"At least for me it's certainly some muscle thing..."
Again, I think a good mental model is that of a corset, or a brace. In this case, the corset you are donning is made of your own muscle.
You could attempt to build that own-muscle corset section by section by doing all of the 40 different trunk and midsection rehab exercises, but even then, in what balance or proportion could you hope to execute them ?
Instead, you can hit all of them, in concert, and in appropriate proportions, by walking.
The difficult part is that bad back pain will not make for easy, pain-free walking - at least at first. I found 4-6 mile walks to produce a fair amount of back pain in the year immediately following my initial disc herniation/tear. It took that forced week or so at the beginning of basic training to pull my spine back together.
Again, I think a good mental model is that of a corset, or a brace. In this case, the corset you are donning is made of your own muscle.
You could attempt to build that own-muscle corset section by section by doing all of the 40 different trunk and midsection rehab exercises, but even then, in what balance or proportion could you hope to execute them ?
Instead, you can hit all of them, in concert, and in appropriate proportions, by walking.
The difficult part is that bad back pain will not make for easy, pain-free walking - at least at first. I found 4-6 mile walks to produce a fair amount of back pain in the year immediately following my initial disc herniation/tear. It took that forced week or so at the beginning of basic training to pull my spine back together.