Originally Posted by
RyanWhittemore
I put the belts up into my armpits and then held onto the bar. I tried to relax and blow out all of my air. I would hang for 15-30 seconds probably. I'd do that between each deadlift set, and maybe a couple of additional times per day. Occasionally, my lumbar vertebrae would 'crack' and scare the hell out of me, but it provided great relief from the sciatica. As for deadlifts, I did them every day at first. It wasn't too long before I started raising the weight and reducing the volume. I'd have to check my log, but once I got over 135 I think I went down to 10 reps, and soon after that went down to 5 reps in a normal linear progression. The idea with the high volume initially was that since I couldn't load the injury with heavy weight, I needed to load it with high volume. Like I said before, the squat took a lot longer. I tried to squat just a bar at two weeks as well, but the sciatic pain was pretty bad, and very intense the next day. It took a few weeks of decompression and deadlifts before I was ready to do much else. I was very happy with the results. I hope it works well for you.