Bridge exercise · Low back pain · St. Louis · Regen.MD physiotherapy
Bridge exercise:
make your hips do the heavy lifting
The bridge is a home exercise that strengthens the glutes and hips so they protect your low back. Face up with knees bent, clench your seat and float your hips upward until shoulders, hips and knees make a single line. Hold 5 seconds at the top, lower one vertebra at a time, ten in all.
Only the exercises your physician has ticked on your home plan are yours to do. Twice daily is the rhythm unless the written plan says something different.
Step by step: bridge exercise
- Starting position. Face up, knees bent, feet planted about hip-width.
- The motion. Clench your seat, then float the hips upward until shoulders, hips and knees make one line. Roll back down one vertebra at a time.
- How much. A 5-second hold up top, ten in all.
What the bridge does for tissue repair
Strong glutes take force off the low back every time you stand, climb or lift. A back with strong hips under it handles the return of normal load far better after treatment.
Fresh from an injection? Read this first
After a PRP or other orthobiologic injection in your low back, the treated tissue needs a protected stretch of days before it is asked to work. Your physician tells you when this exercise comes back. When it does, start with fewer repetitions and build to the full dose over the following visits. Loading in steps like this is how the repair signal from the injection turns into stronger tissue.
More on that: why load is the treatment an injection cannot supply.
Form errors we correct most often
- Overshooting the line so the back arches at the top.
- Driving up through the neck and head.
- Knees splaying apart or collapsing together.
Signs that mean stop and phone us
Feeling the muscle work, a gentle pull, or some next-day stiffness is normal. Call us at (314) 295-3000 if you notice:
- Pain that turns sharp or stabbing
- A pain score that climbs 2 or more points and stays up longer than an hour
- New numbness, tingling or loss of strength
- Feeling dizzy, or your eyesight changing
Call 911, not the clinic, for chest pain, a hard time breathing or passing out.
Tracking what changes
Keep a short log: a check mark for each session and one pain score per day. Hand it over at each appointment; your technician tallies the sessions and has you perform one repetition so your form can be corrected. At each re-check you also repeat the same function questionnaire, and if your physician orders it, a Kinetisense 3D motion scan, so the change is measured instead of guessed.
What to remember
- Clench the seat before you rise.
- One line, no arch.
- Knees stay pointed straight up.
Show us you have it: Before you go, do one bridge and hold the top while we look at your knees. If a point is fuzzy, say so and we walk through it again with you.
The rest of the low back series
- Pelvic tilt: core brace
- Knee to chest: low back and seat stretch
- Cat and cow: spine motion
Related reading: PRP for degenerative disc and facet pain, hip-spine syndrome.
Where this fits: the Regen.MD physiotherapy program, physician-directed rehab paired with our regenerative care. A physician must be in the building and reachable within moments before any treatment begins.