This is quite amazing. Both because the author continued business as usual despite clear warning signs that something bad was going to happen, and for the shear determination to make it better with barbells. I have to admit that back pain is easily one of my most dreaded type of patients. Usually they don't have anything like the level of pathology in the above article, but are willing to do virtually nothing to improve their pain. I was recently fired by such a patient who refused to get out of bed because of pain but had very minor structural problems. I attempted to explain to this patient that this decision would assuredly lead to a bad outcome. I wish I could just say, "if you lay in bed all day, you are fucked." I tried to get as close to saying this as possible. Obviously that's not what the patient wanted to hear.
This also underscores the deplorable state of current PT. Obviously, you can't just tell someone to do this, no matter how beneficial it would be. They either need the knowledge to perform the lifts themselves, or they need a coach. The best we can currently do is to send people to some milquetoast PT and hope for the best, maybe suggesting that they start a strength program once they are released.