Back pain

Good evening, I learned about barbell medicine a few days ago and all of you guys sound pretty knowledgeable. I’m 25 years old and have had a lower back issue for 1.5 years. It happened with bad form deadlifts when I started training and was an idiot. My symptoms are a shooting pain in my glute and an achy pain in my lower back. I get a bad discomfort whenever I sit for to long or even try to squat or deadlift. I would love to powerlift in the future but anytime I try any variation of squat or deadlift my daily pain gets worse. I’ve tried taking a few months off of working out and it was not much help. I’ve also read your stuff on pain and watched some of your YouTube videos on pain. Any help would be appreciated

Hey John, thank you for reaching out. What has your training history looked like over the last two months? Many times getting through an episode of low back pain is as much about learning where to start as figuring out where you are going. If this has been ongoing for 1.5 years we likely need to start small to get you working on a foundation and accumulating some wins. How long can you sit before you start experiencing symptoms?

Thanks for the reply. I’ve been doing stuff that is not spinal loading. (Lunges, bench, dips, pull ups, supported rows and other accesories) Just curious would it be a bad idea to take more time off? I looked up powerlifters with disc issues and I saw that layne norton took
Something like 6 months off of the gym and did Stuart McGill stuff for his back.

Also forgot to say it takes about 30 minutes for sitting to cause more pain. My pain is always worse in the morning as well.

Bump. Anyone???

You mentioned you’ve watched their videos, so follow the advice contained in them. If there’s a load you can use that doesn’t cause pain, start there. If not, is there a certain point in the ROM that hurts? If so, change the ROM and increase it as you can. If not, is there a similar movement you can do? Etc.

I’ve been dealing with low back pain for 5-6 months. I tried a number of things. Doing nothing was the worst. Loading the back routinely, conservatively and over a limited range of motion proved to be the most effective for me. I too had pain mostly after sitting. Some chairs made it worse than others. I don’t know what made it go away, but it just did. Surprisingly it seemed to dissipate the most after I decided to push a few sets of deadlifts harder than I had been pushing them, say RPE 7 for 3sets of 5. YMMV, but I’m convinced not loading the back is the worst for me.

You have stopped doing squats and deadlifts more than two months ago and still have the back pain, so it’s unlikely that taking more time off is the key here. As mentioned above, Austin’s lecture on dealing with pain in the gym gives you a step by step protocol on how to get back to squatting and deadlifting. Additionally I’d consider getting your form checked and trying using a belt.

The comments here are spot on. To begin getting back to barbell based training the key is graded exposure. Start with an empty bar and see what you can do for achieving depth. Work within that range and typically it comes in two ways, you will start seeing increased depth, and you will start being able to tolerate increased load. If the other lifts you are doing are satiating your desire for a workout then you can use those to develop some intensity as you are building tolerance for the squats and deadlifts again.

Also, we have to start getting some small wins out of this and you have to remember that even going from 45# to 55# is progress. The same can be said for the symptoms you are experiencing while sitting. If you can go from 30 minutes to 45 minutes that is a 50% improvement. If you can start accumulating small wins, they start adding up into big progress.

There will likely be a weight where you start feeling symptoms and the goal is to work on building up tolerance to load there to where it becomes easier then, add a little more weight. This will be a process as all of training is, the issue often is we always view ourselves from the lens of our strongest while we need to look at where we are right now. If we can start identifying steps to move forward it is much easier to progress than immediately trying to get back to where we were.

John Miller - symptoms ranged a good bit. It started out with some extreme fatigue that lingered in the low back, and progressed to pain very quickly soon after when I didn’t listen to it a bit. I was pushing too hard. When working out, it would warm up and feel pretty good, but then a few hours after lifting and sitting at my desk job the pain would be extreme. Sleeping at night was difficult, mostly because I’m a side sleeper, and rolling from one side to the other creates a bit of torque on the back that caused a stabbing pain. I eventually quit doing all forms of squats/deads for 3 weeks and it got worse.

I then started back squatting and deadlifting again but at much lighter weights. Only variation was that I did my deadlifts off 4" blocks. I didn’t do any tempo or paused variations, and the weight was fairly light…about 50% of my 1RM for sets of 5. I continued this for several months, and the pain came and went. I figured out that sitting up straight in hard chairs was the worst thing I could do. Oddly enough driving also made it worse. The pain gradually got better to the point that i added weight on the bar. Then for a few weeks it was just a mild reminder in my low back. I was up to about 70% for sets of 5 on squats and rack pulls, and I just got a wild hair and decided to pull from the floor. I worked up to a single at RPE 7 (which was MUCH less than my previous RPE7), and then did 4 sets of backoffs about 20% less than that. It felt great, and I’ve had zero pain since then.

No magic bullet in all this. Trial and error, but keeping moving was the key. If I had taken 5-6 months off completely there is no telling where I’d be. I hope you find an answer! Good luck

Just to touch back on this. My issue seems to have gotten worse and can’t seem to do much of anything gym wise. I guessed I’m screwed to be a powerlifter for life now. As well as my day to day life