Daily Exercise With Ankylosing Spondylitis: Why It Sits Beside Medication in Your Plan

The alarm goes off, and before anything else there is the negotiation with your own back. Roll to the side. Wait. Let the hips catch up. For many people with ankylosing spondylitis, that first stiff half hour is the most honest report of how the night went, and it is also the moment when the advice “exercise every day” can feel like a cruel joke.

Yet that advice sits in every major guideline for a reason. In this condition, movement is not the reward you earn once the medicine has worked. It is half of the treatment itself. An ankylosing spondylitis exercise routine, done most days, is what keeps the gains from medication from quietly leaking away between appointments.

This explainer looks at why that is, what the routine usually contains, which movements deserve caution, and how the two halves of the plan, pills or injections on one side and daily motion on the other, actually reinforce each other.

What actually happens in a spine with ankylosing spondylitis?

Ankylosing spondylitis is a long-term inflammatory arthritis that mainly targets the spine and the sacroiliac joints, the two large joints where the base of the spine meets the pelvis. The word “ankylosing” comes from a Greek root meaning to stiffen or fuse, and that is the risk the whole treatment plan is built around.

The process starts with inflammation at the entheses, the points where ligaments and tendons anchor into bone. Repeated cycles of inflammation and repair lay down new bone at those anchor points. Over years, in some people, small bony bridges form between vertebrae. Where they meet, two bones effectively become one and that segment of the spine loses its motion. The Mayo Clinic describes this progression as a possible outcome rather than an inevitability, and the pace varies enormously from one person to another.

Two features make this condition unusual among back problems. First, the pain and stiffness are typically worst after rest, especially overnight, and ease with activity rather than worsen with it. Second, the inflammation can extend beyond the spine to the hips, shoulders, heels, the joints between the ribs and breastbone, and the eye, where it can cause a painful red eye called uveitis. Both features shape the exercise advice: movement helps because stiffness is driven by inactivity, and the chest wall needs attention because rib joints can lose their spring.

Most people are diagnosed in late adolescence or early adulthood, according to the Mayo Clinic and NHS, which means decades of living with the disease. That long horizon is exactly why a routine you can sustain matters more than an ambitious one you abandon by spring.

Why movement is treated as therapy, not a hobby

There is a tendency to file exercise under “lifestyle” and medicine under “treatment,” with the implication that one is serious and the other is nice to have. Rheumatology does not see it that way for this condition. The NHS lists physiotherapy and regular exercise as central to treatment alongside medication, and the Mayo Clinic describes physical therapy as an important part of care aimed at pain relief, flexibility and strength.

The reason lies in what medicines can and cannot do. Anti-inflammatory drugs and biologic therapies work on the immune signaling that drives inflammation. They do not restore range of motion to a joint that has already stiffened from disuse, and they do not teach the muscles along the spine to hold you upright when the ligaments are trying to pull you forward. Exercise addresses those gaps directly.

What the evidence supports is fairly consistent across guideline sources: people who exercise regularly report less stiffness, better spinal mobility, improved function in daily tasks and often better mood and sleep. What the evidence does not show is that exercise alone can switch off the disease. Nor can it reliably reverse bone that has already fused. The honest summary is that movement protects what you have and helps you use it, while medication works upstream on why the damage is happening.

Think of it the way a cardiologist thinks about a heart patient: blood pressure medicine and a walking habit are not competing options. Each covers ground the other cannot reach. Skipping the daily routine because the medication is working is a bit like stopping the walks because the tablets have brought the numbers down. The numbers may hold; the fitness will not.

What an ankylosing spondylitis exercise routine looks like day to day

A well-designed routine is less a workout than a set of habits woven through the day, and most physical therapists build it from four strands. The table below summarizes the purpose of each; the frequency column reflects general adult guidance from the CDC and NHS rather than a personal prescription, which only your own team can write.

Strand	What it does	Typical pattern
Stretching and mobility	Keeps the spine, hips, shoulders and chest wall moving through their full range	Daily, often in the morning when stiffness peaks and again in the evening
Posture and breathing	Trains the muscles that hold you upright and keeps the rib cage expanding	Short sets daily, plus checks during the day
Strengthening	Builds the back, core, hip and shoulder muscles that support alignment	At least 2 days a week (CDC adult guidance)
Aerobic activity	Supports heart health, weight, mood and general stamina	Working toward about 150 minutes of moderate activity per week (CDC)

The morning slot deserves particular thought. Many people find a warm shower first loosens things enough to make gentle spinal rotations, knee-to-chest movements and hip openers tolerable. Ten unhurried minutes here often does more for the day than a heroic hour later.

