistic that 80% of people will experience some back pain in their  lives. It is very common in recreational as well as elite sailors. To investigate this I have gone straight to the expert in the area: Donna White.

Donna has been the physiotherapist to the Australian Sailing Team and Olympic teams since 2002. As well as Olympic class sailors, Donna regularly treats keel boat, skiff and board sailors. The most common area she has to treat for pain is the lower back and she is currently researching the causes of lower back pain in dinghy sailors.

Why is back pain  so common?

Donna: I believe that unlike many other sports such as soccer, football or tennis, sailing has been seen for a long time as a recreational activity not a ‘sport’. As such, our young or older sailor tends not to train to maintain fitness and strength. Even though a day on the water competing can take a number of hours of hard physical work and puts incredible strain on the lower back, I rarely see sailors warming up prior to the start of a race or completing a few cool down stretches on the shore afterwards. In my experience sailors rarely think of their own individual technique or posture. The main focus of performance outcome is on the “fitness” of the boat, and how it is tuned to perform, rather than the sailor.

I see sailors everyday in my clinic who are surprised to learn that they need to warm up their muscles before sailing, or strengthen their back and abdominal muscles if they aim to hike out of a Laser for any length of time, or grind hard or race across the wings of a skiff. Poor posture/technique and poor strength and fitness would be the most common causes of back pain that I see in sailors. Rarely do I see acute onset pain unless a sailor has lifted incorrectly or twisted suddenly.

What can make it worse:

Donna: Ignoring it and hoping it will go away.  Always seek the advice of a healthcare professional, especially if you have any nerve pain, pain in your legs or difficulty using your bladder or bowel.

What would be the top three things a recreational sailor should do to avoid getting lower back pain?

Donna:

1.  GET FIT. Tune your body as you do your boat. Invest time and energy in yourself. The fitter you are the more able your back will be to stand the demands of recreational sailing.

2.  CORE STRENGTH. Your spine is like your mast, it needs strong muscles or stays all around it to support it. Research tells us that strong core muscles reduce the re-occurrence of lower back pain by 50%! The exercises are simple and easily taught by a physio or gym instructor.

3.  POSTURE/TECHNIQUE. Got back pain? Check your posture. Your spine should sit centrally on your pelvis, a little like the mast sits on the hull. The problem could be due to your desk set up at work – try not to slump and allow your “hull” to tip, placing stress on your mast/spine, and take regular breaks . Ask a coach to review how you move on the boat as opposed to how the boat moves. I see many dinghy sailors who try to get as far out of the boat as possible when hiking in order to keep the boat flat. However due to poor technique/muscle control/fitness they lose their posture and overload their lumbar spine and complain of pain.

Donna concludes with : We all need to listen to our backs and seek help when we start getting symptoms. There are a number of reasons why an individual can be in pain and it is best to be assessed thoroughly so not only do you have an accurate diagnosis and thus the most appropriate treatment, but also learn how to prevent it happening again! Donna White can be contacted at her practice in Seaforth in Sydney on (02) 9907 0321.