Should You Have A Rest Day With Back Pain?

In the latter stages of rehab, rest days become more necessary. In the first stages of rehabilitation, it’s all about mobility and unloading the spine to allow your spine to start healing properly. It’s also about skill-building to help you start engaging your core properly. This stage should be done everyday and no rest days should be needed or taken during this time.

When you start strengthening for back pain in Phase 2, these start to build some stability for your back. In the early parts as you move into it, you may wish to alternate between Phase 1 and Phase 2 to introduce you into this stage. Once you’re used to it, you may be able to continue doing Phase 2 everyday without a rest day – but if you have pushed the boat on one day, you might find taking the next day slightly easier will help you to do some active recovery. It’s not during the activity that you will get stronger, it’ll be good nutrition and quality sleep that’ll get you results.

If you decide to take a rest day, but spend it doing something different to normal ie. you decide to do the gardening or a long walk on the beach, this is not a rest day. It’s ok to do those activities, but it’s not technically a rest day so don’t consider it to be one.

In Phase 3, you introduce more resistance so it’s more important to put in rest days. After a month you might be doing 5 days of Phase 3 and take 2 days of Phase 1. One of those days could be lower intensity if you do enjoy the exercises and don’t want to take a full 2 days of just Phase 2. Don’t neglect the stretching, they are really helpful in the latter stages of recovery as a maintenance.

Flare ups are a slightly different case during the strengthening phase. If you do have a flare up, you should take a rest day to settle things down but this rest day should be doing the Phase 1 exercises in order to assist your body in calming the inflammation.