Aerobic work can be whatever you will actually do. Walking, cycling and swimming come up repeatedly in NHS guidance, and swimming has the advantage of loading the joints very little while encouraging the shoulders and spine to extend. The 150-minute figure is a general population target, not a starting line; someone newly diagnosed in a bad patch might sensibly begin with two or three ten-minute walks and build from there.

How exercise and medication work side by side

Medication in this condition is aimed at inflammation, and it usually comes in a sequence. Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, a class that blocks enzymes involved in producing inflammatory chemicals, are typically the first step according to the NHS and Mayo Clinic. For people who do not respond well enough, biologic therapies target specific immune messengers: tumor necrosis factor inhibitors block a protein that amplifies inflammation, while interleukin-17 inhibitors block a different signaling molecule involved in the same pathway. A newer class, Janus kinase inhibitors, works inside immune cells on the signaling machinery itself. Which class, whether to start one, and when to change are decisions that belong to the prescribing rheumatologist.

Timelines matter for how you pair these with movement. Anti-inflammatory tablets tend to act within hours to days. Biologics are slower; NHS guidance describes a review after around 12 weeks to judge whether the treatment is helping. In the window before a biologic takes effect, exercise is often what keeps a person functioning, and once it does take effect, the reduction in pain is the opening to progress the routine rather than to retire it.

The interplay runs the other way too. When inflammation is well controlled, exercise is safer and more productive, because you are moving joints that are not actively swollen. When inflammation is poorly controlled, the same routine can feel punishing and progress stalls. That pattern is itself useful information for your rheumatologist. A routine that suddenly becomes impossible is a signal about the disease, not a personal failing.

Nothing here should prompt anyone to alter their own prescription. If a medicine seems to be doing little, or side effects are getting in the way of exercising, the right move is a conversation with the team, not a quiet change at home.

Who is usually encouraged to start, and who is usually asked to wait

Almost everyone with this diagnosis is encouraged to move, and that includes people in their first weeks after diagnosis, people on long-standing biologic therapy, and people whose spines have already partly fused. The content changes; the principle does not. The Cleveland Clinic and NHS both frame regular activity as appropriate across the spectrum of disease, adjusted to what the person can tolerate.

There are situations where a team will typically ask someone to pause or modify before starting or restarting a routine. Active uveitis, the eye inflammation linked to the condition, usually needs treatment first, partly because straining and jarring are uncomfortable and partly because vision matters for safe movement. A recent fracture, which can occur more easily in a stiffened spine, requires clearance. A severe flare with a hot, swollen peripheral joint, such as a knee or ankle, usually means resting that joint while continuing gentle work elsewhere. Unexplained chest pain, breathlessness or dizziness during activity should be assessed before anyone pushes on, because heart and lung involvement, though uncommon, are recognized in this condition.

A physical therapist assessment before beginning is close to universal advice. Someone with a flexible spine and mild disease will be given a very different program from someone with fixed forward curvature and limited hip movement. Getting that starting point right prevents the two most common early failures: overdoing it and stopping in pain, or underdoing it and concluding exercise does nothing.

People who are older, who have osteoporosis, or who have other conditions such as heart disease will have their program shaped around those factors too. None of this excludes them from exercise. It simply means the plan is written more carefully.

Does exercise help ankylosing spondylitis get better?

It depends what “better” means, and being precise here protects people from both false hope and needless discouragement.

If better means less stiffness, more spinal movement, easier daily tasks and improved sense of well-being, then yes, mainstream sources including the NHS, Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic report that regular exercise is associated with these gains. The mechanism is intuitive: the stiffness in this disease is partly inflammatory and partly the result of joints and soft tissues that have not been taken through their range. Movement addresses the second part every single day.

If better means the disease itself slowing or stopping, the evidence is far weaker. Exercise has not been shown to switch off the immune process or to prevent new bone from forming at the entheses. That job falls to medication, and even there the picture on halting structural change is still being studied. Anyone told that a particular exercise program will arrest the disease should be skeptical.

