Originally Posted by
Scaldrew
When my brother slipped at work and hurt his back twisting his torso while holding a heavy container in just one hand, he stopped going to the gym for a week or two. I told him he had to move around on it or it'd get much worse. We met up in the gym and went about our business squatting, pressing, and deadlifting like nothing was out of the ordinary. I kept an eye on his form and was mostly there to determine the severity of the injury. Squats were a no-go; he couldn't squat half what he could before he got hurt. I wasn't really worried just yet as squats are usually pretty demanding on bad backs, more so than the deadlift, the stability of which confers some level of safety to the damaged goods. Presses went absolutely fine, so I figured it couldn't be a surgery-type situation.
But when we got to the deadlift, my eyes went wide. He was going through the usual motions of a hurt lifter bending over to grab hold of an object: slow, asymmetrical descent to grab the implement, painful expression on his face, heavier breathing, and all around the body language of a guy who really wanted to be anywhere else in the moment between setting up and moving the weight. He was skittish, but he got there. What really got my attention was the weird leaning he was doing all throughout the lift. I realised quickly he hurt the left side of his back as it seemed to be completely cramped up or persistently contracted throughout the deadlift motion. He was anything but straight up and after I noticed, I told him to focus on pushing with his left leg more. This seemed to hurt a great deal more, so we tried some other things, too. At this point, I'm shooting in the dark cos I have no frame of reference at all. The last thing I can try to get him to do as he's getting really pissed off is to get him to do rack pulls while standing on some bumper plates on just one leg. We tried to get him to move as symmetrically as possible with, really, only about 135lb of weight for a few sets of 3. At this point, though, with all the angles I wanted to inspect, he had pulled a lot of low intensity volume. I told him we'd call it a day and figure out our next move next time.
Now here's the spooky part. I'd call it weird, but I was more or less expecting this outcome from the beginning. The next day we arrange another session of in person coaching and settle on Wednesday (it had been Sunday the day before). I ask him "does your back still hurt?" and he just says "no". Wednesday, he was back to squatting close to his old working weights and deadlifting effortlessly symmetrically with no plates under any of his feet, again close to working weights. He didn't have to go through any more grueling workouts, workdays, or just days of horrible pain and attempts at regaining range of motion. We just came in, did what we had to do in the moment, and poof, no more pain.
My reason for posting this overly elaborate case study is that I find it weird that you would attest to the opposite effect. Especially considering you're much stronger than my brother, I'd expect you to have similar results. Then again the "leg on fire" symptom is one we didn't encounter; my brother was just in non-specific back pain throughout those few weeks. I, myself, remember feeling some troubling pains in my right leg when I fucked up my deadlift form long enough for it to matter, but that pain usually calmed down after walking around for a while. I remember stretching helping just a little bit, but nothing as much as fixing my deadlift form which removed my pain instantly, and I do mean immediately after setting the bar back down again. A form check is really the first thing I'd care to get in this situation, as technique becomes all the more important once normal function is compromised. Can we assume you've already had your form checked on squats and deadlifts?