Lower Back Pain

[Jeff Horner]

You've probably pulled part of your multifidus muscle. If you don't know how to activate that muscle, the entire length of it from your neck to your ass, then you're in for a world of hurt for years to come. You need to do anything you can to figure out how to flex and strengthen it. I started with the Bill Starr back rehab protocol (the article was once on the tight tan slacks blog) which called for starting out with 3x75xbroomstick Good Mornings twice a day, then moving to weighted Good Mornings. That has helped some, but the multifidus is hard to target. It also involves flexing the transversus abdominus which kind of acts like a girdle around your belly.

I became aware of my own dysfunctional multifidus by learning about "sucking in your belly button to your spine" to activate the transversus, which is supposed to co-contract the multifidus. It works a bit, and you really have to think about the activation, but at some point you really just have to think,., flex all your lower back muscles.. think some more and try and put it altogether. Sounds weird, but you've got to do it.

I've lost half my calf muscle due to the pinched nerve in my L5/S1 area... so I'm warning you.

[RyanSmall]

I had a similar situation, I often had a lower back pain, the doctor advised me to take less weight in the gym. But I wanted to cure my back, and a friend advised me mattress types for lower back pain. This article helped me to cured my lower back.

[A Large Hand]

Beastmaster, I'm going through a nasty bout of back problems right now. My only regret is that I didn't get my MRI earlier. I have 2 bulging discs with one hitting the spinal chord. That one put me completely out of commission for 48 hours and 6 days later I'm hobbling around with a dead heel and very tight right leg. This just happened to me last Thursday and your symptoms sound very similar to mine when I first started down this road.

The reason I say I wish I'd gotten my MRI earlier is because I would not have wasted 3+ months doing stupid stuff trying to fix a back problem I did not understand. I first started having non-distinct back pain in December. I thought it was my SI joint so I stretched my QL, psoas, hammys, went to chiro, went to PT, read stupid books about posture, tried to work through the pain in the gym, foam rolling, all kinds of stuff that gave temporary relief. If I had known it was a bulging disc I could have at least focused my exercise efforts and been doing constructive learning about my real problem. Also, I would not have been doing such dumb stretching that probably helped my bulged disc slip further out of place. In my very limited experience, if you go into the ortho, PT, or chiro with non-identifiable back pain they will throw the kitchen sink at you seeing what will work and much of what they will have you do could actually worsen the problem.

If I had known it was a bulging disc I would have taken 1-2 weeks of de-load at the gym, worked on my form, started doing some McKenzie stretches, and let things calm down. My problem got bad enough to make me bed ridden for a couple of days, and I'm still about 70% a week later, but I think if I had been on top of it with the right exercise/rest/meds from the very beginning I would have kept it manageable and eventually worked past it.

Don't be an idiot like me!