What Does “Throwing Out Your Back” Really Mean? Causes, Recovery, and How True Health Centers Can Help
- Dr. Jason Winkelmann
- Aug 13
- 8 min read
Updated: Aug 21
What “Throwing Out Your Back” Actually Means
While not a clinical term, “throwing out your back” typically describes a sudden onset of intense back pain that makes it hard—or impossible—to move normally. There are a few different reasons this can happen, including:
Acute muscle spasm – Your muscles tighten suddenly to protect an injured or irritated area.
Joint restriction or misalignment – A vertebra or pelvic joint moves slightly out of place, triggering pain and muscle guarding.
Disc irritation – A bulging or herniated disc puts pressure on nearby nerves, causing sharp pain.
Ligament strain – Overstretching the ligaments that support your spine.
Why It Happens (Often at the Worst Times)
“Throwing your back out” can happen from:
Lifting something heavy with poor form
Twisting awkwardly (even just to grab something in the car)
Bending forward without bending your knees
Sudden, unexpected movements during sports or daily activities
Weak core or glute muscles forcing the lower back to overcompensate
Or even just random things explained below
Sometimes, it’s not the movement itself but the accumulation of small stresses over weeks or months that makes your back vulnerable to one wrong move.
How It Happens
"Throwing out your back" can occur one of two ways: instantly of gradually. This is what each one means and how your treatment will differ.
Instantly
This is the most common pattern of one "throwing their back out." It happens very suddenly (sometimes for no good reason), and the pain is intense. Your muscles lock up immediately and most movements are difficult, if not impossible without causing pain. This pattern is most commonly seen when lifting something (heavy or light), quickly twisting, bending forward, or even doing something as mundane as sneezing, coughing, or breathing too deeply (I include this one, because yours truly has fallen victim to this cause).
Pattern 1
You actually do strain a muscle, tendon, or ligament by moving too quickly and/or forcefully. "Pulling a muscle," in this case is directly painful, but will cause a lot of inflammation that will further your pain and immobility
Pattern 2
You suffered a disc bulge or herniation. Disc bulges or herniations can cause pain in a multitude of ways, not just what you've been told.
Pattern 3
Your brain got it wrong. If you hurt yourself doing something routine, or it came out of nowhere, this is more of a nervous system issue than a physical problem. In most cases, your brain is reacting to protect you. In the split second your brain has to computate everything going on with your body and your surrounding world, it sensed a moment of instability. One of your joints was going to become unstable (dislocation being the ultimate form of joint instability) and in order to prevent your joint from moving any further in a dangerous direction, your brain told your muscles, tendons, and ligaments to tighten up as quickly as possible. Because surely, not moving that joint any more is the best thing for you. In instances of fractures or potential dislocations, this would be a great idea. But sometimes the brain gets it wrong. It senses imminent dislocation, when in reality you were nowhere near there.
So your brain either did protect you from a potential dislocation, which would have been way worse than your current situation, or it just got it wrong. Either way, suddenly throwing out your back is typically a result of your nervous system intervening, not a structural problem.
Gradually
If your back pain and immobility occurs, say when you wake up in the morning, this indicates your pain is more likely due to a structural problem like:
Completely overdoing it the day before
Chronically tight muscles that have reached their breaking point
Muscle compensation injury
The Kinetic Chain Connection
Your back isn’t an isolated structure—it’s part of your body’s kinetic chain. A problem in one area can overload another. For example:
Tight hamstrings pull on the pelvis, increasing stress on the lower back.
Weak glutes make your back muscles work harder during daily movements.
Stiff ankles change your walking pattern, leading to uneven stress on the spine.
This is why treating only the spot that hurts often fails—if you don’t address the entire chain, the problem can come back.
Conventional Treatments (and Their Limitations)
Typical medical treatments for an acute back injury may include:
Rest and ice/heat
Muscle relaxants
Physical therapy after the acute phase
In severe cases, cortisone injections or surgery
While these may ease symptoms temporarily, they rarely address the underlying biomechanical imbalances, soft tissue restrictions, or postural habits that led to the injury.
What You Need To Know To Treat A "Thrown Out Back"
During pattern 3, your brain is trying to fix a problem that doesn't exist. If stretching, NSAIDs, muscle relaxers, or even massages don't work, this is because your brain is overriding all of it. Your brain wants your muscles tight to "protect" you. Through all of this, your vertebrae have become restricted, losing full motion in certain directions.
Joint restrictions send a new, and constant, message to your brain that "something is
wrong." As long as the joint restriction remains, your brain will keep your muscles, tendons, and ligaments tight to prevent movement. Removing that joint restriction is the cornerstone of a quick and successful treatment.
When you remove the joint restriction a new signal is sent to your brain essentially saying "the coast is clear." Your brain then gives all the tight muscles, tendons, and ligaments the green light to relax. The problem is, muscles, and especially tendons and ligaments, relax very slowly. While they are relaxing, they can very easily pull that joint back into a restricted state. Which starts this viscious cycle of joint restrictions and tight muscles all over again. Treatments that do not respect this phenomenon fail quickly.
