Lower back pain affects about 80% of us at one point or another, according to the NHS.

Thankfully, fewer than 1% of those cases require urgent medical attention. But the pain can still affect your quality of life, and might mean you’re less tempted to exercise.

That can be a shame, as the NHS explained, “keeping as active as possible can help you to recover and do the things that are important to you”.

Avoiding movement for more than a day or two in mild back pain cases might actually worsen your condition, the health service added.

According to a 2019 analysis published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, four activities in particular seemed the most effective at treating “non-specific chronic low back pain (NSCLBP)”.

NSCLBP means doctors can’t find one specific cause for back pain. This applies to the “vast majority of chronic low back pain cases,” the study’s lead author, associate professor Daniel Belavy, said.

This paper analysed 89 studies involving back pain and exercise.

Researchers found that staying active seemed to be more effective than rest for NSCLBP.

Belavy said: “There is a common misconception that if someone is in pain, they should be resting, but our research shows that when the pain has been there for a long time, exercise is an important part of treatment.”

They found four training styles were the “most effective” at treating NSCLBP. These were:

This seemed to be the joint “best” exercise for dealing with the condition.

Speaking to Healthline, Dr Courtney Gilbert, a physical medicine and rehabilitation expert, said: “Pilates teaches you how to articulate your spine and engage your deep core. Research has shown that Pilates can decrease low back pain compared to no exercise and non-specific exercise.”

This can include exercising with a pilates machine (Joseph Pilates, who invented the exercise, called this a Universal Reformer machine: now they’re used in Reformer classes), or doing pilates on a mat.

“There was evidence that Pilates and stabilisation or motor control exercise training were the best of these exercises for reducing pain,” Belavy said.

Stabilisation exercises can include strengthening your core and might involve crunches, bridges, and planks.

Motor control exercise training, meanwhile, typically aims to retrain the muscles near your spine to become more co-ordinated and stronger.

This can include balance training and other moves like hip bridges, sitting knee extensions, and even squats.

You might know this as strength training. It means using weights and resistance training at increasingly high loads to build your muscles up.

We’ve written before at HuffPost UK about how “tight” hips that you might think need stretching can actually be weak hips that would benefit from strengthening. A similar principle can apply here.

Some strengthening exercises include weighted squats, push-ups, deadlifts, bench presses, and more.

Basically, activities like walking and running.

You might want to build up your pace and distance if you haven’t exercised in a while – “our study provides evidence that active therapies where the patient is guided, actively encouraged to move and exercise in a progressive fashion are the most effective,” Belavy shared.

Interestingly, this paper found that “stretching and McKenzie exercises, which is a treatment approach that uses a classification system to prescribe exercise”, were found to be the “least effective” kinds of exercises.

The NHS advises you should always stop exercising if it makes your back pain worse. Speak to your GP if you’re worried about your back pain and/or aren’t sure about beginning new activity.

Oscar winner Brenda Fricker has died at the age of 88.

The character actor was most well-known to film fans for her work in the 1989 movie My Left Foot, for which she made history as the first Irish woman to ever win an Oscar, picking up the Best Supporting Actress prize at the Academy Awards.

Her other movie credits include So I Married An Axe Murderer and Veronica Guerin, while to a generation of viewers, she’ll be best remembered as the character known as the “Central Park Pigeon Woman” in the festive family comedy Home Alone 2: Lost In New York.

Paying tribute in a statement to BBC News on Friday morning, her agent said: “We will never see her like again and the world is lesser for the lack of her.

“I was honoured to know, love and work with her and she will always have a place in my heart and in the heart of so many film and TV fans the world over.”

Brenda’s other on-screen work included a recurring role in Casualty as nurse Megan Roach, a role she continued to play until the 2010s.

She also shared the screen with Glenn Close in 2011’s Albert Nobbs, and appeared in the TV adaptation of the Graham Norton novel Holding in the 2020s.

In addition to her acting career, Brenda released her candid memoir She Died Young: A Life In Fragments, last year.

Following the news of Brenda’s death, Ireland’s Tánaiste Simon Harris said he had been “deeply saddened” by the loss, remembering the late actor as “a national treasure”.

“She was a consummate performer who graced our screens and stages with remarkable talent and authenticity. Brenda brought depth and humanity to every role she undertook,” he said.

Harris added: “She truly was among the greatest exports this country has ever produced and an ambassador for Irish talent on the world stage. Quite simply, we will never see the like of her ever again.”

With details about exactly what went down at Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s star-studded wedding still being kept under wraps, one guest has shed more light on the A-list performances.

It was already well-documented that musicians including Sir Paul McCartney, Stevie Knicks and Haim took the stage during the newlyweds’ wedding reception, which was held at New York’s iconic Madison Square Garden arena earlier this month.

However, sports broadcaster Pat McAfee has claimed that there was another performer on the line-up that had been kept under wraps until this week.

Pat revealed on Monday’s edition of his ESPN show that pop-rocker Avril Lavigne delivered a rendition of her signature tune Sk8r Boi at the reception, describing her performance as “awesome”.

“[It] was the most spectacular evening I have ever been a part of,” he said elsewhere in the show. “I cannot wait to chit-chat about that throughout the day.”

