I’ve been experiencing some odd behavior in my low back during conventional deadlifts where my low back buckles (sudden flexion in either spine or hips) mid lift right below my knees. The first time I experienced this my low back instantly started to feel very sore and continued for a few days. I took one week off from lifting and the next week came back with ~50lbs less on my squat and deadlift.
By the time I deadlifted after the first injury it was about 2 weeks. With ~50 lbs less on the bar my back buckled again during the deadlift (stupid me lol).
I’ve been deadlifting for ~6 years and this has never happened before. I feel like my deadlift form is pretty good (following Alan Thralls 5 point setup process). Since its joint related I have no clue why its happening and came here to see if anyone has any thoughts or has experience it before.
Why does my low back buckle during my deadlifts and what can I do to prevent it? Should I use the low back pain rehab template?
Additional Info
Right now I think my plan is going to be to lay off deadlifting for ~1 month or ~2 and work in some other hip hinge movements (hip thrusts, back extensions, maybe RDL)
Lay off the heavy weights and pivot to a hypertrophy template for all other lifts and eventually fold in deadlifts after that off period
Giving an update here in case anyone is having the same issues.
Directly after this last post I took only one day off and then went back to doing my 4-day routine.
Day 1 - Squats with very low weight (135lbs x 4 x 10reps), DB bench, back extensions (no weight, 5x10 reps), hip abduction machine (low weight, 5x10reps), bicep curls
Day 2 - Bench, split squats, DB shoulder press, pull ups
Day 3 - No deadlifting, Hip thrusts (low weight, 5x10reps), pause bench press, bicep curls
Day 4 - OHP, horizontal rows, tricep pushdown, chest fly I then took off 4 days over Christmas and directly after our long drive back home I did Day 1 again but squats with 210 for a set of 10reps. This is still light weight for me and on the third rep I felt my back tweak again (incredibly frustrating at this point). I was too stubborn to stop it there so I backed down to 135 again and did 4x10reps.
Back was very sore that night (getting up was very difficult). Felt better in the morning but still sore.
Not sure what to do at this point since now I can’t squat either (when the injury came originally from deadlifting).
I’m thinking no deadlifts or squats and try to get leg, ham, glute work from alternate movements with low weight and higher reps.
Thankfully I have a PT appointment today so we’ll see what they say but I’m worried their answer will be “don’t lift for X weeks”.
How about lower the weight even more so you can still squat and deadlift without things flaring up? adding a tenpo variation will force you to lower the weight a lot.
There’s no reason to stop lifting in a common back tweak situation with no red flags or similar, it goes against all the BBM advice I’ve ever read.
The Low Back Rehab template is a really useful tool in the toolbox and is a relatively no-brainer approach to scaling things. The principles especially are invaluable and make for less stress when flares happen and gives you a reliable plan to fall back on.
I definitely haven’t stopped lifting and pretty much doing variations for squat (hack, split squats) and hamstring/glute work (hip thrusts, glute-ham raises etc). But I have stopped doing squats and deadlifts because every time I do I re-injure my back. Obviously there’s something off with my form and I think its probably core related (since that’s where some spine rigidity comes from) but that’s just a hunch.
I’ve been in PT for almost 4 weeks now. The quick (emphasis on quick) diagnosis is that I have to increase core strength and that my left side has a hamstring imbalance. Generally speaking I don’t disagree with that assessment but there wasn’t much assessment around my actual deadlift or squat because they don’t have that equipment*.* I’m curious if a sports specific therapist would have the proper equipment (barbells, rack etc) and design a rehab program around that specifically.
The exercises I’m doing with them is mostly core work (russian twists, dead bugs) or hamstring work on my left side (isometric holds of single leg hip bridges) or isometic adduction work (holding a ball in my legs and squeezing, holding).
After a week and half of PT I successfully did block pulls with 135lb but then re-injured my back again a week later with block pulls at 175lb. At this point I’ve injured my back four times and thinking of getting an MRI. I understand that people can lift safely with a bulged disk and I could no-cebo myself but at this point I would feel better knowing.
I’ve lost confidence in the PT work although agree the things we’re working on are probably useful. I wish my PT had walked me through an assessment similar to this squat university video. I hope its not blasphemy linking to another source - https://youtu.be/nH5NGW5d0NM?si=t6DIkTGuKI9AiPg4
I’ve watched many of the pain/rehab videos from BBM including the common Alan Thrall video on back injury. These are helpful and probably most importantly this 4 Steps for Managing Pain video. What I’m looking for at this point is an understanding of where in the lift I’m screwing up and was hoping the PT could shed that light but haven’t gotten that answer yet.
If anyone knows a good PT who is either sports specific or actually lifts (deadlift, squat) in Brooklyn it would be much appreciated.