If better means posture, the answer is encouraging but conditional. Daily extension work and postural training can help maintain a more upright alignment and can slow the drift into the forward-stooped curve that untreated disease tends to produce. What it cannot do is straighten a segment that has already fused. That is why the routine is framed as protection rather than repair, and why starting early matters.

Finally, exercise does not need to feel dramatic to be working. People often judge success by how much they lift or how far they run. In this condition, the more meaningful measures are quieter: can you look over your shoulder to reverse the car, can you take a full breath, does the morning stiffness settle in 20 minutes rather than 60. Those are the outcomes worth tracking with your therapist.

Is lifting weights with ankylosing spondylitis safe?

For most people, yes, with technique and load chosen deliberately rather than borrowed from a general gym program. Strength training is not only permitted but actively recommended; the CDC’s adult guidance calls for muscle-strengthening activity on at least 2 days a week, and the muscles that support the spine, hips and shoulders are precisely the ones that help a person with this condition stay upright.

The caution is about how, not whether. Several features of the disease change the risk calculation. A partially stiffened spine transfers forces to the segments that still move, so heavy loading with a rounded or twisted back concentrates stress in a small area. Bone density is often lower than expected for age in this condition, a point the Cleveland Clinic highlights, which raises fracture risk if something goes wrong. Reduced chest expansion means breath-holding under heavy load is less comfortable and less safe.

Practical adjustments that physical therapists commonly suggest include favoring movements that keep the spine in a neutral, supported position; choosing machines, cables or lighter free weights over maximal barbell lifts, at least early on; progressing load slowly over weeks; and breathing out through the effort rather than bracing and holding. Rows, chest openers, hip hinges with light load, and shoulder work that draws the shoulder blades back are often prioritized because they counter the forward pull of the disease.

Heavy overhead pressing, loaded spinal twisting and maximal deadlifts or squats are the movements most often flagged for individual assessment rather than being off limits for everyone. Someone with mild disease and a mobile spine may do them safely with coaching; someone with fixed curvature usually should not. A therapist watching you lift once is worth more than any list in a magazine.

Exercises to avoid with ankylosing spondylitis, and why

Very few movements are forbidden outright, but some carry enough risk that most clinicians steer people away from them, and understanding the reason makes the advice easier to follow.

High-impact contact sports sit at the top of that list. Rugby, tackle football, ice hockey and martial arts that involve throws all expose the spine to sudden, uncontrolled force. In a spine that has stiffened, even partially, that force cannot be spread across many mobile segments and can result in fracture. The NHS living-with guidance advises avoiding activities that risk injury for exactly this reason.

High-impact repetitive loading through a stiff spine is the second concern. Long-distance running on hard surfaces or repeated jumping is not dangerous for everyone with the condition, but it tends to aggravate sacroiliac and hip pain and offers little that cycling, swimming or brisk walking does not provide with less jarring.

Loaded spinal flexion, meaning bending forward under weight, and loaded twisting, are the third category. The disease already pulls the spine forward; adding load in that direction reinforces the posture you are trying to resist and stresses the entheses. Traditional sit-ups and crunches, which flex the spine repeatedly, are often swapped for exercises that build the trunk while holding a neutral position.

A short word on what is not on the avoid list. Gentle backward bending, spinal rotation without load, swimming strokes that extend the body, and yoga or Pilates adapted by an instructor who understands the condition are generally encouraged. Bed rest, the instinctive response to a stiff back, is the one thing almost every source agrees makes this particular disease worse. The safest approach is to treat unfamiliar activities as a question for your therapist, not as a challenge to prove something.

Which exercises support bone density, and why that matters here

People with ankylosing spondylitis have a higher than average risk of osteoporosis, a condition in which bone becomes less dense and more fragile. The Cleveland Clinic lists it among the complications to be aware of. It can seem paradoxical, since the disease also lays down extra bone at the joints, but the two processes happen in different places: bridging at the edges, thinning within the vertebral bodies. The result is a spine that can be both stiff and brittle, which is why fractures from relatively minor falls are a recognized concern.

Bone responds to load. The forms of exercise most consistently associated with maintaining or improving density, according to Harvard Health and NIH resources, are those that make bone bear weight or resist force. Five categories come up repeatedly:

• Progressive resistance training with weights, bands or body weight, which pulls on bone through the muscles
• Brisk walking or hiking, which loads the hips and spine through the feet
• Stair climbing, a higher-load version of walking
• Low-impact aerobic classes or dancing, which vary the direction of loading
• Balance and posture training, which do not build bone directly but reduce the falls that break it

Swimming and cycling, excellent for the joints and heart, load bone very little, so a routine built entirely around them may need a weight-bearing component added. Your team will weigh this against your spine’s current state, since the higher-impact end of bone-loading activity is exactly what a fused spine tolerates least.

