Any advice for dealing with low back pain going into a meet?
I have done my best to self-manage it for the past 3 months but it hasn’t gone away and seems to be mostly irritated by deadlifts and DL variations.
My PR deadlft is 425lbs which I pulled in May. But in the past three weeks I have failed singles under 400lbs twice due to acute low back pain mid-way through the pull. My current 1@8 is around 365lbs. RPEs have been going up for less and less weight for 3 weeks now.
I still train, have read up PainScience.com, understand the basics of pain (generated in the brain, not always indicative of tissue damage, etc.), and try not to worry/think about it. I do not see this is as an injury and I am not fearful of deadlifting. In fact I have done some super light deadlifts (65-95lbs for 8+ rep sets) on a couple of my GPP days since the decrease in performance and worsening of pain.
Will NSAIDS mitigate my low back pain on meet day?
Like we all know, training can only be assessed in retrospect. I have been having mild to severe DOMS in my glutes and hamstrings for basically this entire meet prep. It’s possible the 12 Week Strength Template doesn’t work well for my deadlift.
Regardless, I’m pretty bummed because it looks like I won’t PR all my lifts in my first meet which seems to be a common occurrence.
The silver lining in all this is I have learned so much about programming, training, anatomy, and pain science.
Thanks everyone for providing a great community to learn. Any advice is greatly appreciated. 