Low Back Pain Template Modifications and Nutritional Advice

Hi,

I’ve had some mildly annoying lower back pain in the last 2 months or so, and I’ve tried to manage it on my own. While things have improved, I’ve been having trouble reintroducing myself to heavier weights in the squat and the deadlift, with occasional flare ups. The pain usually sets in the day after I “overshoot” my working weight with squats or deadlifts (very low weight seems to be tolerable, but if I try to up the weight to something even a little challenging, say RPE 5, it seems to aggravate my back quite a bit the next day). Today I decided to just buy the low back pain template and see if it works out. I have two questions.

First off, for the final phase of the template, is there any way I could straight up just skip the main programming and run something like Hypertrophy I (which I’ve been willing to try for some time now) along with doing the Rehab exercises on GPP days, or something of that sort? The final phase seems to be a “back to normal” kind of phase, which is why I’m wondering if that’d be reasonable. I’m starting University soon and I already have concerns about how much time I will be able to put towards training, so I don’t think I’m willing to do a 4 day a week program right now.

Second, I’ve put on a bit of weight recently (slow bulk turned into a not-so-slow bulk haha) and was planning for a cutting phase about now. My only concern is if that’s a good idea while I’m rehabbing my back, or if I should wait a little bit until I start training “hard” again. For reference, my BMI is 25.5 right now and my waist is about 32-33 inches. I’m not terribly uncomfortable with my body composition right now but I’d prefer to be lighter.

Thanks :slight_smile:

Sevo,

Thanks for the post. I’ll get right to your questions:

  1. You can run the upper body programming from another template, yes. I would not replace the lower body and “rehab” programming from the low back pain template. If you can’t do all the days, that’s okay. Given the issues you mentioned finding a suitable entry point, I’d be cautious about modifying anything.

  2. Weight loss would fine.

-Jordan

Hey Jordan, thanks for the answer.

As a follow up, if I were to “remove” one day of programming from the last phase of the template, which day would you recommend removing, if any? My bias is to remove the 4th day.

Yea, I would take the 1st exercise from Day 4 (the deadlift), put it as the 3rd exercise on Day 3, and skip the rest of Day 4.