Can a back injury be caused by progressing RLLs too quickly?

I just recently started training BtGB coming from 7 years of Crossfit and KB stuff.

I've been training about 4 weeks, but last Saturday injured my lower back.

I was actually sanding some rust off a KB handle and felt a twinge in my lower pack that got progressively worse.

I'm doing my best to work around it with XR supports and hangs.

My question is, could this injury be a result of running through the RLL progression to quickly?

I did RLL hanging from a stall bar 2 weeks ago and was easily able to do sets of 10.

My workout Friday preceeding the injury included:

HeStd RLL 3, 3, 4

They seemed easy and I tried a few Handstand Block RLL.

I felt no pain, but lacked the skill to do that smoothly.

The next morning I felt the pain.

Have you heard of people straining their back doing RLL?

I'm trying to discern how I hurt by back.

I've done Olympic Lifting, 1000's of KB swings with 72 pounders and up.

After all the ballistic exercises I've done before, I just can't see how I injured my back squatting down and sanding.

I have been working on increasing my flexibility in the Pike and Straddle split.

Is it possible that this flexibility has somehow weakened the integrity of my lower back?

I've focused on keeping a flat back and getting compression with my psoas.

Was this injury caused by progressing too quickly in the RLL?

bigB said:

After all the ballistic exercises I've done before, I just can't see how I injured my back squatting down and sanding

I think this is more common than you realize. I know a guy who's deadlift was in the upper 400s - strained his back picking up his nephew.

It's possible that I damaged my back doing the ballistic exercises too soon.

However, I've been training that way for a few years and I've deloaded from workouts of 15,000 - 20,000 lb loads to ~ 5000 since I started training more BtGB. I have been asymptomatic until last Saturday.

I'm thinking a more recent stimulus triggered it.

The RLL is the newest novel stimulus I see in my logs.

I've experienced elbow pains before from not following a SSC, I was wondering if my overzealous intensity was the origin of my back pain.

I really just wanted to know if others have tweaked their back doing RLL or working pike and straddle stretches to intensely?

bigB said:

I really just wanted to know if others have tweaked their back doing RLL or working pike and straddle stretches to intensely?

Is your back injury muscle related or spine related?

I haven't had problems where I injured a muscle in my back, but if you mean you have spinal problems, then my experience may be of some help.

I used to have lower back spine related problems because of a lack of flexibility. Doing RLL (or L-Sits or even SLS) could cause some "parts" of my spine to move to a wrong position. It was only after many months that I realized that a lack of flexibility was causing this. As soon I became more flexible, all these problems vanished more or less.

It now still happens sometimes that I have a problem with my lower spine, but when it happens, I can /always/ fix it in at most five minutes time by doing the following three stretches:

Upper spinal floor twist:

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Crocodile twist (I do this with both legs straight and putting one feet on top of the other and dropping my feet to the other side than where your face is turned to):

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Lizard pose:

http://yoga.about.com/od/yogaposes/a/lizard.htm

One of these stretches always pops the wrong part in the right position and after that my back is healthy again! I usually hold the stretches for about 30 - 60 seconds.

So, if your injury is spine related, perhaps doing these stretches can help you out in the short term?

In the long term, getting more flexible by doing pike stretches (and other stretches) may prevent future problems.

Good luck!

Well, as Mark is alluding to, if there was something up with your spine in the first place. Some sort of imbalance in the spine or hip, it could be anything that triggers it. From a heavy DL to picking up a pen off the floor.

What's your pike flexibility? Good or bad? We know that stretching does incur micro trauma to the tissues. So again, the straw that breaks the camel's back.