Lower back pain

Hey guys,

2 months ago I did something really stupid. I tested my strength and wanted to see how much weight I could lift. This resulted in to lower back pain. I stopped training for 2 weeks. My back felt great again and today I trained again and it hurts again. This pain occurs with jump exercises, l-sits and other strength moves that requires lower back strength. I don't know what to do now. I wonder whether stretching it is a good idea or must I just stop training for more than a month? I lost a lot of my flexibility in my lower back and can't even touch my toes anymore. I used to be able to do front-splits, just a month before my stupid action. Now I am far away from that. So, is stretching a good idea? If not, what should I do? Is waiting the only option or can I speed it up?

Thank you for reading this. I hope to read advice that will fix this issue.

Max lift in what? A deadlift?

I will suggest the static back pose from the Egoscue method several times per day. There are youtube videos on a number of the Egoscue "exercises. The book "Pain Free" will almost certainly be a big help to you.

I will also recommend very high repetition, slow moving prone back extensions. I do NOT recommend doing this on the floor but rather on a back extension bench. Just bodyweight, and basically do super slow curl ups. 3-5s down and same up. Go to failure. At first you may poop out pretty quickly, but that will pass. You need to rehab the smaller musculature of the spine, and this is really the only way to do that. They are slow twitch muscles and will respond best to longer sets to fatigue. You will notice that you get tired at the joint between each vertebra at first. I would just do 1 set per day for the first week, and do 2-3 days that week nonconsecutive.

lying on your back and performing PNF stretches is the best way to restore your flexibility. You won't be able to do those standing stretches for a few weeks, maybe up to 6. It won't matter, you won't lose anything as long as you do PNF on your back and do that endurance training I just mentioned. You could do the same thing in a partial squat, leaning more and more forward at the hips as the muscles are able to handle it. Go completely by feel either way, and if you're on a back extension bench you will want to have your hips on the pad.

No matter what, don't go to full lumbar extension. Leave a few degrees of untapped motion. Extending the spine as hard as you can to end ROM will not do anything good. This will take some playing around with, but you'll get the hang of it.

Sorry to hear that Rago. Josh's advice is good.

You'll want to not push too much in trying to get the flexibility back, but do work on it, just understanding it will take some time.

On the passive side try this - you'll need a Medium size gymnastics ball - laying on your back put your calves on the ball, I call this Astronaut position, and simply rock from side to side and lightly bounce in a way that feels good to the lower back.

You can also place the ball a bit further away and roll it in towards you lifting your hips.

This can also be done one leg at a time, the free leg bent with foot on the floor, and the leg on the ball straight.

Finally as this feels good, if you can find a way to attach strap or heavy elastic up high do the same thing there. With a straight leg simply move and bounce around in a somewhat orderly manner.

Okay I tried many of what you guys said. Is it normal to not feel so much in your lowerback during these exercises? And a question to Joshua. About the poop part, haha. I don't really get what to do? Is it some sort of pike sit up? Tried those, and I can feel it a bit in my lower back.

Curl Ups are in the book, in the core section.

About feeling it, it's not always necessary to feel anything, but for lower back rehab, if you do feel it, it should feel pleasant and like you are doing yourself some good. It shouldn't hurt, this is very important. It is ok if your lower back feels tired though, once it feels tired (aka -pooped out) stop and rest.

Cole Dano said:

Curl Ups are in the book, in the core section.

About feeling it, it's not always necessary to feel anything, but for lower back rehab, if you do feel it, it should feel pleasant and like you are doing yourself some good. It shouldn't hurt, this is very important. It is ok if your lower back feels tired though, once it feels tired (aka -pooped out) stop and rest.

Woah, the first one felt a bit painful, but than the second it become way less and it kept on getting less. I did 10 of them and felt great afterwards. But, what do you guys recommend. Reps of 5?

It's always a good sign if it gets less, that's ok, if it ever gets more painful as you continue that's means stop for sure.

You might try starting with Arch Ups and then after warming up go to Curl Ups. See if that hurts less and if it makes the Curl Up sets hurt less.

With Arch Ups and Curl Ups reps depend on tempo and how you feel 5-10. For rehab I prefer a slow controlled tempo with a clear pause at the top and bottom. So 5 could be quite taxing that way. I'm pretty sure Josh has the same sentiment there.

Rago said:

Cole Dano said:

Curl Ups are in the book, in the core section.

About feeling it, it's not always necessary to feel anything, but for lower back rehab, if you do feel it, it should feel pleasant and like you are doing yourself some good. It shouldn't hurt, this is very important. It is ok if your lower back feels tired though, once it feels tired (aka -pooped out) stop and rest.

