At some point I had found profiles on the old GiantScientific.com forum suggesting that maybe the stretching method known as Back Bridging can help a person increase and grow taller since they are stretching out the torso and vertebrate.

At this point I can’t find the thread or posts which does suggest this form of exercise. However there are quite a few yoga websites which suggest that the idea is feasible. or at least some weak content Internet Marketer created pages which suggested this idea. So I wanted to do a little bit more research to see whether the idea had any chance for effectiveness.

From the MMA website Sherdog.com, I would learn that the backbridging exercise can increase flexibility and build upper body strength.

From the website…

“Bridging works your entire posterior chain, while simultaneously stretching your hip flexors, shoulders and upper back (places where guys tend to get tight). Back bridging can also strengthen your vertebrae and increase spinal circulation.”

This section talks about something called a “hip flexors” when I would google and find out is the muscle that connects the main torso body to the legs, around the same region as where the leg hip joint attaches to the pelvis. Everything else is normal biology language. The other thing that I noticed was that the vertebrate can be strengthened, but it says nothing about stretching or elongating the vertebrate. When a body part is strengthened, it usually suggest that it got thicker or wider, not longer. From this quick review from a MMA based website, there is nothing to suggest that a person has any chance of growing taller from doing the backbridging exercise. The fact that it can increase flexibility gives a slight chance, but the posterior region is stretched in the opposite direction from the normal stretching.

The other website or reference suggesting this would work is from HERE. Unfortunately there is not a lot of information that it is giving except this excerpt below…

“…lie on your back and put arms on the floor beside your legs. After this lift your abs and pelvis towards the ceiling”

They talk about lifting one’s abs and pelvis but that would not change the internal body structure alignement. We could hope that the hip flexors and the ligaments that hold the total hip bone to become slightly moved away from the socket, but that would lead to injury. Lifting the pelvic suggest that maybe the lumbar vertebrate area can be stretched out, but we find out that the lower  vertebrate are almost fused together.

So is it possible that the backbridging pictured to the right can make a person grow taller at least temporarily by stretching out their vertebrate or spine? 

At this point I would say no. It is true that the stretching of the human vertebrate may cause temporarily elongation, but most of the human torso’s weight and organs are on the anterior side of the vertebrate (in front of). When a person does a normal stretch like getting into a pair of yoga pants, and trying to touch their toes while going into a downward dog position, The vertebrate will be slightly bent in the anterior direction and that will cause a little bit of increased separation and width in the intervertebral disks but the vertebrate physiologically designed to be able to bend in that direction. After the person gets back up to the up-right position, The disks may stay in that expanded volume state for a short while.

But one could argue that the backbridging is just the opposite of the position described where the vertebrate are bent in the opposite direction. However my argument is that the human vertebrate is not designed to bend in that direction. If a person did more of the back bridging, they would strengthen their back, but I would guess that the disks between the vertebrate are more likely to be compressed than expanded. This is due to the fact that the most of the torso weight is in the anterior of the vertebrate. When you are backbridging the weight of the front side of the body pushes down ward, causing the disks to be squeezed even more between the vertebrate.

This is similar to the architecture design known as the roman arch. Notice that with the roman arch, the arch stays in placed being squeezed into stability due to the weight from above it. That is similar to what the human body’s intervertebral disks do when they are bend in in the opposite direction and the weight of the body pushes downward on the vertebrate.

On the other hand, when you are stretching out in the normal direction hands touching the toes, the vertebrate is not being pushed down by the anterior torso part, giving it a better chance in expanding, than being compressed.