Back Injury and Programming

Aloha.

I’ve been running Bridge 1.0 with success, after coming back in to training through a basic novice progression.

I was on the tail end of week 6 when I tweaked my back squatting unbelted. Was rushing through the session, had just gotten some bad news and squatting hastily and foolishly.

Came in today and found that I am uncomfortable with the pressure I am feeling around my l4-l5 area. So I’m thinking of halting the program presently.

I have two questions:

a) If I choose to rehab this with some moderate volume at a lower intensity for a week or two, would you suggest jumping back into the bridge, or would hopping on the strength template next (my original course of action was to proceed to it) also make sense? Looking to compete in the fall.

b) If I took this opportunity to go on a retreat - 10 day silent meditation at the end of the month - what would your advice be on returning to lifting?
Nutrition is very sparse on the retreat, and I wouldn’t be training at all. My thought was that re-entering through something like the bridge, followed by the strength template, would be great.

I am a SS Coach and generally have just programmed for myself, and have found your templates and knowledge useful. Keep it up, awesome following your journey!

-Roland

Roland,

Thanks for the post and I hope you’re feeling better. For this situation, I would not recommend halting the program, rehabbing in a manner significantly different from what is programmed in the Bridge, or taking a 10 day silent meditation where you’ll be underfed and not training when you are working back from an injury- though I suspect you may do it anyway.

I would plan on doing the training as written with an eye on overall load for squatting and pulling movements. If the pain increases as you add weight, keep the weight light enough so that this does not happen during session 1, then add weight slowly on subsequent sessions. If you cannot perform the movement with the empty barbell without significant pain that gets better as you warm up, pick a different related movement to do in its place and follow the same protocol.

I would likely start the bridge over with the low stress week if I had to take 10 days off.

Hope this helps!

-J

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