Woah, the first one felt a bit painful, but than the second it become way less and it kept on getting less. I did 10 of them and felt great afterwards. But, what do you guys recommend. Reps of 5?

Only if you give out with 5. I would prefer that you start off with bodyweight and just go to failure until it takes you around 90s to fail. At that point you need a few lbs of extra weight held at the collarbones. I'd start off with 2-3. Doesn't sound like much, but when you're moving with constant tension and no momentum it makes a difference. It may not be enough, what I would want is to add enough weight to bring the time to failure back down to 30-40s. From there, just keep using the same weight until you get back up to 80-90s to failure.

When it comes to training muscle tissue itself, load doesn't matter as long as you actually go to failure, and this is the right way to rehab. You have damaged something, and adding load quickly is stupid. You have to give the tissue time to heal. Did you know that it takes about 6 months for a simple small tear or damaged piece of muscle to be fully mature muscle tissue again? Now you do! Even then, you will have a certain amount of scar tissue that needs to be remodeled as well, and that process takes at least a year.

All of this 12 week rehab stuff is misleading. That's based on what insurance companies will pay for and is enough to get you back into daily life without huge problems in most cases, but is not representative of true recovery at the tissue level.

Knowledge is power and now you know. Train this way for about a year. As you feel better after about 3 months go ahead and start working back into whatever exercises are hurting right now. As Cole said, do whatever flexibility work you can for now. You'll be able to do a lot more soon if you follow this plan.

Trust me, the ironic part of this is that if you stick with it you will actually be stronger by the time your tissue is back to normal than you were when you got hurt. Stronger by a considerable margin. That's because this is actually the "right way" to train at the tissue level, and you will have enormous untapped strength potential for your CNS to take advantage of as you slowly start working back into "strength training" due to the tissue growth that will be occurring in the deep muscles of the spine.

As my old roommate Captain Planet used to say, The POWER is YOURS!

That's interesting Josh so a TUT window of 30s-90s resulting in failure. It's the failure part that somewhat surprised me rather than leave a rep or two in the tank.

One question. What do you mean by 30-40s and failure? Do you mean a set of 30-40? And by failure, until I get tired?

Cole Dano said:

That's interesting Josh so a TUT window of 30s-90s resulting in failure. It's the failure part that somewhat surprised me rather than leave a rep or two in the tank.

I've been trying it and it works extremely well. The failure is necessary in order to ensure you recruit and train as many motor units as you can, and train them all to fatigue. That's part of why the long TUT is necessary... the lower the TUT you can sustain the more motor units you're training simultaneously, and this means that your fatigue is based on higher motor units and not the lower ones. This doesn't seem to make an enormous difference with hypertrophy, but there are quite a few advantages over heavier training:

1) It is easier to keep good form with lighter weights, so you are going to train the muscles to specifically do what you want with good form.

2) Higher TUT will always cause higher levels of lactate to build up, and as lactate buildup is associated with elevated growth hormone levels and GH acts on connective tissue and not actual muscle tissue, this will help with the connective tissue side of remodeling.

3) Force applied to the muscle is lower, which drastically reduces any risk of re-injury, while still causing the same growth response as heavier training.

4) If you have very slight pauses between reps, as most people do, you will actually pump blood through the areas. This helps with healing, especially in the tendons. This is actually done best with 5-10 minute sets of what obviously has to be an extremely light weight.

5) If you are truly keeping constant tension then you will induce ischemia, and short term ischemia is associated with a rapid healing response. If you can keep the tissue somewhat ischemic for longer periods of time (up to 10 minutes) with exercise you can, to some extent, duplicate the effects of clinical work in this area without having to do anything potentially dangerous.

6) You will be inhibiting venous return, which is what causes "the pump" to occur. This is, in and of itself, an independent modulator of protein synthesis. In other words, the pump actually does somewhat increase the rate of protein synthesis. That's pretty cool.

So, if combined with good nutrition this is a very intelligent way to conduct functional rehab once you are out of the clinical stages. It's also a smart way to do clinical rehab once you've gotten to where you can do resistance training, which Rago is already at.

Remember, in rehab we want lots of tissue growth.

1-2 reps in the tank is primarily for skill work where form breaks can cause injury. As such, training to failure is naturally going to be a better option with more moderate or even light loads.

Rago said:

One question. What do you mean by 30-40s and failure? Do you mean a set of 30-40? And by failure, until I get tired?

By failure, until you can no longer perform another rep no matter how much you want to.

30-40s should be the minimum time you can maintain continuous motion when adding resistance. At first with your bodyweight this may be too long for you, but that will change quickly.

