Your spine is arguably the most important structure in your body, so it’s important to take care of it. Your spine gets a lot of compression from daily activities, gravity and general life. Add to that the extra compression you give it with strength training and you better start decompressing it.

Back health is extremely important, and I’m willing to bet most of you have back pain currently. I myself hurt my lower back about a year ago, and this is one of the methods I used to get it back to 99% (still sometimes gets tight or painful). I’ll do a complete post on why you have back pain and how to fix it later, but read this now.

What you want to do is follow a simple decompression method that helps to keep your spine healthy and mobile by helping it decompress to its original length.

Here’s the whole thing you need to …

How To Perform Spine Decompressions

You’ll need a pull-up bar to do your decompressions. After you have that piece of equipment, there’s two ways to go about this:

1. Obtain Gravity Boots: This is the process that I utilize. These are boots that you bind onto your ankles and have hooks on them so you can hang upside down from your pullup bar securely and allow your backbone to decompress. I make use of Teeter Hang Ups Gravity Boots. An extra bonus is that with these boots I can perform upturned sit ups for my abs and other cool “upside down” exercises.

2. Hang With Your Hands: This is easy. Simply hang from your pull-up bar and relax all your muscles-hold it for as long as possible. The longer you hang the better shoot for at least 5 minutes and build up from there. You probably can’t hang that long, so here’s

How To Hang On Longer With Your Hands

The longer you hang the better, but your grip will probably give out. While I would never recommend using lifting straps for your regular lifting, I recommend them for decompressions because it will allow you to hang on longer. Choose nylon-type lifting straps or lifting hook straps because they’re more durable.

How To Relax Your Muscles So Your Spine Decompresses

Your muscles need to be relaxed in order for your spine to decompress (staying tight won’t help). Here’s what to do whether you’re using the gravity boots method or the hanging from your hands method:

* Come down the pull-up bar

* Take a deep breath and keep hold of it

* Stiffen your whole body (concentrate on abs, glutes and make fists)

* Hold your entire body stiff for 5 seconds

* Give it all off, your breath and the whole stiffness. Take it easy

When you do this you’ll have a feeling your whole body relaxing and you’ll probably “drop” down a little. You’ll most likely sense your back decompressing, remarkably the first few times.

How Often You Should Decompress

Every day is great. Though I have to admit that I don’t do it day by day always. But you certainly should aim to do it as much as possible. If you get tired hanging upside down you can read a book or something. It’s great to do these right after your strength training sessions, right after your settle down-think of it as a part of your cooldown.