Lower Back Strain from a Squat rep

[Razik]

Greetings, Comrade Campitelli and friends!

First off, apologies for the Bolshevik-quality video I'm about to post, it was not recorded with the intention of posting here, but something went very wrong on the 4th rep of my 3rd set with 300lbs today and I'd really appreciate an experienced eye to have a look at the footage. I believe I have a good clue about what I did wrong because for some silly reason I decided to put my back into harder extension on that rep and thus probably into overextension. But I'm a novice, not an SS coach, and I can't help but wonder if I'm wrong about that or doing other things wrong which may have played a role in it.

The pain is in the lower back muscle on the right side. The nature of the injury is, from what I understand, that of a strain. It feels sore while walking and tightens up suddenly when bending over/twisting or just randomly while walking in a way which causes me to gasp a bit. It's completely painless when the muscle is relaxed while sitting or lying. I had no trouble bench pressing afterwards but didn't feel I could power clean. I found I could do bent-over-rows instead with only slight discomfort. I have not had an injury like this before.

Here is the video. The bad 4th rep is at 29sec.

[Tom Campitelli]

Those squats don't look bad overall. You started cutting off your depth on last reps, but that may be pain related. While you may be in a touch of overextension, there is nothing injurious about any of those reps. Overextension can ding your back up, so don't overdo it. I cannot see anything here that screams "problem," however. Sometimes injuries occur for reasons that are unclear. I can tell you that if you hurt your back and were able to keep squatting, you probably didn't suffer anything terribly serious. Do you have pain running down a leg? Allow it to rest for two or three days and then start providing it as much activity as it can stand without making things worse. Try squatting the empty bar and stay out of overextension. If it feels better as the workout progresses, you are probably doing the right thing. If it starts to hurt more, back off. I bet that in a few weeks, things will be largely back to normal. Welcome to the human condition - back pain.

[Razik]

Thanks for the help, Tom!

I ended up taking almost a week off of lifting and just went for long walks instead, which seemed to help.

The pain has been entirely isolated to the muscle I felt hurt during the reps; no radiating at all. It improved considerably after the first few days but has since been very slow to heal and I'm still not 100%. I did load it the other day with squats and deadlifts using 80% and 70% of my previous PR work-weight while focusing on keeping the back flat and while it seemed to handle it just fine I noticed from the new video I took that I'm still having an issue with overextension at the very beginning of my descent. The video I posted here shows the majority of the LB extension occurring during the first 1/4 as well, here's a freeze frame where you can see my mid-upper torso being damn-near vertical:



I don't really notice that I'm doing this (except for that bad 4th rep) which is making it tough to prevent. I think it might be the case that I've been a bit mind-fucked by some knee-tendinitis issues I was having before where I was clearly coming too far into the knees and using knee extension instead of hip drive. My correction of that problem may have been an over-correction and perhaps deliberately coming a little more forward at first could solve it. It also seems that my knees are being shoved out too much. Would you agree with any of that or have any other cues or observations that would be of help?

Again, thanks for taking the time to do this. I know it's mostly just you and Wolf doing these form checks for everyone right now. If there's anything that I can help you guys with over the interwebz, please let me know!

[Tom Campitelli]

Would you agree with any of that or have any other cues or observations that would be of help?

I think you are more or less on the right track. Glad to hear that you are on the road to recovery with your back. Backs hurt, but they usually heal up, too.