Lumbar spine pain

[Dror]

Hey,
I’ll Start with a quick recap about this pain I have:
It started a few months ago, every time I unracked a squat I would feel a deep pain in my lumbar spine are, the pain did not occurred when I was squatting, but I felt it only on 3 occasions:
First, when I unracking the squat I’d feel it for a second or two, second time when walking back from the rack, third, the bar used to bounce on my back every time I locked a rep? It doesn’t happen anymore.

Successfuly, I managed to get rid of the majority of the pain when I remembered a queue from on of rip’a video - keeping the lower back tight.
It worked very well, but I noticed the pain was still there and that my lumbar spine still stayed very stiff.

In the last week or two the I felt it become stiffer, radiating even more to my neck (it did before but it barely bothered me) making it also stiff and aggravating, and also the pain started to pop here and there on my everyday life.

Today I tried to self diagnose and check when those this pain occur.
After moving around for a bit I figured the pain doesn’t happen in a specific position more so in the motion of moving my lumbar spine from flexion to hyperextending.

The faster I go trough the motion the sharped the pain gets, but it doesn’t stay, it is just a deep hard sting for a second and then it’s gone.


On today’s workout I was supposed to squat 157.5 kg.
Looking back I know I should have warmed up better before starting to warmup for the squat, but through the warmup I felt the pain a bit when unracking and walking the bar out of the rack, and struggled getting into the groove for squatting, but other then that I didn’t felt anything during the warmups beside struggling with balance.

I went for my first working set, had the same level of pain unracking it that I had on the last warmup, nothing major, and after 3 reps I felt that I have to stop before I’m making anything even worse.

Decided to rest 10 min and try again, unracked the bar, same level of pain, walked it out of the rack and just before I started the first rep I felt a slight electric feeling in my lower back (nothing special on the lumbar spine) and decided to call it at that.

I then tried lowering the weight back to 140 kg (my last warmup), and I felt the electric feeling in my low back again, did a rep that beside struggling to find balance felt good and called it for squats.

I then proceeded with the rest of my session - bench and power clean that felt good with no pain at all (beside when I lay down just before my back touches the bench).
I finished my workout with some foam rolling that at the time did seem to relieve quite a bit of the pain and soreness, but I’ll know for sure in the next few days (I’ll try to roll a few more times to see if it’s getting better).

Now before I go to a doctor and wait to get sent to another doctor that will probably send me to a conventional radiographic screening and all of this will take me a few weeks or more just to get an appointment to doctors that will think me doing squats or deadlift is dangerous (unfortunately it’s hard as F to find knowledgeable doctor I’m my country) I’d like to use this forum because I’ll probably benefit more from the knowledge here.

Also in the meanwhile until I fix this injury what should I do with training? I assume it’s just a shitty workout day and that I’ll probably crush this weight easily like I did the last workout with 155 kg, but should I continue to do the program if everything is back to normal next session?

Also, should I foam roll my back before or after my workout?

Thanks in advance, I know it’s probably harder to give advice without actually screening me but if there are any tests I can perform on myself at home / the gym to do you can deny options and narrow down what could it be let me know what can I do.

I’ll update if the foam rolling and better warmup helped after the next few sessions.
Thanks!

[Dror]

so follwing up in hopes for you to get a better a pictre and be able to help me,
it's been 2 weeks since that workout, the first session after I repeated the same weight - 157.5 kg that went smooth like butter, then continued to press that failed just because i was too tired, and 160 kg deadlift that felt great.
here's the squat and deadlift from that workout - link
after that session I've squatted 160 kg that felt harder but still no pain, then continued to a bench and power clean that also was pain free, just the same stiffnes.

after that workout I've unfourtantly had a week layoff In which I was at a mostly sedentery work for many hours a day.
as the days went by my stiffnes started to feel worse and after 3-4 days I also started to feel some low back pain when doing everyday stuff like getting out of bed, bending over and so on.
what I found common is that the pain wil occour not everytime but mostly when I'm cold, I also can trigger it I sit on a chair, round my back, grab the chair with my hands and pull myself down into the chair.

yesterday I got back to the gym excactly after a week (thursday to thursday) and I started to warmup just like I used to.
up until 100 kg squat everything felt fine like it used to, on 140 kg I felt some low back pain when walking the weight out of the rack (unracking this time felt fine, first step also, but on the second step back the pain occoured).
I the stood with the weight for a few seconds and felt a some pain, then I squatted down, no pain but on the way up I felt that pain again.
I accidently hit the safety's so I racked the bar and decided to try it again.

then rested a few minutes and the same thing happend excactly the same, racked it again after a rep and stupidly decided to try go up to 150, again the same and luckily nothing got worse.

then rested a bit and moved on to press, here the pain was felt on the end range of the bounce (the range where the hips are most forward).
again nothing major, last workout was failed press with 62.5, before that 60 was hard but I managed to do it, here I warmed up to 60 and did 2 reps and called it at that because I didn't want to take the risk (both reps had the same amoung of pain).

then continued to deadlift, everything went smooth here, no pain at all, worked up to 5 reps with 150 kg, just felt too tired and weak.


so after the long recap of what happend up until now, how do I move on from here? Iv'e been playing with the idea in mind to reset everything to the point where my form is the closest it can to perfect and pain free, and start again from there, but also the 2 last workouts before the layoff went very well and pain free.
and outside of the program, what can I do to help with the pain?
thanks again.