LBP, made it worse...

Medical Q&A [Moderated]
1

Last friday I did paused deadlifts for the first time. I probably didn’t keep my back set quite right, and felt a pain in the left side of my lower back as I performed the top set @~8. I tried to think “No big deal”, and it worked. I was supposed to do back offs after that and they felt fine, just a little stiffness.

Drove and drunk quite a bit over the weekend (not both at the same time) with only mild discomfort.

Tuesday the pain was nearly forgotten. Back in the gym and warming up for squats. I may have rushed a bit through warmups because with only 30kg on the bar I heard a crack in my lower back as I was coming out of the hole.

This time despite all my efforts it was too painful to continue. All I managed was a few light sets of incline bench. Spent most of the next 36h in bed with ibuprofen and did a few airsquats and air deadlifts.

I feel super annoyed that it got worse and not better… What can I do except use really, really light weights? When do I know it’s safe to increase the weight?

2

I would use really light weights if you need to in order to get back under the bar. You would’ve been fine on Tuesday, as there is nothing that actually cracked in your back that caused pain (likely)- but the noise freaked you out and the symptoms you’re having now are a residual of that. My advice would be to ignore cracks, divorce the ideas o goodf form=no injury or bad form= injury from your mind, as they are not helpful, and move as much as you can. Start with whatever load you need to start with now and add slowly from there.

1 Like
3

Today I did almost exactly what my program called for and it went just fine. I actually felt less pain during beltless pause squats than while I was resting between sets or sitting at home.

So if I understood correctly, those two “injuries” were random and independent events?

4

Probably, yes.

5

I heard about the so called slump test, is it BS or not? If not what can you infer from it?

6

It’s BS. Can’t infer anything reliably from it.