Drs.,
Would love to get your perspective on a somewhat peculiar situation that I thought the beginner template might be able to help with. I’m a 30-year-old male with a history of intense but never competition-level physical training — spent a few years doing Crossfit, then began training Brazilian jiu-jitsu last year. In September of last year (~15 months ago), I was training jiu-jitsu about three times a week, and one day after a session I noticed a strange soreness in the area of my tailbone. It grew to the point that it became almost impossible to sit normally without severe discomfort in the tailbone area, accompanied by lower back soreness, particularly in the sacral region. I believed I had either a broken or bruised tailbone, a diagnosis that was reinforced by the chiropractors and doctors I talked to — but there was no imaging done to confirm or deny.
Fast forward about 10 months, to this summer — my pain had gotten better and then gotten worse again, and I saw another chiropractor who believed that the problem was actually my SI joints. This time, I had an MRI done, and it revealed that everything looked fine — no clear abnormalities in the SI joints, spine, etc. — except for a small lesion in the right iliac bone. Suspicion was an osteoid osteoma or osteoblastoma, and I had a bone-deep CT-guided biopsy. Turned out, the lesion isn’t a tumor — there’s some fibrous bone-marrow remodeling, whatever that means, but the radiologists and orthopedic surgeon who performed the biopsy believe, at the moment, that it isn’t particularly concerning, won’t get worse, and should heal on its own. Therefore, they aren’t planning to perform an ablation or anything like that, which means I need to learn to live with this sucker.
In my search for potential treatment modalities, I came across Barbell Medicine. I’ve dabbled with Starting Strength in the past, before my injury, and was a fairly dedicated Crossfitter, so I am experienced with barbell lifts. My question is, do you think something like the beginner’s template would be safe and potentially constructive for my condition? I’ve been mostly avoiding any sort of intense physical activity — have mostly contained myself in recent months to yoga and walking. But I’ve gotten a number of different opinions on what, exactly, is productive to do, and because there’s no clear understanding of what’s CAUSING the pain — since the lesion has been regarded as an incidental finding by my docs — there’s also been no clear instructions on how to address it. (A situation similar, in that sense, to most cases of lower-back pain, it seems.) I have the suspicion that strengthening my body might provide some relief, particularly because I’m about as skinny as I’ve ever been — 5’6", 120 pounds.
Would love any perspective on this, and whether you think the beginner’s template program could be a good way of addressing my pain.
Thanks so much —