Elite athletes in certain sports that ask a lot of the spine - like gymnastics and wrestling - have been found that have an increased risk of lower back pain.

Rowers and cross-country skiers don't have to bend themselves backwards. But they do have to flex and extend their spines, over and over again.

"They expose their backs to monotonous movements for a number of years," said Ida Stange Foss, of the Norwegian School of Sports Sciences in Oslo, the lead researcher on the study.

Yet in the long run, Foss's team found, elite rowers and skiers may have no more lower back woes than people who get their sports on TV.

Of 415 former rowers and cross-country skiers surveyed, about 56 percent said they'd had any lower back pain in the past year. That compared with 53 percent of non-athletes - a difference that could have been due to chance.

"This is an important and positive message for the athletes," Foss said in an email.

However, the news was not all good. Rowers and skiers who'd trained harder in the past year - more than 550 hours - were also more likely to have had a bout of low back pain in the past year.

The pain was generally short-lived. "Most of the elite athletes reported a pain duration between one and seven days, (or) eight to 30 days during the past year," Foss said. "Very few reported pain lasting for more than one month."

Still, that means active rowers and cross-country skiers might need to take steps to protect their backs.

"It is important for the athletes to prevent lower back pain through strengthening the core muscles and increasing the core stability, to better tolerate the high training volume," Foss said.

The study, published in the American Journal of Sports Medicine, included 173 rowers and 242 cross-country skiers who'd been surveyed back in 2000. Foss's team surveyed them again in 2010, asking about their training and exercise levels over the past decade, any problems with back pain.

For comparison, the researchers surveyed 116 non-athletes and 209 athletes in orienteering - a sport that involves outdoor running and no specific strain on the back.

Most people in each group - around two-thirds - said they'd had low back pain at some point in their lives. Of the athletes, 17 to 19 percent said they'd had pain in the past week, as did 20 percent of the less sporty group.

Other studies have found that when it comes to exercise and back pain, extremes matter: Both couch potatoes and heavy-training athletes may be at increased risk.

Back in the 2000 survey of these same athletes, the researchers did find that lower back pain became more common as rowers and skiers bumped up their training to get ready for competition.

And cross-country skiers had more pain when they used "classic" techniques rather than "freestyle," Foss noted.

"These findings," she said, "indicate that it is important to vary movement patterns and techniques, especially during intense training periods."

SOURCE: bit.ly/SEYPPl American Journal of Sports Medicine, online September 12, 2012.

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