Lateral Movement Low Back Pain/Overall Soreness?

Medical Q&A [Moderated]
1

Hey BBM Community,

I’m currently going through time number 2 of the LP after foolishly taking 3 weeks off after the ever popular back pain event (won’t call it an injury) that built up over a couple weeks after squatting and deadlifting. What I have noticed this time going through the LP is that I can squat and deadlift without any back pain, but if I do something that requires a lot of lateral movement (spikeball, basketball) I feel more stiff and sore than I do from training. I even felt the same back pain that I did from LP number one, except this time it was from playing basketball with a 6 year old and dunking on his 8 foot goal. Embarrassing.

Two questions from this:

  1. Is the soreness that results from lateral movement activities more noticeable because I don’t “train” in them like I do with the core lifts?

  2. How can the same degree of pain result from (what I have to assume was) the improper execution of lifting of heavy weights, as barely playing basketball with a little kid?

Thanks!

2

  1. Probably, yes.

  2. Pain is Weird: A Volatile, Misleading Sensation

3

Thank you for the response! That was a great article to read. It sounds like whatever stimuli I’ve experienced before that caused a “danger alarm” to go off, thus producing pain, was used by my brain to produce a similar feeling of pain because the stimuli experienced was similar.

I guess what I don’t understand is what about the act of barely jumping to dunk a ball on a short goal can produce a stimulus similar enough to improperly squatting/deadlifting that causes a high level of pain to be experienced.

Either way, thank you very much for the response.