Our Integrative Solutions at True Health Centers
At True Health Centers in Westminster, CO, we take a whole-body approach to help you recover quickly and prevent future flare-ups. Our solutions include:
This is actually the best place to start when you've "thrown out your back." Especially if you fall into pattern 3 above. A chiropractor will be able to quickly determine if your issue is more of a disc injury or muscle injury (and refer you out for more diagnostic work and treatment), or if it is a case of false instability.
A chiropractic adjustment quickly and gently removes joint restrictions, which neuroreflexively relaxes tight and spasmy muscles. Thus breaking the joint restriction / tight muscle loop. A few adjustments helps keep this pattern from reforming.
While chiropractic adjustments are not for everyone, there are other options your chiropractor has to mobilize restricted joints and break this cycle.
Massage therapy, on its own, works great for treating a "thrown out back," but in combination with chiropractic works wonders! After your chiropractic adjustment your muscles are most wanting to relax. Massage therapy speeds up the process of relaxing tight muscles, and targets those you cannot stretch. This helps prevent the joint restriction / tight muscle cycle from reforming.
Dry needling targets deep trigger points in muscles that contribute to pain. In combination with chiropractic and medical massage creates the conditions for a more complete healing process. Dry needling is sometimes your best treatment option for a quick recovery when you are in too much pain to be adjusted or if your back is too tender even for massage.
If you fall into the gradual mechanism of injury category or you repeatedly "throw out your back," you may need to consider physical therapy to correct muscle imbalances, compensation injuries, and joint instability. Physical therapy restores strength, flexibility, and movement patterns to prevent recurrence.
If you are looking for the most complete healing possible, and especailly if you want to prevent future occurrences, naturopathic medicine will take your treatment plan to the next level. "Throwing out your back" is not just a physical problem, it is a biochemical issue as well. Vast amounts of inflammation rush to the scene of the injury and tend to stay there for longer than necessary. This equates to pain and slower healing times.
And even if your injury purely is a physical problem, our naturopathic doctor can support your treatment with the necessary nutrients to build new, and stronger, muscles.
The Most Likely Cause You've Never Heard Of
There is a culprit lurking in the shadows. It contributes to a fair number of back injuries, yet goes undiagnosed in most cases. It is a rib restriction. Along your upper and mid back there are 12 ribs that attach to your vertebrae on both sides. These are very delicate joints that cause a surprising amount of pain when they become restricted. This pain can feel like a normal back injury but in some cases there is a dead giveaway that your problem is your ribs: pain with breathing and arm movements.
Chiropractic adjustments and mobilizations are your best defense against pain caused by a rib restriction.
What It Means If You Keep Throwing Out Your Back
Everyone will "throw out their back" at some point in their lives. It is almost innevitable. But if this is a recurring issue for you, there are unaddressed issues still at play. This is where going beyond conventional treatments will pay off with dividends. You don't just have a "bad back," you have unidentified areas of concern that are likely rather easy to fix with the right care. Areas of concern that will only get worse the longer they are ignored with pain relievers and muscle relaxers.
What is causing your problem is likely a combination of:
Chronic inflammation
Muscle imbalances and compensation
Joint restrictions
and maybe even a disc bulge or herniation
How Soon Should You Get Treated?
Early care is key. The longer your back stays locked in a protective spasm, the more your body compensates in unhealthy ways—making recovery slower. Ideally, you should seek treatment within 24–48 hours after an acute flare-up.
What To Do Immediately
The first step is to recognize what has happened and be honest with yourself that this will likely not go away on its own, and will take some time to fully fix. But doing nothing is the exact wrong thing you can do. If you cannot seek medical attention right away the best things you can do are:
Ice the affected area for 20 mins. If you can, ice for 20 mins, remove the ice for 20 mins, then reapply the ice for 20 mins. Do this as much as possible within the first 48 hours of injury. Ice helps numb the area and reduces inflammation. While it may feel good, research has shown that icing for more than 20 mins at a time can be more harmful than beneficial.
After 48 hours, if you are still unable to seek medical attention, begin alternating your ice and heat. 10 min hot followed by 20 mins cold. Back and forth as much as you can. This will encourage blood flow to bring in nutrients to heal while removing metabolic waste from the site.
Use anti-inflammatories wisely. High doses of fish oil and turmeric / curcumin will help modulate your inflamamtory response. Meaning you will produce beneficial amounts of inflammation without crossing the line into harmful amounts. Be selective about your use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) like ibuprofen as they actually prolong the healing process.
Try to stay moving. While this is likely to cause pain you want to keep your back as loose as possible. Light stretching and movements that only begin to cause pain without you having to push through pain are in most cases safe and beneficial.
Preventing Future Back Injuries
If you have "thrown out your back" once, it is likley you will again. If you are already a victim of this pattern it is time to seriously think about preventing the next one. We help our patients reduce the risk of recurrence by:
Teaching proper lifting and movement mechanics
Prescribing targeted stretches and strengthening exercises
Maintaining spinal and pelvic alignment through periodic care
Get Back to Living Pain-Free
If you’ve recently “thrown your back out” or are dealing with recurring flare-ups, it’s time to address both the pain and the underlying cause. Our interdisciplinary approach treats you, not your symptoms.
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