I have a client who has complained of chronic low back pain (concentrated on his left side) for 10 years. Every morning he wakes up, his back is “stiff/sore” and according to him, needs to stretch for 10 mins upon waking. Once a year or two, he has an “incident” in his low back for a few days to week.
He has gone to Mayo Clinic for physicals, communicated his back issue and they performed an xray which showed nothing abnormal.
About 2 months ago he went to a low back expert in Rochester, MN and performed a MRI amongst other tests (not exactly sure outside of interviews and exams that were done). While there they discovered he has a 6th lumbar verterbrae and a disc herniation along his right side. They said with the symptoms he’s exhibited those findings are a non-issue.
He’s been to physical therapy multiple times, worked out at my facility for about 6 years and worked out with me, personally, for about a year.
In the last 4-5 months, thanks to you all, my thought and philosophy has shifted a bit. Previously we’ve done alot of McGill big 3, stretching, etc but symptons haven’t budged. More recently, I’ve tried to be careful with how word and position thoughts and ideas to him. However, as a personal trainer, his issues are a bit beyond my credentials and scope.
He now wants to go to a chiropractor but I want to ensure he’s getting what he truly needs. Is this a type of consult you all would be willing to take or do you know of a chiro (as he’s pretty set on seeing one) or know of someone who he would be able to see in the Orlando, FL area?
I’ll speak from my experience and maybe offer another set of eyes on this topic.
I’ve dealt with chronic low back pain for about 10 years. I remember once after an intramural flag football game in college being unable to walk across the parking lot of my dorm back to my room. I felt a lot of numbness and tingling in my low back that shot down one of my legs. I had to take tiny steps to make it. There was no traumatic hit that caused this. It was just a cold day and I wasn’t used to stop and go sprinting like that. In fact, back then, I didn’t run at all. I’ve gone through quite a few chiros and massage therapists, foam rollers, stretching, and mobility protocols to address this pain, especially once I started powerlifting. Since discovering BBM and listening to the pods and watching their videos, I bought in completely and ditched all that stuff.
What I’ve learned is this:
Using therapeutic modalities to address my low back pain actually increased my experience of pain, as it caused me to focus my attention on my back more often to determine whether or not it was getting better or I needed to address it.
All the foam rolling and stretching in the world is no substitution for 15-25 warm-up reps with an empty bar. It makes a big difference for me.
My felt pain isn’t something that can be fixed by an outside practitioner. When I get low back pain, I’ve learned that it’s probably the result of long-term training mismanagement (4-8 weeks). The Texas Method really stressed my lower back and hips, which I’d never had issues with before. The BBM templates are generally excellent at managing long-term training stress.
When I get low back pain, I adjust the intensity on the bar. Myo-rep squats with only 135 on the bar caused me to nearly cry, so I dropped it to 95. Still had pain. So I started practicing higher rep squat sets with 95lbs and under on off days to desensitize myself to that sort of volume and gradually worked my way up. It really helped.
Lastly, I’ve learned to accept some amount of pain. Hearing Austin and others talk about their own pain and how they live with it and work around it in their training builds confidence and mental toughness for me. I think mental toughness is as much about who you’re around and who you listen to as it is anything else. I’m not a trainer, but if I was, I think I would make developing mental toughness a top priority for any client of mine. I just finished a training session with stomach nausea (garage gym) but BBM has given me the tools to manage that sort of thing, especially with RPE as my compass. And I only threw up once
I would recommend searching the Clinical Athlete directory for a chiropractor in that area. I would trust any of them to be up to date on BPS and the current research
Thanks for the questions. We’d be happy to consult with your client. Please have them fill out our intake paperwork here: Contact Us | Barbell Medicine.
Also - you would be able to sit in on this consult if you’d like and it is ok with your client. Let us know if you need anything else.
@elliottse85 If you fo the consult and modify/continue training, please do report what happened, how did the client progress, etc. I would be really interested as I have been having the same issues. They DID decrease a bit when i backed off with the training a bit (load management) so that might be the key to it.
