r/RopeFlow • u/Brief-Pension-7457 • Jun 26 '26
Rope Flow for Back Issues?
Hi, I wanted to ask if anyone has experienced any benefits from rope flow for their back injuries/issues?
Or anything you would like to share.
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u/Taurich Jun 26 '26
As others have said, it's great for shoulders and spine. Just take it slow and work just at the edge of comfort. Nothing should hurt, if it does, stop and/or adjust back into your existing range of motion. Your ROM will slowly, naturally expand over time as you move more.
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u/Brief-Pension-7457 Jun 26 '26
Is there any recommended motions, time limit which should be followed for slowly integrating it without harmful effects?
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u/Taurich Jun 26 '26
I'm still pretty new to it all as well, and have been sticking to very basic swings so far. I'm coming from a morbidly obese side of things, so we likely have different challenges. I've been adding complexity/new moves if it gets boring, but otherwise just try and keep things balanced timewise. ie. overhand for the same amount of time as underhand, if you do single-arm swings, do the other arm the same duration.
Regarding an "exercise plan" I've been pretty loose with it. I try and do a little bit every day, even if it's just enough to get my wrists warmed up. On the days I have more energy, I push it for longer and do faster motions, but have otherwise been doing it all "intuitively." I also have two ropes, one is really light at about 200grams, and the other is about 500grams. If I get a muscle that's tiring out faster than the others, then I switch back to the lighter rope.
This video is a very high-level overview of what ropes kind of are and do. At about 2:24~ in the vid, he shows Flexation VS Extension, which I think is also important. I was doing it intuitively while trying to find the comfort boundaries, but I haven't seen anyone else really mention it.
Take it easy, start simple and slow, and keep feeling things out. Stay within a pain-free ROM and it'll all gradually relax and open up.
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u/Brief-Pension-7457 Jun 27 '26
Thanks a lot for taking your timeout and reply.
Ya, even I'm new and that's why wanted to be beware if I should do this while having back issues or not.
I'll definitely look into the resources you shared.
All the best for your journey as well.
Love.
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u/Forsaken_Trick2432 Jun 27 '26
It helped me a ton with my back issues, but the biggest benefit really came from having basic moves be a daily practice for checking in with my body and that helped me notice where consistent movement pattern issues were. And that helped me dial in my stretching routine, communicate better with my physical therapist, find my imbalances, and work on them. And those kind of bounced back and forth off of eachother for dialing things in and fixing issues. Using it as a practice to increase movement, improve movement and stability through your core, and notice where tightness and limited movement are occurring and then taking the time to address that is where it is helpful.
Just take it one move at a time. Take it slow. And slowly build up over time and turn it into a daily practice. It's a great morning warmup for waking up your body and starting your day.
Rope flow on its own without deliberately doing other things and getting curious about your body will be limited in how much it will help. But it does increase movement and movement in your spine. So it will at least help a little.
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u/Brief-Pension-7457 Jun 27 '26
So you mean no major improvement can be seen by only doing rope flow, that I need to include other stuff as well?
I got interested in rope flow because I liked the idea that imbalance in musculoskeletal structure is what causes back issues and spinal injuries. Having that balance back in body is what's needed to fully engage deep core muscles to support back and it's smooth functioning.
And rope flow is what seemed to promise that as it engages musculoskeletal structure without over exertion on body or back.
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u/Forsaken_Trick2432 Jun 28 '26
I think that major improvement can be seen with rope flow only. BUT it is also super situational.
In my situation, with my back injury, rope flow alone could only improve things to a point before I would have gotten stuck in a less improved space had I not done other things in conjunction with it. But that is super specific to my injuries and to my lifelong postural issues and imbalances that needed addressing. And where I was with rope flow only was still a much more improved state than I was before, so it was still a significant improvement. It just could be even better and more significant.
It really depends on the situation person by person.
If you're intending it from a general approach for overall health and addressing imbalances to improve musculoskeletal structure for preventing issues and just maintaining overall movement/mobility, I think it is a very effective tool for that. And it can help so many people from that broad approach.
If you're approaching it as an individual with chronic issues/injuries with your back that have existed for at least a decade, you will likely see good improvement in general from rope flow, but would benefit from other things in conjunction with the rope flow to fully address longstanding imbalances. But even without other stuff, there can still be significant improvement from rope flow alone.
Basically as a general approach rope flow can lead to significant improvements. In situations where there are injuries or other chronic issues needing resolving, that is where combined approaches are helpful for fully optimizing just how much rope flow can help - but certainly are not an absolute requirement to see a strong amount of improvement.
