What exactly is the crunching sound when I repeatedly injure my lower back?

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?

I’m sorry to hear about this issue. It’s been discussed a few times here before (here, here, and this video for example).

If you have not yet checked out our general article on pain it would be a good place to start. We also have other content on the topic available in the podcast and YouTube channel.

It’s hard to say without more discussion what the best path forward would be here, but unfortunately that type of individualized conversation and recommendations are a bit outside the scope of what can be provided via the forum here. A consultation with someone you trust would be reasonable next steps if you are unsure of your path forward. While we are obviously biased, a consultation with our rehab team would be our recommended approach for this type of thing.