Bone health is also a place where exercise and medical care intersect. Adequate calcium and vitamin D intake, a bone density scan when your rheumatologist thinks it is warranted, and reviewing whether long-term steroid use has affected bone are all part of the same conversation. Exercise is one lever among several, not the whole answer.

Posture, breathing and the chest wall: the part people skip

If a routine has a neglected corner, it is usually here. Stretching feels productive and lifting feels like exercise, but standing tall against a wall for a minute or practicing deep breaths feels like nothing at all. Yet these are the movements most specific to this disease.

The postural drift in ankylosing spondylitis is predictable: the head moves forward, the upper back rounds, the pelvis tucks under to compensate. Left unchallenged over years, the stiffening can lock that shape in. Postural training aims to make the upright position habitual before that happens. Common elements include lying flat on a firm surface for a short period daily to let gravity extend the spine, standing with the back of the head, shoulders and heels against a wall to feel true alignment, and strengthening the muscles between the shoulder blades that hold the upper back open.

Breathing exercises address the joints where the ribs meet the spine and the breastbone. Inflammation there can reduce how far the chest expands, and the Mayo Clinic notes that reduced chest expansion is one of the physical signs clinicians measure. Practicing slow, deep breaths that push the ribs outward, sometimes with hands placed on the lower ribs for feedback, keeps those joints moving. Swimming does this almost automatically, which is one reason it appears so often in the guidance.

Two small habits reinforce all of this without adding time. Sleeping on a firm mattress with a thin pillow, or none, discourages the neck from bending forward overnight; the NHS living-with page discusses sleeping position in this context. Checking your posture at natural pauses through the day, such as each time you sit down at a desk or stop at a traffic light, turns a daily exercise into a running correction.

What the first weeks of a new routine usually look like

Expect the beginning to be unglamorous. In the first one to two weeks, most people notice that they are stiffer, not looser, after exercising, particularly if they have been inactive. Muscles unused to work protest, and joints taken through a wider range than they are accustomed to can ache for a day. This is ordinary and settles; what it should not do is escalate. Pain that is sharp, that lingers into the next morning, or that produces new swelling in a joint is a reason to scale back and check in with the therapist.

By the third and fourth weeks, the morning routine typically feels less like a chore and the movements themselves become smoother. People often report that the stiffness on waking settles faster, and that tasks such as putting on socks or turning to look behind them are slightly easier. These gains are real but modest, and they belong to a routine that is being repeated, not to any single session.

Across the following months, the strengthening and aerobic strands start to pay off. General adult guidance from the CDC frames the 150 minutes per week of moderate activity as a target to build toward, and reaching it gradually over a couple of months is reasonable for someone starting from very little. Progress in strength work is measured in slightly heavier loads or a few more repetitions every couple of weeks, never in leaps.

Expect interruptions. Flares, illness, travel and life will break the streak, and the routine should be designed to survive that. A version that takes ten minutes on a bad day and forty on a good one is more valuable than a single ambitious program. Most therapists will help you build both, and will want to review the plan periodically, especially after any change in medication, because a better-controlled disease can tolerate and benefit from more.

Exercising through a flare: adjusting, not stopping

A flare is a period when inflammation intensifies, bringing more pain, more stiffness and often fatigue that no amount of sleep fixes. The instinct to stop moving entirely is understandable, and it is also the response that most sources caution against, because inactivity feeds the stiffness that the flare is already producing.

The workable middle path is to shrink the routine rather than abandon it. Gentle range-of-motion movements, done in a warm shower or after a warm bath, keep joints moving without loading them. Breathing exercises can continue almost regardless of how you feel. Short, flat walks replace longer or harder aerobic sessions. Strength training is usually paused or reduced to very light, pain-free movements until the flare settles, particularly if a peripheral joint is hot and swollen.

Heat before movement and, for some people, cold afterward can make the reduced routine tolerable; the Mayo Clinic mentions heat and cold as useful self-care alongside exercise. Pacing matters too. Fatigue in a flare is not laziness, it is a feature of systemic inflammation, and spreading small amounts of movement across the day generally works better than one block.