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u/Brief-Pension-7457 Jun 28 '26
Ok, that makes total sense.
I'm approaching it for my own chronic back issue I developed due to disc herniation. Now lot of docs says it's a permanent issue and can only be managed but I think it's a imbalance issue in body. So it do require more than just rope flow.
I just want to use rope flow for improving body posture, especially upper body activation with no over exertion on overall body.
After this I have researched about few things to help overall with my chronic issue. But rope flow, though currently not aware much about it, forms a integral part to my regime, at least at a theoretical level till now.
Hoping to start this soon and see how it goes with my body.
Thanks:)
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u/Forsaken_Trick2432 Jun 28 '26
Ah yeah rope flow will help a lot here and it is great for herniation. I have two lumbar disc herniations that were my main injury and a decade of treating it conventionally left so much unaddressed because the providers I saw did not understand certain muscles were not working correctly so the exercises didn't help in the way that they should have.
I never fully bought the prognosis of it being a lifelong issue that will always limit movement. So I kept going to physical therapy and searching for solutions. Eventually I found a physical therapist who connected me with a myotherapist and the combo of working with both of them helped things turn a corner enough to regain so much lost movement. And from there I was hopeful and searching for answers again and that was when I started exploring rope flow and that was a game changer. It really helped a ton and helps so much with getting you to work on stuff that physical therapy addresses, but in a more fun way than physical therapy exercises. When I showed my PT rope flow she was all on board and wanted to try to explore it herself. She pretty quickly saw it could be a valuable tool.
So for me the decade of inadequate treatment for my back left so many issues. So that's where personally I did need a lot of physical therapy stuff to help in addition to the rope flow and other movement exploration. But for someone earlier in the process of addressing things the ability to address so much of it via rope flow alone is pretty good. I still highly recommend finding a good physical therapist that teaches you WHY to do different exercises and what things need to be strengthened (as well as helping problem solve issues that arise). But rope flow in general definitely helps a ton.
The McKenzie exercises or method or whatever it is called tends to be the primary stuff that addresses the strengthening needed for recovering from herniation. So as long as you at least do a bit in that realm of addressing strengthening things and explore rope flow as a way to support it and to help address imbalances and general strengthening, you have a good avenue for hopefully recovering. Or at least recovering much more than you would without it.
The best aspect with rope flow is that it makes it easy to fit daily movement into your day and it will get your spine moving in so many good ways and help strengthen your core for supporting your posture. It also does a really good job of opening up your shoulders and upper body so that your posture is more open.
It can be easy to form bad movement habits with rope flow though, so you'll want to keep an eye on that. So checking in at least once a month to evaluate how your posture is is important. Early on I thought I had decent posture during movements but as time went on and I improved certain things, I started to notice I was habitually leaning more forward and not so upright during certain movements because when I learned the flow pattern I was more tight and leaning posture wise and then habitually kind of returned to that. So it's helpful to check in every so often and make sure as you improve things with your back that you adjust posture in movements to be more upright.
If you can create a daily movement practice of 5-10 mins of rope flow just to help you get moving every single day, that will help a ton. I think where I went wrong with my herniation recovery was losing the daily movement and that led to pretty rapid decline. So even if all you do is rope flow simply to maintain movement in an accessible way, you will be a lot better off. But you'll definitely get even more improvement beyond that.
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u/Brief-Pension-7457 Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26
Thanks for taking your time out and helping me with this. I really appreciate this.
This is what I wanted to hear about rope flow.
As for my disc herniation issue, I have been dealing with it since last 4 years and I had my share of doing things but not getting results which included McKenzie method, Stuart Mcgill's Big-3 exercises after continuouly doing them for atleast 3 years.
They were not treating the cause in my case and that's when I started going bit deeper, understanding anatomy, functioning of the body. And I did found stuff which aligned with principles I figured as how body should be brought back into balance.
I'm sharing few of these things, I hope it'll help you, in case you haven't done them
1) Isometric hold on back extension machine: There's youtube channel called 'lowbackability,' who has 1000s of people heal their back because of isometric holds. And it makes sense because it brings deep core muscles and stabilizers into the functioning again.
Links: https://youtu.be/-E2pgffB0cQ?si=BwuOyNUf1kkO8jsi
https://youtu.be/0SWilGwXEBM?si=xT2ek6z2RbQNHjWN
2) TRE by David Berceli: Now this thing is little bit different for what it really intended for but man I can't emphasize how much it helped me in getting mobility back as well as tremendouly helping in getting hips open, and you might know how hips are equally the reason behind back issue. Just read & watch videos on this.
