4 weeks ago i “tweaked” my back during deadlift. It happend with moderate weight and on the eccentric face of the lift. The pain was really bad and i could not bend over. However, i had previously watched your podcasts on injury and started moving around instantly doing air-deadlifts and squats. After 6 days with moving around most of the days (the motion is lotion princip) i was basically 100% pain free.
I thought to myself. “ok, this was over quick” and went back to running my program. I started squatting and felt no pain what so ever. But suddenly, in the buttom of the squat, i felt a sharp pain through my left leg. I finnished the movement but “the tweak” was back for sure. Same pain in the same area of the the lower back.
Anyway, i started moving around again like i had when it happend the first time. And once again, they pain was gone in 1 week time.
But these two tweaks have me all messed up mentally now. In my 7 years of lifting i never had a tweak before. I now feel nervous having to squat or deadlift and because of this I have not done it for 2 weeks, even im pain free.
So my qustiuon is: How do you build back confidence after something like this? How do you work the mental site of coming back from an “injury” ?
It sounds like you may be doing a great job in the immediate aftermath of the symptoms, and are pain-free a few days later, but then are jumping right back into your regular program.
You build back confidence the same way we build back physical capacity. You may need to take a few extra sessions (or sometimes even a couple weeks, depending on the “injury”) to build physical and mental capacity back up to where you were before, rather than jumping back in 100%. There are numerous ways you can manipulate the programming/training variables in order to develop a more “gradual” approach back to regular training (e.g., same program with all RPE targets dropped by 1, or by using more tempo movements at first, or by temporarily reducing training volume, among many others).
Since i made this topic, I have started deadlifting and squating again, albeit with very low weight to try and get my confidence back. I still feel nervous and finding myself thinking, almost expecting that something will happen. And i know from your podcasts that this is the wrong mindset. But its tough to “re-wire” my thought procces. I will keep working on it, and trust that time and training will take care of this. I will follow your advice and take it slow. Thank you
