Originally Posted by
Nick D'Agostino
Hey Yonason, when a contributor to pain is an impinged nerve, people usually use words like sharp, numb, tingling, shooting, radiating, and electrical to describe their experience. If it is a dull achy pain that is appearing after you lift and lingering, it means you have to alter the program to manage better the fatigue generated in the session.
The idea I'm trying to push you away from is that the pain has an exact "cause" or "source." In cases like this, there is no one source. It is better to think of pain emerging from a bunch of contributing factors. Some of these may include sleep, life stressors, and your beliefs about what pain means. Also, I believe it is better to focus on things you can control, like the above variables and training variables, than things you can't like anatomy. If you want to feel better quickly, you should take action on all of these fronts simultaneously (fishing with a net is more effective than fishing with a pole). What is going on with your biology is just one small piece of the pie. Most of the time, in these types of situations, focusing on what might be the biological contributing factor makes things take longer.
My first suggestion would be to increase the deadlift frequency to once per week. You can still keep the once a month heavy plan. There is a good chance that what you are experiencing may be related to DOMs because the frequency is too low. The repeated bout effect is not protecting you. Also, when you do decide to go heavy, use either a ramp up to a top set or a top set a backoff style of loading. Sets across with a max weight may be generating more fatigue than you can currently quickly recover. As things improve and your training becomes more structured and regular, you can go back to using heavy sets across. I hope some of these suggestions help!