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Of course, while every one of those muscles serves a different purpose and each is susceptible to its own form of strain, tears, and other kinds of injuries, we want to focus on the most common and debilitating muscle problem in terms of aging: back pain. First, let’s tour your back. Your spine is the snakelike curved structure made up of small bones called the vertebrae, which are stacked one on top of another to form a column. Between each two vertebrae, there’s a disc that provides cushioning. Think of the spinal structure as a series of jelly doughnuts—with the vertebrae acting as the semi-hard casing and the discs as the squishy substances inside that casing. Tendons and ligaments hold the entire spine together, and openings in each vertebra line up to form a long hollow canal that houses the spinal cord from the base of the brain down the spine. Small nerves from the spinal cord jet out the spine through the space between the vertebrae. (A bulging or herniated disc happens when too much torque is put on the spine and the disc bulges out, like pinching the doughnut so the jelly oozes out. If that occurs close to a nerve, that leads to inflammation of your nerves leading down to your legs and arms, which is why a pinched nerve hurts down the legs or arms more so than directly in the neck or back.) Though we all have heard of the severity of injuries that can come from trauma to the spine, the more common forms of pain come from strained muscles in or surrounding the lower back.

The muscles in your lower back have a function similar to your knees—they support a lot of your body weight. Yet they are just not as strong as they need to be to support you by themselves, and they are often abandoned by the stomach and pelvic muscles that work in harmony to support our upright structure. The people who are most at risk for back pain are those who go long periods sitting or standing, those who are in poor physical condition or who have a poor exercise regimen, and those who do heavy labor. They’re less likely to recover quickly from lower back pain because their lifestyle exacerbates the pain—or their bodies aren’t equipped to recover. They may also have overused or underdeveloped muscles in their lower back. In that case, doing anything from getting off the couch to stepping into a car may be enough to trigger excruciating tension on your lower-back muscles. That’s the strain that causes the pain. (To test yourself, lie on the floor and raise one leg straight up. If there’s pain in the back of your leg when you raise your foot about a foot off the ground, it’s probably more of a nerve problem than a muscle problem.)

With about 65 million Americans suffering from back pain, it’s the second most common reason for medical visits. The way the odds play out, you’re likely to have about one serious episode of back pain for every fifteen years of your life (serious is defined by pain severe enough that you seek medical attention). For those who plan to live ninety-plus years, that means you’re likely to have six severe episodes of back pain in your life. But in only 5 percent of cases does the pain keep you from all daily activities. The really interesting part of this is that, unlike your bones and joints, your back muscles seem to be under the most strain from the ages of thirty-five to fifty-five. Back pain is much less common in older people, presumably because older people carry less tension in their back. Luckily, nearly 95 percent of lower back pain can be treated without surgery. And even more can be prevented by doing exercises that center around the pelvis and abdomen.

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