Hello from Serbia (EU), i wanna start this by saying that my English language is bad, sorry for that. I’m 24 year old and i have been following BBM for almost a year, watched almost every podcast, brother and i have bought BBM 12 week strength template.
I have few questions about my problem.
-I began to do powerlifting two years ago and i followed Candito 6 weeks program had a great progress until a year ago then i experienced back pain on deadlifts, It’s not ordinary back tweak, I could not work with a empty barbell, so I went to the chiropractor and did MRI, it turns out i have a bulging disc and Kyphosis and little bit of scoliosis. I did not feel any pain in my legs only in low back region. My chiropractor advised me to try spinal decompression with gravity boots, so i did that. I can freely say that it helped me and i have pulled 600lbs at 220lbs on the previous competition. So my concern is whether it’s good to do spinal decompression with bulging disc, and how often i can do it, at this moment i’m doing it twice per week for 15 min, and i still have some minor pain in morning, can i increase frequency or should i avoid doing that?
i would appreciate any help, thanks!
Hi, thanks for the question!
We used to have evidence that suggested that individuals with radicular symptoms (symptoms that radiated below the knee) that didn’t respond to certain movements might benefit from short-term traction/decompression, but this was with the intent to move them away from traction/decompression to more specific movement exercise treatment. That being said, our evidence has changed over the years and it generally doesn’t have much utility, especially if your symptoms are more local to the lower back. That’s not to say it didn’t help you, 600lbs is a great deadlift, but at this point you may not have much use for it anymore. The finding of a bulging disc is more or less normal, and doesn’t have a strong correlation to lower back pain, neither does kyphosis or scoliosis.
So should you continue using the boots? Compression is not a bad thing for the spine, on the contrary it’s beneficial for disc healing and bone density, so decompression really isn’t need to counter-act this, nor is there enough decompression to do any harm as well. It’s really up to you if you want to continue using them, but I wouldn’t think of them as a needed decompression for “excessive compression” of your spine or discs. It might just be a habit at this point that provides you some mindfulness and self-care that you can continue with or replace with another activity.
Hope that helps, let us know if you have any other questions about that!
Thanks alot Mike,i appreciate you answering my questions.
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