Hi all. So I am new here, and generally new to training. I’ve had back issues for more than a decade + The worst of it began at age 22 on a seemingly normal day at the basketball court where a jump seemed to sprain my upper back. I thought whatever, it’s a sprain, it’ll go away. It weirdly did not. I went to the doctors, they gave me some sort of an injection using some syringe (steroids? Don’t remember now). I then started engaging in normal activity except after 24 hours it came back 10 fold. And a new symptom was in (dizziness). From then on, that upper back had a dull ache/pain for months. The dizziness went away after half a year but when I tried to workout at the gym, no amount of warmup helped, it only caused this stiff, agonizing pain. So I stopped doing all physical activity in the sense of resistance training (perhaps the worst mistake I made) for more than a decade. Only 2 years ago, at the age of 33, when a weird chest symptom took me to the ER did one of the doctors say, “You have costochondritis. As for your heart, your heart’s doing fine”. The costochondritis is much better now, but I now wanna start training. The problem is, even dumbbell rows cause me upper back pain around the rhomboid area that takes a day or two to settle down. I have scheduled an appointment with a physiotherapist so that’s in order for first week of the new year but I wanted to get an idea from you guys. For someone in my situation, what do I do? Not train at all until I strengthen my back first? I don’t know anything about this or sports medicine…
Hi there!
Thanks for the question and welcome to the forum. It sounds like you have had a long and frustrating road over the years, and it is completely understandable that you feel some reservations about starting again.
The first thing we want to emphasize is that you are not broken. No doubt, years of pain and symptoms like dizziness can feel scary, but it’s reassuring your cardiac workup was clear is a very positive sign. I can’t evaluate your specific case from here, but I would likely reframe the costochondritis and non-specific upper back pain as more about how the nervous system is processing inputs and protecting the area rather than a sign of permanent structural damage or something being permanently injured.
Regarding your question about whether you should wait to strengthen your back before training: we would argue that training is the process by which you strengthen your back. There is not really a way to get stronger without exposing the body to some level of load. The goal is not to wait until the pain is completely gone to start, but rather to find an entry point that you can tolerate right now.
When you do dumbbell rows and feel pain that takes a day or two to settle, that is typically a dosage issue. It does not mean the movement is dangerous or that you are re-injuring yourself; it just means that the current volume, intensity, and/or range of motion is currently exceeding what your body is prepared to handle after a long period of inactivity.
For your specific case, it sounds like you would benefit from speaking to one of our pain and rehab experts. You can reach out to us via this contact form.
-Jordan
Thank you very much for your response, Dr. Jordan. First thing I did is picked up the Dumbbell at-home program from Barbell Medicine. I’ve been doing a lot of reading at your page, including the link you sent here in your post. This is because Barbell Medicine is for me the only place which in the last few days, drilled into my head the idea that I have it back asswards about all this. As you just said too. The long inactivity is actually hurting me more than helping me. And that I can begin with the right dosage, that’s the control I should have started with long ago. Instead, I just endured pointless dull pain on and off. Nowadays, I don’t have pain most days (unless I were to try training, which in my case I may just need to lower the weights and start) so I think I will start with your program that I picked up, and if I face issues even following that first one to the T. Or if pain surfaces in a way that really bothers me, I will do the pain and rehab consult! Thank you very much!
That’s great! I am very excited for you and I appreciate the kind words.
A word of advice is to start more conservatively than you otherwise would, both in loading and movement selection. You’ll have to “unlearn” some trepidation around movement, as well as the resulting discomfort you may be expecting to feel. Plenty of time to advance movement and loading over time, but let’s start conservatively!
-Jordan
Thank you! I actually did just that over the last week. On my last post here on this thread, I had tried the 15 lb dumbbell to start with, for the dumbbell floor press, and it felt like my muscles on the arm could easily take that weight, wasn’t feeling taxing in any way, but my balance sucked. Like my hands were wobbly and not able to stabilize the dumbbells when elevated. After the DOMS pain settled over the next 48 hours, I went back to it again, took an entire extra day off, and then the wobble was reduced by more than 60%. Way more stable. I even added the fat gripz to the 15 lbs. I am glad I came across Barbell medicine or else I’d probably not start even in the coming months, waiting around for nothing.
Happy to hear all went well. Keep it up!