Flares are also medical events, not only exercise puzzles. A flare that lasts longer than usual, that involves a new joint, or that comes with eye pain or visual change warrants contact with the rheumatology team, who may want to review whether the current medication is doing its job. Keeping a brief note of when flares happen and what seemed to precede them gives that conversation something concrete to work with. What you should not do is change the medication yourself in the hope of easing the flare; that decision, like every decision about prescriptions, sits with the clinician who knows your history.

What people often get wrong

Myths gather around any long-term condition, and a few of them do real harm here.

The first is that rest heals a bad back. For mechanical back pain that can hold some truth. For inflammatory back pain of this kind it is reversed: rest stiffens, movement loosens, and the classic pattern of pain that is worst after lying down is the clue. Someone applying general back pain advice to this condition can spend months making it worse with the best of intentions.

The second is that once medication works, exercise becomes optional. Biologic therapy can transform how a person feels, and it is tempting to spend that new energy on everything except the stretching routine. The medication addresses inflammation; it does not maintain range of motion or posture. The routine still does that job, and it is easier to do well when pain is controlled.

The third is that if it hurts, it is damaging. Some discomfort during stretching and mild muscle soreness afterward are expected. Sharp pain, pain that worsens as the session goes on, or pain that brings new swelling are different and should stop the activity. Learning to tell the two apart is one of the most useful skills a physical therapist can teach.

The fourth is that a fused spine means exercise is pointless. Segments that have fused will not regain motion, but the segments that remain mobile, the hips, the shoulders, the chest wall and the muscles supporting all of it can still be maintained and strengthened. Function and independence depend on those as much as on the spine itself.

The fifth is that any exercise program marketed for the condition must have been tested for it. Many have not. The safest programs are the unglamorous ones built with a therapist around the principles above, not the ones promising to reverse the disease.

Questions to ask your care team

Appointments are short and the questions that matter tend to arrive in the parking lot afterward. Taking a written list turns a rushed consultation into a planning session. These are the ones that tend to unlock the most useful answers.

• Which parts of my spine and which joints are currently most affected, and how does that change what I should and should not do?
• Can I be referred to a physical therapist who regularly treats inflammatory spinal disease, and how often should the program be reviewed?
• What signs during or after exercise should make me stop and contact you, as opposed to ordinary soreness?
• How should my routine change during a flare, and is there a version you would like me to keep doing regardless?
• Given my medication, are there any activities you want me to be more cautious with, and are there infection or injury risks I should factor in?
• Has my bone density been assessed, and should weight-bearing or resistance work be a bigger part of my plan because of it?
• Is it safe for me to lift weights, and which movements would you like a therapist to watch before I do them unsupervised?
• How will we know whether the exercise is helping? Which measures, such as chest expansion or spinal mobility, do you track?
• If my medication is changed, should my exercise plan change with it?
• Who do I contact between appointments if I develop eye pain, new chest symptoms or a sudden change in my back after a fall?

The last question is not an afterthought. Knowing exactly who to call, and how, is the difference between an early phone call and a late emergency visit. Write the answer down alongside the rest.

When to call your doctor

Most of what exercise produces in this condition is ordinary and expected: temporary soreness, a stiff morning after a hard day, a joint that grumbles for a few hours. A few situations are different and need prompt medical attention rather than a wait-and-see approach.

Contact your team the same day if you develop a painful, red or light-sensitive eye or any sudden change in vision. Uveitis is a recognized complication of ankylosing spondylitis, the Mayo Clinic and NHS both flag it, and early treatment protects sight.

Seek urgent care, which may mean emergency services, if you have a fall or a jolt followed by new or sharply worse back or neck pain, since a stiffened spine can fracture with less force than a healthy one. The same urgency applies to new weakness, numbness or tingling in the legs or arms, difficulty controlling your bladder or bowels, or numbness around the groin, all of which can signal pressure on nerves and should never be managed with stretching.

Chest pain, breathlessness that is new or out of proportion to the activity, palpitations, or fainting during exercise need assessment before you exercise again. Heart and lung involvement are uncommon in this condition but are described in mainstream sources, and they are not something to test at home.