So let me get this straight. I need to do as much slow curl ups in 30-40 seconds or until I fail? Sorry I'm really confused

Rago said:

So let me get this straight. I need to do as much slow curl ups in 30-40 seconds or until I fail? Sorry I'm really confused

Ok. To end confusion:

Just go to failure. Don't increase weight until failure takes more than 70-90s to reach, and don't go up more than 5 lbs per workout. Don't increase weight more than once per workout, no matter how easy it is. Just go to failure.

Joshua Naterman said:

Rago said:

So let me get this straight. I need to do as much slow curl ups in 30-40 seconds or until I fail? Sorry I'm really confused

Ok. To end confusion:

Just go to failure. Don't increase weight until failure takes more than 70-90s to reach, and don't go up more than 5 lbs per workout. Don't increase weight more than once per workout, no matter how easy it is. Just go to failure.

Great! Just did 23 in 80s, so can I add 1 KG to it now?

That's too fast. 80 seconds should only be enough time for 13 reps at 3s down, 3s up or so at the most. I want you to really focus on vertebra by vertebra movement with no momentum. You will probably be able to do this, so if you have no trouble with 2-3 sets to failure then by all means add the 1 kg!

I'm with Josh on this, for rehab, don't do the movements for speed, see how slowly you can do them. And use your senses, try to feel the movement, this is important for the brain side of the rehab. Remember, even though there may be tissue damage, it's not the tissue the causes the pain, it's your brian, (not the conscious brain, the protective circuitry) the brain also needs the rehab.

This is why many people get relief from back pain doing things like yoga.

Right, thanks for the advice. Managed to do less than 13 in 80 seconds. It feels so great in my lower back. I feel so much better each time after this.

Great thread!

Josh, I've been wondering...is this high repetiton/low weight training to failure somehow usable to prevent/treat knee injuries? I'm doing a lot of flips on concrete these days and i'm worried about beating my knees take. I'm doing paterson stepups and some other work, but something extra is always useful. Thanks

Warik said:

Great thread!

Josh, I've been wondering...is this high repetiton/low weight training to failure somehow usable to prevent/treat knee injuries? I'm doing a lot of flips on concrete these days and i'm worried about beating my knees take. I'm doing paterson stepups and some other work, but something extra is always useful. Thanks

Yes. There is actually research out there that has focused on heavy vs light squats and it found that very heavy squats with low reps (90% 1RM or something like that) caused slow cartilage degeneration and that the very light squats for very high reps caused regeneration of the same cartilage. So from a joint health and longevity perspective the light reps are a very, very good idea.

It doesn't matter all that much what the exercise is as long as you can perform very high repetitions with a lighter weight. SLS would be out, for example, unless it was with a heavy band assist or unless you could do something crazy like 30-50 reps without stopping.

I was wondering whether I could also try doing RLL's. I can't do curl ups alone, got nothing to hold on to with my legs. But I can do RLL's alone. And what about headstand RLL's? Or is that too much?

One more thing I was wondering. How long until I can finally train L-sits and do tumbling again? I really miss those things. At the moment, I don't have a sharp pain, just an annoying pain that hurts a bit when doing l-sits. It feels like I'm damaging my body when doing them. So I don't, but I really want to be able to do them again without that feeling.

It's actually not that hard to make a set up with a strap that will allow you to do Arch Ups and Curl Ups.

I made a short video a while back -

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4979

Rago said:

I was wondering whether I could also try doing RLL's. I can't do curl ups alone, got nothing to hold on to with my legs. But I can do RLL's alone. And what about headstand RLL's? Or is that too much?

One more thing I was wondering. How long until I can finally train L-sits and do tumbling again? I really miss those things. At the moment, I don't have a sharp pain, just an annoying pain that hurts a bit when doing l-sits. It feels like I'm damaging my body when doing them. So I don't, but I really want to be able to do them again without that feeling.

Prone RLL would be ok if they feel ok, but curl ups are what you want. All you really need is a chair and someone to hold your feet for a minute.

Cole's adaptation is also excellent.

I used RLL, just BW on a block next to PB while holding the PB rails helpful twice in 2010. 3-6 months without barbell work made my lower back weak when I got back under a bar.

Mainly used them because Louie Simmons has gone on record of using them for his lower back issues. Unfortunately, the UC Berkeley Rec Gym did not have a reverse hyper. I did do some back extensions on the PB but also used a fair amount of PB and Ring swings purposely piking on purpose to loosen up my lower back that had tightened up BIG TIME.

Good Mornings could also be used. Again, light weight and super high reps.

As has been said, the super high reps allows for more blood flow which heals tissue.

I also looked into a lot of Yoga "snaking" for loosening up my lower back.