Originally Posted by
BMueller
I'm 33. So the same as you, basically. My herniations were at L4-L5 and L5-S1. Both were incurred before SS-style lifting. The L5-S1 injury was pretty bad, occurred about 8 years ago. It entailed several months of leg pain and numbness, muscle weakness, and general inability to do much of anything physically demanding. To this day, I get occasional recurrent sciatic symptoms, which are generally fairly tolerable, when my back gets taxed and/or recovery is insufficent. I can deal pretty well with the fairly minor tweaks and strains I get lifting (ones I would honestly get more often before I started squatting and deadlifting), but the fear of the more catastrophic back injury, the potentially life changing one, is really the one that holds me back. And the deadlift is really the exercise where this fear arises, I think because of the effort required to move a heavy deadlift and the strain I can feel in the hamstrings and lower back during the movement.
I really started squatting and deadlifting mostly to get my legs and back stronger so that I would be less prone to injury. I think I've done a pretty good job of that, but I'm now at a point where I'm not just merely content with settling there. I'm also aware, though, that to keep pushing beyond the easy gains brings further injury risk and this is where I've gotten stuck a couple of times.
Thanks for letting me crowd your lifting log with my issues.