Call within a day or two, rather than urgently, if a joint becomes hot, swollen and painful and stays that way; if a flare lasts longer than your usual pattern or does not respond to your usual approach; if you develop a fever while on a biologic medicine, which can lower resistance to infection; or if pain after exercise is consistently sharp, escalating or waking you at night rather than easing within a day.

None of these signs mean you have done something wrong by exercising. They mean the disease, or something alongside it, needs a clinician’s eye. The routine can restart once they have looked.

Frequently asked questions

What exercises should you not do with ankylosing spondylitis?

Contact sports and activities with a high risk of falls or sudden impact, such as rugby, tackle football or martial arts throws, are the most consistently discouraged because a stiffened spine fractures more easily. Heavy bending or twisting under load and repeated spinal flexion movements like traditional sit-ups are often swapped for neutral-spine alternatives. Very few movements are banned for everyone; a physical therapist can tell you which apply to your spine.

Does ankylosing spondylitis get better with exercise?

Exercise is associated with less stiffness, better spinal mobility, easier daily function and improved well-being, according to mainstream sources such as the NHS and Mayo Clinic. It has not been shown to switch off the underlying inflammation or reverse bone that has already fused, so it works alongside medication rather than in place of it. The realistic goal is protecting movement and posture over the long term.

Is lifting weights with ankylosing spondylitis safe?

For most people, yes, provided the program is adapted. Strength training on at least 2 days a week is standard adult guidance from the CDC, and the muscles supporting the spine and hips benefit from it. The adjustments involve keeping the spine neutral, progressing load slowly, breathing out through effort and having a therapist check heavy or overhead lifts before you do them unsupervised.

What are 5 exercises that increase bone density?

Progressive resistance training, brisk walking or hiking, stair climbing, low-impact aerobic classes or dancing, and balance training to prevent falls are the categories most often cited by sources such as Harvard Health. Bone density is a particular concern in ankylosing spondylitis, so your team may emphasize weight-bearing work, while steering you away from the high-impact end if your spine has stiffened.

What are the best ankylosing spondylitis stretches to do in the morning?

Gentle movements that take the spine, hips and chest through their range are the usual starting point: lying knee-to-chest, slow spinal rotations, hip openers, backward bending over a rolled towel, and deep breathing that expands the ribs. Many people find a warm shower first makes these more comfortable. Your physical therapist should select and demonstrate the specific stretches, since the right set depends on which segments still move well.

Should I exercise during an ankylosing spondylitis flare?

Most guidance favors reducing rather than stopping. Gentle range-of-motion work, breathing exercises and short flat walks usually continue, while strength training and higher-impact activity are paused or scaled back until the flare settles. Heat before movement can help. A flare that lasts longer than usual, involves a new joint or comes with eye symptoms should prompt contact with your rheumatology team.

How long does it take for exercise to help ankylosing spondylitis?

Early weeks often bring more soreness before things ease; by three to four weeks many people notice faster settling of morning stiffness and slightly easier daily movements. Strength and stamina gains build over months. General CDC guidance frames weekly activity targets as something to reach gradually. These are typical patterns rather than promises, and progress depends heavily on how well inflammation is controlled by medication.

Can exercise replace medication for ankylosing spondylitis?

No. Exercise maintains mobility, posture and strength but does not act on the immune process driving inflammation and new bone formation. Anti-inflammatory drugs and biologic therapies address that upstream cause. The two are complementary, and decisions about starting, continuing or changing any medicine belong with your rheumatologist. Stopping medication because exercise is going well is not something any guideline supports.

Is swimming good for ankylosing spondylitis?

Swimming appears frequently in NHS guidance because it moves the spine, shoulders and chest wall through a wide range while loading the joints very little, and the breathing pattern expands the rib cage. Its limitation is that it does little for bone density, which is a concern in this condition, so most therapists pair it with some weight-bearing or resistance work rather than relying on it alone.

Why is my back stiffer after resting with ankylosing spondylitis?

The inflammation in this condition affects the spine and sacroiliac joints, and stiffness tends to build during periods of inactivity, especially overnight, then ease with movement. This pattern is the opposite of most mechanical back pain and is one reason daily exercise is treated as therapy. If your morning stiffness is lengthening or your usual routine no longer helps, tell your team, since it may indicate that inflammation is less well controlled.

References

• NHS: Ankylosing spondylitis, Treatment
• CDC: Adult Activity, an Overview (Physical Activity Guidelines)

This article is for general information only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Please consult a qualified doctor about your individual situation.