Hi BBM,
Thank you in advance for reading and replying to this.
I am 23 and have been lifting for almost 5 years.
Cause
- Around end of August, I was doing Trap-bar jumps and shrug pulls. I’ve done this lots of times before, but this time I rushed warming up and used a bit too much weight. I suspect that on one of the reps, I didn’t posture myself properly while the bar was going back down on the descent. However I didn’t notice any pain until 20 mins later, and even then, it was just some stiffness.
- A day or two later, I did some kickboxing on a heavy bag. This is when I felt the most low back pain I’ve ever felt in my life. It was mostly on my left side. I was like this for about 2 weeks, although over this course, it did settle down.
Symptoms
Since then, the low back pain has been lingering, although it was starting to get much better over the weeks and months.
- I had pain sitting down and especially standing up from sitting down or bending down - basically whenever my lower spine flexes. But zero pain lying on my stomach.
- I had pain squatting ATG low-bar as I usually did. So I did high bar pin squats, putting them just before I felt any pain in my back.
- I had pain kickboxing.
- I had pain doing basic things like bending over
I had minimal to no pain from doing RDLs when weight was less than 80% 1RM. Even some reps above this weight wasn’t too bad.
Eventually after 2.5 months, my low back pain was almost gone. I was about 80% back to normal and was even ready to start doing MMA again.
But I did a hard kickboxing session, where I felt some small pain on my left side again. I didn’t think much of it and did heavy TB DLs and jumps. My low back pain returned just as bad if not a bit worse than initially in August; I cannot even RDL anymore whereas before I could at least do that.
Questions
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Do you think I could benefit from the low back pain rehab template? Is it geared towards powerlifting? I was thinking to just find exercises I have no pain doing and progressing from there
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Will my low back pain be forever? I am seeing some people talk about ‘10 years’ and ‘learning to manage and reduce symptoms over the course of their life’ which is seriously scaring and depressing me a lot. Honestly I cannot imagine not being able to do the sports I like again. The fact that I got to 80% back to normal is the only thing giving me reassurance. I don’t really care about being pain and not being able to move, just as long as it’s temporary for a couple months max.
Many thanks
First, I want to commend your self-management strategies when you originally hurt your back. It can be difficult to stay calm and find a tolerable entry point into activity, but it sounds like you were able to accomplish that and were managing quite well until this most recent set-back.
Unfortunately, sometimes re-injuries happen, and this can be incredibly frustrating, especially when it feels like we were “doing all the right things.” Sometimes life is just that way and we don’t always have an explanation for it. It would be great if rehab from an injury was a linear process, each day slightly better than the day before, but sadly, it is not. We will all experience set-backs along the way, some larger than others.
I do think that you could benefit from the low back pain rehab template. It is geared toward a powerlifting style of training. You also have the ability to select which exercises from a group of exercises you would like to perform to tailor the training toward your goals and/or to the movements that are currently tolerable for you. The template could help by putting in some “hard stops” on training from keeping you from doing do much too quickly, which sounds like you might benefit from in this stage.
I don’t think that your back pain with last forever. Fortunately, you were able to successfully manage your first episode of acute low back pain by auto-regeulating and performing movements at a tolerable dosage, this should give you some confidence that symptoms will improve over time. I also think it is completely reasonable that you will be able to doing the sports that you would like to do, including MMA, within a reasonable timeframe.
Hang in there, it will get better. If you decide that you would like more specific advice, we would also be happy to consult with you remotely and provide individualistic rehab based programming.
Hi,
Thanks a lot for your encouragement and reassurance, I hope it will go within a reasonable timeframe.
I will definitely look to get the template.
Is this not where massage comes into place? I think it’s what’s needed tbh. But Idk
How familiar are you with our content? Massage is not something that we would recommend as a treatment for persistent low back pain, or really any persistent pain, and has not been shown to alter tissue structure or improve performance. Rather, we would advocate for a more active approach to pain management, including adjusting training variables (volume, frequency, intensity, etc), getting adequate sleep, managing stress, proper nutrition, etc.
Hannah