I first want to thank you guys for all the great work and content you put out. It has been a life-changing for me as my wife and I have gotten back into lifting consistently over the last year and a half using your templates.
My question is regarding my fifteen year old daughter, who participates in high level competitive cheerleading. She is a “flyer” who gets tossed around in the air, so her body takes some abuse. The last couple of years, she has been experiencing some lower back pain on and off. Her doctor diagnosed her with spina bifida occulta and said she’d have to stop flying in order to be pain-free.
From what I’ve read, most people with this are asymptomatic but with those that do have pain, it’s usually mild. My daughter desperately wants to keep flying, but her doctor has kind of put the fear in all of us that in doing so she may be causing long-term damage. Would doing some resistance training to strengthen the muscles in her back be a good option to allow her to manage/alleviate the pain and continue to fly? Or is she better off heeding the doctor’s advice and avoiding putting so much stress on her back?
I’ll tag @Derek_Miles here in case he has anything to add.
However, this is likely to be just another situation where an individual developed non-specific low back pain, and imaging evaluation (I assume) revealed this structural finding that the pain is automatically attributed to. I remain skeptical that this finding is related to the pain, and I would not recommend ceasing activity or worrying about “damage” here. Resistance training is always a good option for everyone, including youth athletes, but there’s nothing magic about it compared to other types of exercise for specifically improving pain.
I would agree with what Austin is saying here. This is no different than individuals having an L6 or Bertolotti syndrome. I use both of those as examples as likely most people would not know the first variant exists and even more would have no idea what the second one is or that it is relatively common. Spina bifida occulta looks to have a prevalence of 12.4% and no real association with low back pain. I do not see a reason why your daughter cannot continue to cheer. Doing resistance training would very likely help her symptoms. If she is a flyer she is a power athlete, having a base of strength helps athletes express that power. As with all things, start small with it and grade the weight back up. Don’t let the fancy words put fear in you, she has plenty of cheering ahead of her.
Thank you so much. I truly appreciate the invaluable info. You guys are the best