The holidays are a back's worst nightmare disguised as joy. Suitcases hauled out of car trunks at odd angles. A toddler who wants to be carried through the airport. The Christmas tree wrestled through a doorway. Three hours of standing at the kitchen island rolling out dough. A long drive in a seat that doesn't quite fit you. And then, somehow, you're supposed to host fifteen people and smile.
Every December, the messages start landing in my inbox. Students from my callanetics classes, friends of friends, my mother-in-law's neighbours — all asking some version of the same question: how do I get through the holidays without my back going out?
This is my honest playbook. Not the version where you cancel everything and lie flat for three weeks. The realistic one — where you still travel to see your in-laws, still cook the big meal, still lift your child onto your hip for the family photo. You just do it with a strategy.
Why the holidays wreck lower backs
Before we get tactical, it helps to understand what's actually happening. A bad back rarely "goes out" from one dramatic moment. It's the accumulation — and the holidays stack the deck.
Sitting for long stretches in a car or plane shortens your hip flexors and dumps load onto your lumbar spine. Then you stand up cold and lift something heavy. You sleep in a guest bed with a sagging mattress. You wear party shoes that change your whole posture. You eat and drink in ways that bloat your midsection and reduce core support. You skip your usual movement routine because there's "no time." Stress climbs, and stressed muscles guard.
By the third or fourth day of this, the back you've been managing reasonably well at home is twitchy and unhappy. And then someone asks you to grab the heavy roasting pan out of the oven.
If you've been confused about whether your particular pain is sciatica or something else, my earlier piece on sciatica vs SI joint pain is worth a read first — because the strategy shifts slightly depending on what you're dealing with.
The lifting rules I actually follow (and teach)
I have two boys. I run ultras. I also have a back that, like most backs that have done a lot of living, has opinions. Here's what I actually do — not the textbook version, the real one.
Hip-hinge, don't squat, for anything you can lift one-handed
Most "lift with your legs, not your back" advice imagines you doing a deep squat to pick up a feather. In real life, for a suitcase, a grocery bag, or a wrapped gift, you don't need to drop into a squat. You need to hinge at the hips, keep the load close, and let your glutes do the work.
Push your hips back like you're closing a car door with your bum. Soft bend in the knees. Chest stays proud. The bar of the suitcase comes up to you, you don't crumple down to it.
The "split stance pick-up" for awkward objects
For anything off the ground that's awkward — a child's car seat, a box of decorations, a bag of dog food — I use a split stance. One foot forward, one foot back, hinge from the front hip. It's the way I pick up my kids' shoes off the floor a hundred times a day and it's the way I taught my mother-in-law to get her cat carrier out of the back seat.
The "no twist" rule that matters more than anything
The single most common way I see people hurt their backs over the holidays is rotation under load. You lift the suitcase, then twist to put it on the bed. You pull the turkey out of the oven, then pivot to set it on the counter. You scoop up the toddler, then swing them into the car seat.
Lift. Pause. Reposition your feet. Then turn. Every single time.
This is the rule I drill into my callanetics students until they roll their eyes. And they're the ones who don't pull their backs out before Christmas dinner.
When you can't avoid the lift, brace
For genuinely heavy things — the tree, a heavy bag of compost for your sister's garden, a sleeping eight-year-old — brace your core before you move. Imagine someone's about to gently punch you in the stomach. That subtle 360-degree tightening through your trunk is what protects your spine. It's not a "suck in." It's a firming up.
The back brace question
I get asked about back braces constantly this time of year, and I want to be careful here because there's a lot of bad information floating around.
A lumbar support belt is not a cure. It's not a replacement for strong glutes and a working core. But used at the right moments, it's one of the most useful tools I know for someone managing chronic lower back pain through a high-demand week.
The way I think about it: a brace is for moments of predictable load when your back is already irritated or vulnerable. Travel days. The hours you'll spend hosting. The afternoon you're going to spend hauling boxes down from the attic. It gives proprioceptive feedback — basically, your body becomes more aware of its position — and it can offload some of the work your deep stabilisers would normally do.
The HYKLE Sciatica & Lower Back Support Brace is what I recommend to my students who deal with this stuff. It sits low on the hips (which is the part most people get wrong with traditional wraparound elastic belts — those sit too high and can spike blood pressure, as one of our customers Alice pointed out in her review). For sciatica and SI joint irritation specifically, the lower placement is what you want.
What I tell people: don't wear it all day, every day. Use it for the lift, the long sit, the hosting shift. Take it off when you're moving normally. You want your own muscles to keep doing their job.
One of our customers, Natalie, wrote that after pulling her sciatica two weeks before her appointment, the brace let her walk and sit without pain through her recovery. That's the use case. Not a permanent crutch — a bridge.
Travel days: the back-saving sequence
A travel day with a cranky back is a project. Here's the actual sequence I use when Deso and I are loading the kids and the gear for a holiday trip.
Morning: I do ten minutes of gentle movement before I touch a single bag. Cat-cow, hip circles, glute bridges, a few standing pelvic tilts. If my back is already grumpy, I do the bed-based routine from my sciatica exercises article. Five minutes is enough to wake the system up. Cold muscles tear; warm ones don't.
