I injured my lower back about 1.5 years ago doing some back off sets of deadlifts, it was my first one ever after 7 years of miraculous injury free deadlifting. There was an audible pop in my low back followed by serious pain, I hobbled to my car and went home and for a week it was a mission just to roll out of bed. After 2-3 months of slow progress I was back to deadlifting and squatting normally.
However that only lasted about 6-8 months until it happened again. It wasn’t as severe this time around, but enough to make bending over painful and real deadlifting was off limits again. I seem to now be in a cycle where I deadlift/squat normally for 4-6 weeks and then the pain starts slowly creeping back a little more every deadlift session (not dramatically like the first time). Reducing volume doesn’t seem to help so I basically always have to just stop deadlifting for 4 weeks unless I want to limit it to 135lbs until it feels good enough again, then repeat the cycle.
A few weeks ago it happened while I was squatting, at the bottom I felt/heard a distinct ‘crunch’ in my lower back and I’ve barely been able to bend over to feed my cats until the last few days.
I guess I’m wondering what could be physically going on back there that’s causing a literal crunching sensation that leads to weeks of pain. It seems logical there must be a very real and physical issue, but I don’t know what that could be. Is it worth getting x-rays or will that not change anything?