Acute lowback pain: where should I lift again and what would I do with the trauma?

Pain & Rehab Forum [Moderated]
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Background:

  1. I have trained as a powerlifter for the last 2 years. My BW now is 80-82kg, 33 years old male. Prior to the low back injury, I got a right groin pain, which seems to cause by my hip flexor, and a minor pain of my right shoulder.

  2. I’m based in the UK, but had to go back to Asia to visit my mum who had cancer, and for the last 2 months (from beginning of Sep), my life has been full of stresses, my sleep has been really bad, and I always have short temper. My diet has been way more worse than before, too. The local gym in town is not that nice, either, there is no small bar that I could use for hook gripped deadlift, so I had to use straps instead, which I had not done before back in the UK.

  3. On the last Thursday, when I pulled a set of 145kg x 3, conventional DL and I got a sharp, acute pain at my 3rd rep. The pain stopped me from training, and I was in trouble with moving, too. Standing up and sit down were so troublesome for me. The pain is somewhere around my L5. After a week, the pain now is only 30% left compared to the first day. I didn’t apply any cold/hot therapy or went to see any doctor. I also did not hit the gym since.

  4. Now, the most annoying thing to me is to try to get back into the gym. There are many questions in my mind:

  5. Firstly, what caused me that incident, I want to know to prevent it? Is it my form, or my bad recovery due to stress and poor diet, or both? Unfortunately, I didn’t record myself, so I don’t have any clip, but here is the vid of me pulling 140kg x 3 with straps in previous deadlift session (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjTP…nnel=karaoke00). Could not being familiar to use straps possibly cause an issue, too? My PR is 167.5kg.

  6. How do I know I am ready to get back to the gym to do deadlift or any hip hinge movement again? I feel so traumatised now because I don’t know what caused it and have no clue how to prevent it. What indicator one in my situation would use to know if he/she is ready to exercise again?

  7. Regardless of my pain being around 30% remaining, should I go to get an X-ray or MRI to find out if my discs are okie? As far as I followed BM, it seems useless to do so but I’m not sure now as I just want to get back to training asap as it helps a lot with my mental issues. Besides, I have no pain or any numbness to my limbs at all. So what would you reckon in term of getting MRI?

  8. As I’m planning to compete, so it would be very upsetting if I won’t be able to be fully recovered due to this incident. Do you think it’d be my case?

I hope the lengthy question wouldn’t put you off as I tried to give as much details as I could. Thank you for your help.

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Hi there,

Sorry to hear about this issue. I know it can be scary and frustrating. Fortunately we have lots of free content on this sort of topic that will be helpful for you to review, linked below.

The short answers are:

  1. no one will be able to accurately give you a single specific cause or preventative strategy for this kind of thing; it is almost always due to multiple factors, and sometimes “shit just happens” even with everything else lined up. This is why it’s more important to focus on the prognosis (which is good) rather than a specific diagnosis (which probably doesn’t matter, here).
  2. There is no indication that you need to avoid exercise, based on the information you provided. The linked content below will help with this.
  3. Based on what you’ve described, pursuing imaging like an X-ray or MRI would be more likely to cause harm than good. If you want more individualized advice on this, we’d need to consult with you directly. The only situations where that kind of imaging is useful is when we suspect an underlying systemic disease, or if invasive procedures like surgery are being considered/planned.
  4. No, I do not think this would be the case for you; your prognosis for recovery is likely good.

If this is insufficient to get you going in the right direction, or if you’re interested in more specific/indivdualized guidance and answers to your questions, pursuing a consult with our team would be the next best option.

Some quick “what to do” videos:

Our general approach to managing pain in training: https://www.barbellmedicine.com/blog…ining-what-do/

Articles on the rehab process:

https://www.barbellmedicine.com/blog…e-the-process/

Podcasts / Discussions on back pain in general:

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