Recovering from a back injury

S

SweetDaddyPatty

New Member
I tore ligaments in my lower back while deadlifting about 10 years ago and ever since my back has been prone to injury. Whenever I try to incorporate squats, deads, or even bent over rows into a routine I end up "pulling" something in my lower back.
Most recently I was doing arm-supported dumbell rows and on the eccentric portion i felt my back "give." It's kept me out of work for several days. The doctor says he thinks its probably a slipped disc and the best thing I can do is rest and take anti inflammatories and muscle relaxers for a week or so.

It's getting better but i wonder if anyone has had a problem like this before and been able to fix it.
What did you do?
I thought of maybe starting out with bodyweight squats and adding 5 lb dumbells every three weeks or something like that to very very very slowly build functional strength back up.

Does anyone have any similar experiences or tips for recovery to share?
 
I was suffering from lower back pains for a few years until I began to train this year. It took a few months to get it sorted out but I managed to fix it. It's not completely fixed but enough for my purpose. I applied a combination of solutions, not just one.

Stretching. Lying down flat on my back, I put one leg up and rest the knee on the opposite side. Then I twist my torso to stretch the lower back. Things pop once in a while.

Massage. I take a tennis ball and roll it under the lower back. Or just put it where it hurts and lie there for a while.

Proper technique. I changed my gait somewhat. The reason being that I gained some weight from training and so more weight sits directly over the lower back. I changed my gait to have a little more spring in my walk. I also changed my posture a bit when I work or do stuff standing up or even when I sit or sleep.

Proper training. I alternate between the squat and deadlift. Both exercises solicit the lower back tremendously and doing both in the same workout will make it stiff and painful. Alternating them is much more manageable. I arch my lower back more and use my legs more when I lift any weight from the ground so that probably makes the biggest difference of all. Even the lightest weight with improper technique adds up to stiffen the lower back and eventually make it painful. In other words, I always do a full squat from now on when picking up stuff from the ground. As I should have done from the start.

Sorry, forgot to add something. I wear shoes with as flat a sole as possible to affect my posture as little as possible. The feet, after all, are the foundation of the body. The more stable they are, the better the body moves on them.

I guess we learn from our mistakes.
 
I'm actually lifting barefoot these days in my gym.
I went through 30 years of back hell supposedly from injuries sustained by daily lifting the steel ramps on my lowboy truck. Chiropractors said I had bulging and crushed discs and all this out of alignment problem (but it did'nt look so bad to me...) and I eventually got up to a 430 lb parallel squat that seemed to re-injure it. I stopped squatting, and anything like hypers or good mornings that would work the back.
It got worse.
I now deadlift, squat, pendlay row and anything I want pain free, or almost so. Part of it comes from Dr. John Sarno's book "Healing back pain", a very unbelievable outlook at first, that brought up emotional (mental) ties to supposed "injury". Upon examination, I realized that my life was a living hell at that time complete with a bad divorce and he had a point for me to consider. The more I read the less pain I had. Weird.
Then he advocated doing the very exersizes that you tend to avoid. Made sense. Strengthen instead of weaken the back. It turns out that the back is an immensly stronger structure than we give it credit for, a miraculous thing actually.
It so turns out that most people with back trouble will associate it with something that happened around the time it started, looking for a cause, yet in emotional avoidance, the brain can shut off oxygen to parts of the body, usually the back or neck, giving you something else to focus on. Sounds stupid, doesn't it?
I can't ignore a 435 lb. deadlift though, after 30 years of intense pain. I can't ignore NOT thinking about my back all day. I can't ignore enjoying sex again.
Just food for thought.
 
On the Christain Channel here in Miami a guy said through prayer he healed a serious knee injury caused by squatting. He felt a warmth in his knee during the sermon and since then he's been pain free. Sounds like BS to me...but if you're a religious guy, maybe give it a try.
 
Yeah, some guy on a site about steroids said the same thing about prayer healing his back. He was also running Deca at the time, so who knows.
 
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