A “Motor Skill Training” Approach to Chronic Low Back Pain

For patients with chronic low back pain, two possible approaches to therapy are traditional strength/flexibility exercises and more-personalized training that focuses on improving the patient's particular functional limitations. For this trial, researchers randomized 149 patients with at least 1 year of low back pain to one of those two approaches, labeled as “strength-flexibility exercise” (SFE) and person-specific “motor skill training” (MST). All patients reported at least three functional limitations related to low back pain but could walk without assistance; those with symptomatic disc herniation or structural spine problems were excluded. Patients had weekly 1-hour sessions for 6 weeks with physical therapists and were instructed in h…