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Trying contacting Dr. Nancy Grieger. She is a jumper and writes health-related articles for Parachutist. She can probably offer some advice. https://www.blueskiespt.com/

Train mobility, there is plenty of info on the internet. The reason for this, if you're lifting any sort of weight with compromised joints, when your muscle fail do to fatigue or poor technique, you'll shock load your joints and do even more damage.

The way Curt put it was an RDS is for performance while a removable slider is for convenience

Yeah man, as posted above, awesome openings on my Katana 120 with the VFX2 sized RDS I had on my Crossfire before (75cm wide by 64cm deep). I had it made by a local rigger and it's got the PD style connections which are pretty easy to reconnect. Takes maybe 2 minutes more to pack and so much easier to deal with after opening. IMO, the NZ Aerosports method is a bit more difficult to put back on but others prefer it so your mileage may vary. Depending on where you are, happy to share his details with you if you want him to make one to the same specs but, if you're not in Australia, you'll probably be better off finding someone closer to you. You'll get people telling you "You don't need a removable slider on a canopy over 100 square feet" etc. but they're just talking about performance and I don't think that's the reason for removing your slider. Like you, I hate stowing my slider behind my neck so I think you should ignore them. You'll never go back once you start taking your slider off.

Dear bycastory, Lat pull-down exercises are unlikely to help much with weak/painful lower back muscles (lumbar spine). I suspect that your back pains started because you gained a lot of weight and all that weight was on the front, pulling your lumbar/lower spine at an odd angle. I suffer the same problem when my beer-gut gets too fat. As another poster suggested, discuss back exercises with a certified physio-therapist. The correct physio' can save you many hours of training and much pain.