You hurt your lower back lifting something. Now what?
My guess is that your reading this because you hurt your back from deadlifting, picking up something heavy, or maybe you have in the past, know someone who has, or are looking for some information on how to recover and even prevent this type of injury from happening. If you answered YES to any of those you may find this article pretty helpful.
I write this for you as a previous victim of several lower back injuries, tweaks, and flare-ups throughout my life that occurred during my own fitness training, sporting events and regular activities of daily life. With the proper research and education as well as first hand experience of being able to use certain techniques I have compiled this list of things you may want to consider if you are experiencing back pain that is the result of lifting.
1.) Is my pain Acute or Chronic?
The first thing you are going to need to figure our is whether or not this back pain is acute or chronic.
If it is Chronic, this means that it has been lingering around for a number of weeks or months. If you are like me and you rush back in to the gym too early it may have gotten worse since your last deadlift session or last time you picked something up off the ground. This means you may have aggravated a preexisting in. If you are experiencing chronic pain you may need to see your doctor to get a proper diagnosis of what you are dealing with.
Acute pain typically lasts only several days and is likely due to a mild strain placed on your body by lifting something heavier than you are capable of or perhaps when working out your muscles were too fatigued to make it happen. All issues that have occurred with my lower back have been acute injuries. The one thing that you need to know is that if you do not treat your acute injuries with respect and you jump back into lifting too soon you can turn your short acute injury into a more long term, chronic injury, causing it to worsen over time and take much longer to recover from.
2.) What do I need to do if my pain is Chronic?
Save time reading this and go see your doctor. It is likely that my suggestions will not help your condition.
3.) Did I strain or sprain my lower back?
Some of the most common injuries that occur due to physical activity are Strains and Sprains. But the most important thing to understand is that they are different from each other.
A muscle Strain is when a muscle is stretched beyond is maximum length, which is commonly due to not being able to produce the force needed to work against a resistance. There are two basic ways strains occur on a muscle:
- The force of the muscle is substantial enough this can result in a strain on the muscle that stretches is beyond its max length (Think of a rubber band that is stretched out and then gets stuck at a new length when its not being stretched)
- The force can cause the muscle fibers to tear (Think of the rubber band again but instead of stretching out it either rips or snaps completely), which is a more severe result causing significant muscular damage.
A Sprain, on the other hand, is relative to your ligaments: the tissues that hold your bones together. Unlike a muscle that is responsible for movement and muscular force, ligaments are responsible for holding our bones in place. Just like a strain, a sprain of the lower back can cause an excessive lengthening of the ligaments that hold your lumbar vertebrae together which can cause a degree of instability that may result in pain. Ligaments do not have a great blood supply which means they do not heal as fast as damaged muscles do. In many cases, a ligament sprain can result in chronic pain due to how long the repair process can take.
4.) What do I need to do immediately after the onset of an Acute injury
First, acknowledge what happened resulted from likely one of two things, 1) you moved with poor technique which put you in a position prone for injury (i.e. you didn't use your legs when picking something up) or 2) your body was not prepared to do whatever you did that is now causing you pain.
Second, REST! Take a minimum of two to three days off to give yourself time to feel out what happened and let your muscles recover. If you are dealing with a strain its likely that you were over doing it anyways so award yourself with some well deserved rest.
When I say rest I mean complete rest and avoidance of any bend and lift movements that may have caused the pain. This means that if you injured your back in a workout from doing squats or deadlifts that you still should not go to the gym for an upper body day because you can still aggravate your lower back by picking up dumbbells off the rack or loading plates onto the barbell. Upper body exercises still require you to bend and lift even if that wasn't your intention. So take it easy.
5.) Is a muscular imbalance the reason I got injured?
You may do some research on your own (which is likely why you are reading this) and learn about different causes to back pain like poor posture, anterior pelvic tilt, mobility issues of your hips, muscle tightness, etc.
While all of those all have potential to cause issues that can lead to back pain it is not likely that it is isolated to one or the other. I would argue that the bigger picture is that you may have neglected some really important muscles that stabilize our torso and our pelvis. Specifically the elusive muscles of the Core and Glutes.
In most cases that I have dealt with, both personally and with clients, either failure to activate the core and glutes properly as part of a warmup or weakness in one or both muscle groups was the culprit for a technique breakdown putting the individual in a poor position that resulted in their injury.
6.) What should I do after I rest and pain subsides?
Do not, I repeat, DO NOT rush back into the gym for a deadlift session, feel out unloaded bend and lift movements first and respect the pain you were recently feeling. You dont want it to come back, right?
If your pain was in fact caused by a weakness of muscles that protect your lower back then that is where you should start. "Rebuild the foundation to make sure that it can hold up the house." By foundation I mean the muscles that will complement a strong and stable torso region to support and protect your lower back
Try these Lower Back Stability Exercises to begin strengthening the muscles that are needed most when you do big movements like squatting or deadlifting.
7.) How will I know I am ready to get back into the gym and begin rebuilding my strength?
I will repeat from above, DO NOT rush back into heavy lifting. If you haven't taken the time to let your body heal in addition to working on stabilizing the muscles around your torso and hips you are likely not ready.
Now, thats not to say you should not get back to performing compound exercises like the squat or deadlift. My professional opinion is that there is value to still practicing those movement patterns once you are pain free. Gradual is going to be the key word here. When recovering from a back injury it is important to get back to the basics. YOU ARE NEVER TOO GOOD FOR THE BASICS! Start performing the movement at higher volumes with light loads and focus on perfecting technique. Great technique will take you a long way especially now that you have experienced a minor injury, you will definitely want to prevent that from happening again in the future.
Figuring out how to approach your workout routine after recovering from any injury is a scary thing. You may avoid certain exercises in fear that they will "tweak" a previous injury or slow down your recovery. It takes careful planning to navigate improving your fitness in a safe and progressive way. What works for your friend may not work as effectively for you. Every person is different and needs an individualized plan to follow. Get an individualized plan for yourself!
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