Hi.
First of all, many thanks the great content you put up here at BBM. I am very familiar with your approach when it comes to pain but I still have a few hesitations when it comes to how I will approach training.
In January, I injured my back doing sumo DL (i’m a conventionnal guy so this was a “variation”) after a few weeks of feeling a bit tight and fatigued in the lower back area. I pretty much shrugged it off, like I always do when something bothers me (I used to freak out a lot, but your content helped me to have a bit more of a stoic approach).
I deloaded my training and kept on doing my program as much as possible, adjusting weights/ROM. Even if I injured myself doing sumo, my conv DL was the lift that suffered the most. I wasn’t really able to pick things off the ground pain free, especially in the very first part of the movement. SLDL was the most painful, but Sumo DL was pretty much fine. Squats were rapidly fine.
Things were getting better, but I re-injured myself “the same way” doing sumo DL in May. I did the same protocol (less weight on the bar, adjusted ROM on some lifts, etc) and things got better really quickly afterwards compared to the first time.
Did I went “too fast” ? I feel like things went better weeks after weeks, and I got a little bit excited on getting back to “normal training”. I’m am currently trying to ease up the “healing” process by slowing doing the weight increment on the DL.
I feel a bit stuck into a weird loop: sumo DL was the main trigger twice (ie: I injured myself twice doing it) but conv DL suffers the most afterwards. At first, i thought “just ditch the sumo” but I cannot really train conventionnal right now, so I still currently pull sumo. How do you think I should approach things in the long term ?
Tough to say without more information gathered from a consultation with you. I will say recurrence is a fairly normative aspect of the process for many people, even if we feel dosage of activity is dialed in.