Bulging Disc and deadlifts - any advice?

Pain & Rehab Forum [Moderated]
1

Hello everyone,

I am 20 years old, male, and in the middle of march I hyperextended one rep in a set of deadlifts (conventional) with 455lbs. Initially, I realized I had made a mistake as I did not lockout properly and recruit my glutes, but I felt no pain or problems after the set or throughout the rest of the workout. Three days later, all I had experienced was mild soreness, so I decided to deadlifted again. I was able to deadlift in the low 400s (around 90% of my usual training weight), but my back felt very “tight”. I felt like I had very little speed off the floor when I would deadlift, so I stopped the session early. Again, I didn’t really experience any pain rather just soreness in the lower back. I quickly realized that I may have a problem on my hand. Over the week, I had persistent soreness in my lower back - I thought it most likely some sort of muscle strain and eventually the soreness was clearing up after I stopped deadlifting for roughly 2 weeks. I was able to squat perfectly fine throughout all of this.

After 2 weeks, I decided to deadlift again but it felt much worse. The “tightness” I felt in my lower back was more severe then 3 days after the initial session that started these problems. Despite this, I warmed up to 3 plates. This is when I heard a crack in my lower back while trying to lockout the weight. Immediately, I felt sharp pain in my lower back, heard ringing in my ears and felt like I was about to faint. I stopped the session and had trouble walking back to my car as my back was extremely inflamed. Over the next week my lower back was extremely sore/inflamed. I could still walk after this incident with some pain. This eventually cleared up around the end of March.

I decided to wait another 2-3 weeks before getting into deadlifts again. I could still squat with no pain. Fast forward three weeks later, and I could deadlift again. The tightness was still lingering but was going away. As I mentioned earlier - I used to have a lot of speed off the ground when I deadlifted, but in my sessions in late April I had almost none of it. I managed to work up to 465lbs which is 87% of my 1RM (535), so I felt like I was making progress since the initial injuries. Since then, my form has changed slightly from a slight rounded back deadlift style to a more complete neutral spine. [This may be the reason as to why I feel like I have “no speed” off the ground.] My form now feels much more strict, and the week after the session where I worked up to 465, I did a workout where I deadlifted 5 sets of 4 with 435.

I came into this session feeling okay, but on this day and before I had even deadlifted I had noticed I had pain running from my left glute to the side of my leg (above the knee). This was the first day I felt any sort of pain like this ever. It didn’t really hurt, but it was radiating. As I deadlifted, the pain became more noticeable but I still finished the session. Ever since this session, I’ve had this sort of pain.

I’ve gone to my family physician twice and we both believe I have nerve impingement caused by a bulging disc (I felt pain in both legs when we did the leg raise test). I could feel the pain radiating for a few days after this session from the left glute to upper leg area (end of April). For now, the pain doesn’t radiate but it is still present. I have been hanging off a pull-up bar almost everyday to decompress my spine and this helps alleviate the pain. I have also been deadlifting still, and this doesn’t make the pain any worse or better.

Is it normal for impingement to come out of the blue like this? I feel my form after these injuries has been very strict and controlled (despite working with weights that are quite heavy). I have also been sleeping on my back (soldier type position) and sometimes in fetal position (with my legs lowered).

I don’t know what specifically lead to this pain, but after that specific session I have also regressed in progress. Ever since the session that somewhat exacerbated the pain in my left leg (and maybe made the impingement worse), I have not been able to deadlift nearly as much as I did that session (despite my lower back feeling completely fine and there being no tightness). I have been deadlifting only once or twice a week since the end of April, but again I have not been able to crack the 400s. The pain caused by impingement is slowly going away but I’m worried I made my situation worse somehow.

Is there any advice anyone could give me? Has anyone encountered a situation similar to mine?

My current plan is to continue deadlifting 2-3x a week (with intensity and volume controlled) and to continue spinal decompression exercises in the meantime. Again, it is a little discouraging that I haven’t made any meaningful progress in 2 weeks. I am waiting to get my MRI done (which could take 1-2 months) and to be connected to an orthopedic surgeon in the meantime to see how bad the problem is (and where the bulge is).

I appreciate any help or advice. I know this problem doesn’t get solved immediately but I want to maximize my recovery and get back to normal as soon as possible. I just find it odd that the one of my best sessions since injury (the first day the pain started) has hindered my recovery so significantly.

2

Hey, sorry to hear about your situation. There are some pieces that we need to unpack here in order to get you set right. How do you currently regulate the intensity of your workouts? If you had a setback and the inclination was to return to prior weight the next session (even after a break) that likely was overreaching for what you were ready to do. I’m going to assume from your comments that you are not very familiar with our content and some of that may be a good place with which for you to start.

​​​​​​[https://startingstrength.com/article/aches-and-pains

​​​​​​](https://startingstrength.com/article/aches-and-pains)Recovering From an Injury: Embrace the Process | Barbell Medicine

https://thelogicofrehab.com/2016/12/09/the-problem-with-a-entirely-structural-based-approach-to-low-back-pain/

2 weeks is a very short time frame with which to expect to be 100% better. If you sliced your hand cutting vegetables, the scab would still be there in that time frame. That doesn’t mean you can’t use your hand, but going full bore is likely not the best solution. This is no different than getting some pain in your back, you can still train but it does take time to return to full function. What programming are you currently following? How long have you been training?

3

Hey! Thank you for your reply. I’ve been training for just over ~3 years. I’m currently deadlifting 2x a week, and squatting once a week. Monday - DL, Wed- Squat, Friday- DL. I lift 5x a week and do full body workouts in each, with a heavier bodybuilding focus after my compound lifts. I aim to get in anywhere from 20-30 reps per DL session, I don’t really aim for anything because depending on the day I could be feeling better or worse (so I’m basically regulating my training through RPE, but I just choose a weight I’m comfortable with, usually something in the high 70% to low 80% range, and then I do it for sets of 4-7 reps). It’s been a couple of weeks since posting this. Right now, my back feels very good overall, I still have some “irritation” (I say this because to me it doesn’t really feel like pain, but it’s just annoying when I do experience it). In particular, I get this sort of irritation if I stick out my left foot like a penguin abruptly. Over the weeks I was doing nerve glides and some spinal decompression, but that doesn’t really help me anyway (because before it was mainly to stop the pain I had before). My deadlift form has looked much better, I have corrected the mistake (hyperextension) that previously caused my injury. I’ve been able to do some sets of 5 with 395 (which is 88% of my previous 5RM volume pre-injury) with good form recently. I think it’ll only be up from here as long as I manage my volume effectively. I’ll just have to wait and continue exercising in the meantime. I don’t know when this pain will go away however, and sometimes if I do too much volume I do feel some weird radiating irritation-like pain in my back that usually subsides in 5-10minutes after deadlifting during a session. I’ve talked to a good friend of mine who is a PT and he thinks I just have nerve entrapment. This irritating pain is quite weird though - like I mentioned previously it first started as a radiating pain from lower-back to upper left glute, and then it shifted to the upper side of my leg, and now it’s just this weird irritation in the whole leg that lasts like half a second whenever it does pop up (kind of like a jolt of irritation if that makes sense). I never had any intention getting back to the weights I was previously lifting right away, I just know that since the initial injury and subsequent mishaps (since the middle of March), it’s been quite a long time in my eyes and that my recovery progress should have been much better (had these nerve entrapment issues not pop up after a workout in late April as I mentioned before). I was able to lift very very close to my normal weights near the end of April before this session, and since that workout I felt noticeably weaker. I do feel a lot better now and I think in another two months, I’ll be back to normal or even stronger then I was before given how I am progressing.