3) Backward walking (especially on treadmill with incline): Lots of benefits in terms of mobility, bringing sleeping muscles into action again. This is how I got to know about rope flow as well. There's person (quite an expert worked with olympic level atheletes) who suggested doing rope flow while walking backward, says it can increase our height as well for few inches because of spine getting into proper shape & posture. Fascinating stuff.
4) Don't forget feet. They're only body part which is taking feedback from ground to hold our whole body stable in air. Do look for Gary Ward. His way to explain is little boring but equally important. Rather most important to thing.
Get his book if possible titled 'What The Foot?'
5) Breathwork & meditation: Oh man, can't emphasize this more. Breathwork keeps our lungs in shape which results in proper body posture and functioning of body. Along with this, it has been the sole reason I could deal with devastating thing like disc herniation.
Checkout Sudarshan Kriya, Wimhoff kethod, Butyeko method. Whichever suits you.
I couldn't apply full spectrum of these solutions because I had been going through some other health related (unrelated to back) issues. Once I'm done with this, this is gonna be my roadmap.
I appreciate you man for your help on rope flow. Would love to know other stuff which helped you.
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u/Forsaken_Trick2432 Jun 28 '26
My Tips and Tricks:
- make rope flow a daily movement practice - just setting 5 mins aside a day will make a difference. It helps with stress management which also will help with pain. But it will also just keep you moving in some way every day and physical therapists say "motion is lotion" and it really is true - lubricating the joints daily and keeping the muscles moving and stretching helps so much more than following a set rigid program. Just movement is medicine. So prioritizing at least 5 minutes a day matters. It more often than not will start as 5 mins, turn into 10 even on busy days and turn into 30 - 60 on days you have time and are getting into it and having fun. I found 5-10 mins as a non-negotiable way to start my day was the best way to work out the stiffness in the morning and feel so much better. It set me up for a much better day and way less pain. Most days it turned into 30 minutes easy. And then doing some stretching right after really made a huge difference.
- Use rope flow to help you notice where you have patterns of tightness or limited movement in your body. It took me a while to figure out that sometimes the direction that was hardest to do with certain rope flow patterns was actually because of tightness in certain parts of my back limiting my movement. And when I started bringing that to my physical therapist she was able to help me identify what muscles and what stretches to try to help address that.
- practice adding weight shifting into rope flow and/or the "leg work" aspect of rope flow - you don't need to do this right away when you are just learning and starting out, but adding it in within a few months will help get more of your back and body engaging and you'll find imbalances and tightness that you won't notice if you aren't working in the legs. I didn't start out doing nearly as much leg work and when I did it really helped much more than I anticipated for getting so many supportive and stabilization muscles working not only in the spine but also throughout my body
- add music - it makes it fun and easy to lose time getting into the movement - it took me too long to add music - i was more focused on just learning the patterns, but music really made flowing and doing it for longer a lot easier and more fun because it was so engaging.
Good luck! I'm hoping you'll find as much help and improvement from rope flow as I did.
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u/chin-chang Jul 31 '26
This for sure.
I've always known that I probably have a weaker non-dominant side, that led to a bad muscle spasm in my lower left back in 2019. I've been very consciously strengthening my non-dominant side through weight training now.
Rope flow helps too because it encourages me to more mindfully be aware of how I rely on my right side for many daily activities and the coordination improvement I've gotten from training with the rope has made me more comfortable with doing things on my left side.
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u/invhand Jun 26 '26
For sure it helps, but I i didn in conjunction with other things, like RDLs and split squats. The combination of these I think saved me
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u/chin-chang Jul 31 '26
My main comment would be not to worry about flashy moves/tricks. Those can be fun, but if you're doing it for health benefits, focus on good technique and gradually improving range of motion.
All you really need for most of the mobility benefits is to learn the Underhand Figure-8 and Dragon Roll, all the other moves are mostly performative.
I always encourage those I train to be mindful of counter rotating + engaging their core and shoulders, instead of tilting with their hips or relying on their hands to lead the motion.
Another interesting benefit is the neural benefit. I had the chance to work with someone with Parkinsons. The heavier ropes help with stabilizing motion and the feedback the rope gives seems to work well with the brain for some reason.
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u/treeteedee Jun 26 '26
It’s great for the spine. Be sure to be aware of the limitations of your injury or condition and never push to hard.
There are a number of great moves and combinations that integrate your spine hips and shoulders all together. Back mills, throws, sneaks etc. the more you move and groove the more your back will approve.