05/12/2026
Great write up from Dr. Justin Farnsworth.
A spine that doesn’t flex, extend, rotate, and side bend is not a healthy spine.
It’s a spine you’ve been afraid to use.
The body is a use-it-or-lose-it system. Every joint, every muscle, every connective tissue adapts to the demands placed on it. Bone gets denser with load. Tendons get stiffer with progressive demand. Range of motion shrinks when it isn’t used and expands when it is.
The spine is no exception.
Most adults move their spine through a fraction of its available range every single day. They sit. They stand. They walk. They drive. The spine flexes maybe 20 degrees forward, extends maybe 5 degrees back, and barely rotates or side-bends at all. For decades.
Then one day they bend down to pick something up, the back complains, and they conclude the bending was the problem.
It wasn’t the bending.
It was the 30 years of NOT bending. Of not rotating. Of not side bending. The spine that suddenly hurts wasn’t broken by the movement that triggered it — it was made fragile by the years of avoidance that came before.
A spine that’s intelligently loaded across all four motions stays mobile, strong, and resilient. A spine that’s protected, coddled, and asked to do almost nothing becomes the spine that “goes out” the moment life asks for more.
The fix isn’t to use it less. It’s to use it more — across the full range of motion, under appropriate load, with patience and progression.
Flex it. Extend it. Rotate it. Side bend it. Load it. That’s what the spine was built for.
