Programming around lower back injury.

Few weeks back i tweaked my back. Since then i have trouble getting my pulls to normal weights. I got my squat back to normal in a matter of couple weeks. But yesterday, i pulled 275 for 5 without any back back pain, and went ahead to pull 325, and immediately felt pain in the lumbar spine, like that first day when i got the injury. Now i’m back to square one. So i have a few questions:

  1. Do i keep following 12wk Press template as is or do i modify it (rack pulls instead of regualar and paused dls, moving dls to the end of the session, skipping 1@8, 5x5 or 5x3).
  2. How do i know if and how much to increase weight on the bar?
  3. What exercises, if any, to avoid in general until recovery (ie i used to do cable crunches for my ab work).

Jumping from 275 to 325 may have been too aggressive. Back up and plan to make more like 10 lb jumps from session to session instead, until you’re back up to speed. You might consider getting your form checked as well.

I can’t tell you whether you’ll need to modify the exercise selection, as it depends on whether certain movements exacerbate things more than others. If they do, those are the ones to swap out.

I would probably not plan on doing singles @ 8 while recovering from an acute back tweak.