Reply With QuoteSounds like scar tissue. How long after the pop did you continue squats and deadlifts? If you waited a longer time that might have allowed the scar to accumulate more.
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Lump in back after deadlift injury
During my NLP I had worked up to squatting 255 lbs x 5 and attempted to deadlift 285 lbs x 5. I was not using a belt and during my 4th rep of deadlifting, I heard an audible pop and felt huge pain in my lower back. For months afterwards I had constant pain in my lower back. For recovery, I would squat the empty bar and deadlift 95 lbs for 3 sets of 12. This helped a lot and made my back feel much better.
After my back started feeling better, I noticed a lump on the right side of my lower back. It's about the size of the top 1/4 of a tennis ball. I went to the Doctor to have it checked out and he believes that I tore a muscle and then the muscle healed in a clump. He sent me to a Physical Therapist who told me that I just needed to increase my core strength. After 2 weeks of doing planks and bosu ball sit-ups, I quite physical therapy and went back to NLP.
I can now squat 315 lbs x5 and deadlift 365 lbs x 5 without any back pain but I still have this lump in my lower back. I ALWAYS use a belt now when the weights go over 225 lbs.
The lump is quite noticeable (I often get comments on it when I go swimming) and I'd like to get rid of it if possible.
Has anyone else experienced a lump after a lifting injury? If so, has anyone been able to get rid of that lump? Is this something only surgery could do?
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Sounds like scar tissue. How long after the pop did you continue squats and deadlifts? If you waited a longer time that might have allowed the scar to accumulate more.
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I was squatting the empty bar the very next week and added 95 lb deadlifts maybe a few weeks after that, but I didn't add weight to the bar and restart my NLP for several months after that (after the lump formed). This sounds like it was a mistake to not restart sooner. Hopefully that's a lesson I won't need to relearn again.Originally Posted by heinz83
A quick Google search about muscle scar removal returns something called the Graston Technique. My first impression is that this just looks like a very painful massage with metal tools and would just remove a lump out of my wallet, but has anyone else heard of this?
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Given that you aren't actually experiencing any deficits in strength as a result of this, the scar tissue probably didn't grow anywhere along the insertions (which you can, and it sounds like you did, avoid just by keeping the muscle moving: loading it less than aggressively is more a matter of efficiency) but just an overgrowth of connective tissue (analogous to a keloid or hypertrophic scar). If it's presence isn't affecting your squat and deadlift, it's hard to imagine what physical activity you could actually undergo that would affect IT. Sounds like it's just a cosmetic defect. Maybe you can take a look at it and get a surgeon to chop it off.
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Never heard of Graston, but after I had surgery on my broken wrist many years ago they told me to massage it hard and rub in Vitamin E to get rid of the scar. I did this half-ass, so it's still there. Most of the scar tissue was underneath and had to be broken up by exercise.
You could try massage but if it doesn't do anything I would probably just leave it alone. Or get a tattoo so people have something else to look at.
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