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HEALTH & WELLNESS 126 Joseph DeMarco, DC, is the owner and founder of DeMarco Chiropractic in Manchester. Being active and caring for your body are among the best ways to prevent back pain, but it's not always clear which exercises will be the most benecial to add to your regular routine. at's where a personal trainer can really help. Inexibility, bad posture, desks and car seats that aren't ergonomically ideal, and "too much sitting and not enough moving" are among the many culprits of back pain, says Amy Salant, a personal trainer and owner of Fitness Together in Andover. We asked her to share a few of her top tips for back pain suerers. • Stretch, then strengthen. "You have to get them moving before they can lift anything," says Salant of clients. For instance, certain yoga poses, such as cat and cow and downward dog, are very helpful for back pain. Other stretches, such as hamstring stretches and hip openers, are helpful, too. • Strengthen your core. Core-strength- ening exercises involve more than just doing endless crunches. "It's denitely not like that," Salant says. "If you're doing crunches, you're really only ac- tivating your upper core." Instead, she recommends planks, starting out with 10-second on and 10-second o intervals; pelvic tilts; and abdominal presses. Even squats, weight lifting, and other exercises should activate your core. A personal trainer can help you do them properly. • Get up and move. Many people have a job where they're sedentary, or sitting all day long. Salant recommends getting up and moving regularly. For instance, she told one client to get up once an hour and do 10 body weight squats right at her desk. "Everyone in the oce used to laugh at her, but they all ended up joining in with her," she says. In fact, any type of moving, whether it's taking a walk during lunch or using the gym at work, is benecial. "Even if it's just 10 or 15 minutes, everything counts, everything adds up," Salant says. "Just move more; that's the key." • Stretch correctly. Salant says that it's important to do dierent kinds of stretches, in the right order. She recom- mends starting with a ve-minute warm- In a perfect world, our spines would stay per- fectly aligned all the time. But it's not a perfect world, and back pain is part of almost everyone's life. at's where chiropractors can come in. up, and then doing dynamic stretches while walking and moving; next, move on to the workout, with a static stretch at the end while the body is warm, both to get a better stretch and to reduce risk of injury.