He teased: “I’m sure there was something that I agreed to not talk about, but from the things that I’ve been reading about, other people [are] talking about it, like, kinda sorta ’cause there were no phones in there.

“There is no notes section, no writing or anything, so it’s literally all just memory.”

In the lead-up to their big day, it had been reported that Taylor and Travis were not playing around when it came to their nuptials, with TMZ alleging that guests had been required to sign electronic NDAs ahead of time, and that invites were individually watermarked so any leaks could clearly be pin-pointed.

What we do know is that comedy actor Adam Sandler officiated at the ceremony, where around 1,000 guests watched on, and while Taylor and Travis opted out of having bridesmaids and groomsmen, they each had their brothers, Austin Swift and Jason Kelce, as their “man of honour” and “best man”, respectively.

Andy Burnham has insisted he “wasn’t in the position to be involved” in the Parliamentary Labour Party’s decision to oust Keir Starmer as prime minister.

In his first speech as the new Labour leader – and three days before getting the keys to No.10 – the Makerfield MP distanced himself from the internal turmoil which engulfed his predecessor.

He said he would now work to bring the party together and stop any in-fighting.

He claimed his party would “put the power that comes from that unity at the service of people and places who have been waiting too long for politics to bring them hope again.”

Reporters later asked if it was right for him to talk about ending the friction within Labour after helping kick Starmer out of office.

“Well, there was obviously a decision taken by the PLP [Parliamentary Labour Party],” he said.

“It wasn’t by me… I wasn’t in parliament. I wasn’t in the position to be involved in that in terms of the decisions that the PLP came to. But obviously, in politics, you have to respond to the big moments.

“The May elections were a big moment, but it was up to our members of parliament, and obviously I then responded.”

Burnham was the mayor of Greater Manchester up until he won the Makerfield by-election last month.

However, that contest was triggered by previous Labour MP Josh Simons who stood aside so Burnham could get a path to the Commons – and then oust Starmer.

Burnham’s comfortable win in Makerfield galvanised support for him and prompted Starmer’s resignation shortly afterwards.

The former mayor tried to run for parliament back in February in the Gorton and Denton by-election as well, but was blocked by Labour’s executive party and Starmer.

Burnham’s top ally, ex-transport secretary Louise Haigh, also triggered backlash this week when she suggested she had been working for a year behind the scenes to get Burnham into power.

“He has been thinking about this and certainly planning for this, for this moment, for at least the last year,” she told the BBC’s Political Thinking with Nick Robinson, though admitted the route only became clear after Labour’s terrible election results in May.

It comes after there was widespread speculation at the September 2025 Labour Party conference that Burnham was gaining momentum as a possible successor to Starmer.

Burnham praised Starmer’s legacy earlier on Friday, too, telling reporters: “Obviously, we’ve already brought change. We’ve obviously got our MPs here today,” he said.

“We’ve been working hard with the Labour government, and we’ve changed things already.

“We’ve brought NHS waiting lists down, finally getting going in the right direction.

“They’ve been going in the wrong direction since I was the health secretary a long time ago, but it’s good to see that change coming through.

“Rights for workers, rights for renters, rail renationalised – that was a really important thing that the government has done – and only this week we passed the Hillsborough law… so no one in this country goes through what they did.”

He added that Starmer “leaves a legacy of a country that will be about justice and fairness going forward, and that is a huge thing, but we’ve got much more change to bring”.

Listen to Commons People, the podcast that makes politics easy. Every week, Kevin Schofield and Kate Nicholson unpack the week’s biggest stories to keep you informed. Join us for straightforward analysis of what’s going on at Westminster.

Matt Damon has claimed that Ben Affleck’s reaction to his performance in The Odyssey came in the form of a phone call he’d been waiting decades for.

The two actors are close friends as well as frequent collaborators, having co-written the Oscar-winning Good Will Hunting, as well as sharing the screen in the likes of Dogma, Air and The Rip.

During a new interview with MTV UK to promote The Odyssey, Matt opened up about his friendship with Ben, recalling how they’d been through “a whole hell of a lot together”.

“He’s one of the great loves of my life, I will say about Ben,” he enthused.

Matt then shared that after Ben watched The Odyssey for the first time, he “got a phone call from him that I think I’ve been waiting 45 years to get”.

“He didn’t stop talking for an hour,” the Bourne Identity star said. “It was like he’d seen the movie 20 times. He got absolutely everything, every detail, he somehow soaked it all in in one viewing.”

But Ben isn’t the only tough critic in Matt’s life who was won over by The Odyssey.

Matt revealed how his 20-year-old daughter Isabella (who refers to his film The Great Wall as just The Wall, claiming there’s “nothing great about that movie”) had called him after watching the Christopher Nolan epic just to tell him how “proud” she was of her dad.

Watch the full interview below:

He has also spoken candidly about the gruelling shoot, which took the cast and crew to a series of locations around the globe over a three-month period of filming.

“The joke on the crew was we didn’t have a single easy location,” Matt recalled to GQ earlier this year.

“Every time we’d go somewhere, we’d be like, ‘Well, Iceland will be easier’. And then it’s raining sideways and it’s fucking freezing. Iceland was like, ‘Yeah, easy? Hey, hold my beer.’ ”

The Odyssey is in cinemas now.