Lower Back Question

[Deadmaster200]

Hello Mr. Rippetoe,

Please allow me to start off by saying how much I enjoyed reading your books. I bought the first edition of SS last year, and just recently bought the second edition, PP, and Strong Enough. Then, I read every single thread and post of this forum while starting your novice program. I was an intermediate until I stopped training last year. I developed what I thought was a really nasty injury, and I also thought the best thing to do was not to train.

I had an achy lower back (lumbar area), it was ALWAYS achy. However, this was not the main problem, below the lumbar area where the spine ends into the tailbone was always very painful, and on bad days the pain would also shoot in a straight line across my right ass, and on the worst days it would continue and wrap around my outer hips down through my quads. About 3 times over the last year, something seemed to snap in that area and I was actually unable to walk for a few days each time. Seriously, until just this week, I thought I had a serious injury just waiting for an excuse to explode.

When I was working out seriously last year, I stopped doing squats in the middle of my bulk because my ass was getting insanely huge and I was splitting all my pants/jeans right in the crotch area, even after buying new ones to fit my new big ass in less than 2 months.

Some basic info about me:
30 years old, 176 cm, currently 78.5 kg

When I quit last year, I peaked at 85 kg. I tested my 1RM a few months later after no training and obviously losing a little weight. They are:

Squat: 130 kg Deads: 145 kg Bench Press: 110 kg
Standing Press: 72.5 kg Weighted Dips: BW +65 kg
Weighted Chins: BW + 20 kg

During the layoff I lost quite a bit of muscle and kept a lot of the fat, so before starting your novice program I dieted back down to 74 kg and around 11-12% bodyfat.

Here is the strange thing and the part of this post that I would like you to comment on. I decided to just start your novice program as if it were really my first day in the gym, stopping at a weight just where I started to lose some speed. After just this one workout with squats, the achy lower back went away completely. The pain just below this was still there though. The weight was low enough that it was keeping quiet for the time being. Into week 4, the pain started to get really bad again, and I knew that if I kept this up, I would be where I was when I quit last year (after only 4 weeks!!! what a joke!). At that point, I decided to try one set of 10 of bodyweight back extensions even though I don't have the bench for it. Even more amazing than with the lumbar back pain, this one set made the pain substantially decrease. That area is extremely tight when I first wake up for some reason. Now I am into week 5, I have done one more set of BW +5 kg, and I did another set of 10 of BW +10 kg just today. I am stretching the area for a couple minutes first thing after waking up. After just a week of this, the pain is NEARLY gone.

I was actually about to post a thread asking what to do to fix the problem! I am extremely happy that it was so easily fixed. But to the point of this post, do you have any idea what caused this? Would you be able to explain why simply doing a few back extensions has remedied the problem? Most importantly, now that it is better, is there absolutely any advice you might be able to give to keep this from ever happening again?

I have a couple of other questions that won't be such long posts, but probably better to make the separate threads, so I hope you can bare with me!

[Mark Rippetoe]

Damn, that took a while. Yeah, it's quite common for back extensions to fix back problems, and I think that usually the mechanism is a flushing of the area with blood and lymph, CSF movement, facet joint manipulation, intervertebral disc decompression, all or part of these deals. Just don't quit doing them and you prolly won't be as prone to back problems.

[Deadmaster200]

Mr. Rippetoe,

Thanks for the reply. Again, sorry for the post being so long, but I thought it would be better to give you as much info as possible.