Loading the car: Brace on. Suitcases as close to my body as possible. Hip hinge. The heavy ones go in first so I'm not lifting them over other bags. If something is genuinely too heavy, I ask Deso. The number of back injuries I see in proud, competent women who refused to ask for help could fill a clinic.
In the car or on the plane: I roll up a small sweater or use a packable lumbar pillow to support the curve of my lower back. Every 90 minutes, I get up — full standing, walk around, gentle backward bends. On a plane, I do this in the back galley. I do not care if I look strange. The alternative is arriving stiff and inflamed.
Arriving: Do not, do not, do not unload the entire car the moment you arrive. Stretch first. Walk for two minutes. Then unload, in two trips, with breaks between. I cannot count the number of people who have hurt themselves in the first five minutes at their destination.
Hosting without destroying yourself
If you're the one cooking, here's the truth: a hard kitchen floor for six hours is brutal on a lower back. Worse than a long run, in some ways, because you're stationary and tense rather than moving and flowing.
A few things that actually help:
Use a cushioned mat in front of your prep area. Even a folded yoga mat. The shock absorption matters.
Sit when you can. Bring a stool into the kitchen. Sit to chop vegetables. Sit to whisk. Standing is not a virtue.
Alternate one foot up. This is the bartender trick — keep a low step or the open dishwasher rack nearby and rest one foot up on it for a few minutes at a time. It changes the pelvic angle and offloads the lumbar spine.
Wear sensible shoes. I know it's a party. Save the heels for the half hour you sit at the table. Cook in something flat and supportive. Your spine is not impressed by your shoes.
Take a brace shift. When you know you've got three hours of standing ahead, the brace earns its keep. Put it on before you start, not after the pain has set in.
Lifting kids over the holidays
If you've got a toddler or a small child, the holidays multiply the lifting demands. Coats on, coats off, into the car seat, out of the car seat, up to see the lights, up to put the star on the tree, up because they're overstimulated and crying.
I wrote a whole piece on lifting a toddler with a bad back that goes deeper into this, but the holiday-specific advice is: minimise unnecessary lifts. Let them climb into the car seat themselves if they're old enough. Sit on the floor with them rather than crouching repeatedly. Use a stool so they can reach the bathroom sink without being lifted. Every avoided lift is a deposit in the back bank.
And for the genuine lifts — when they're asleep, or when you do need to scoop them up — brace, hinge, keep them centred against your sternum, do not twist.
What I do every single morning during the holiday stretch
This is the one habit I refuse to skip, no matter where I am or who is waking me up.
Five minutes on the floor before my feet hit the day:
That's it. It's not a workout. It's a wake-up call to your spine. I do it in hotel rooms, in my in-laws' guest room, on hardwood with a towel under me. The day I skip it is the day my back reminds me why I shouldn't have.
The recovery moves for the end of a hard day
If you've overdone it — hauled too much, sat too long, hosted too hard — here's the wind-down that works.
Legs up the wall for ten minutes. Lie on your back with your legs straight up against a wall. It decompresses the spine, drains the legs, and slows your nervous system down. I do this almost nightly during heavy travel weeks.
Heat on the lower back for fifteen minutes. Hot water bottle, heat pad, warm bath. Heat increases blood flow and relaxes guarding muscles. Cold is for acute inflammation in the first 24 hours of a fresh injury; for chronic grumpy backs, heat almost always wins.
Gentle walking. Even ten minutes around the block. Movement is what backs want; rest beyond a day or two often makes them worse, not better.
When to actually worry
A brace, some smart lifting, and a morning routine will get most people through the holidays in one piece. But there are signs that mean stop the playbook and see someone:
- Numbness or weakness in a leg (not just pins and needles — actual weakness when you try to lift your foot)
- Pain that wakes you from sleep and won't ease with position change
- Any change in bladder or bowel function (this is an emergency — go to A&E)
- Pain after a genuine fall or accident, especially if it's worse the next day
For everything else — the familiar ache, the stiff mornings, the radiating discomfort you know — the playbook works.
The honest bottom line
You can have a good holiday with a bad back. You cannot have a good holiday if you pretend your back isn't bad and then blow it out on day two.
The people I know who manage chronic lower back issues well during the holidays are not the ones with the strongest backs. They're the ones who plan around their backs. They warm up before they lift. They wear the brace when they know they'll need it. They ask for help. They take the five minutes in the morning. They sit when they can. They don't twist under load. They build in recovery instead of waiting until they're broken.
If you're heading into a heavy stretch and you know your lower back is going to be tested — pack the HYKLE Sciatica & Lower Back Support Brace in the suitcase. Wear it on the travel days, the hosting shifts, the heavy-lifting hours. Take it off when you're moving freely. Your back doesn't need a hero. It needs a strategy.
Have a beautiful, well-managed holiday. And if you do end up flat on the living room floor at some point — knees to chest, slow breathing, ten minutes — call it a feature, not a failure. Backs have a way of reminding us to slow down. Sometimes that's the whole gift.