I hurt myself. I hope this is where I am meant to post this.

[GHOSTWOLF]

Coach Rippetoe,
I'm an 18 year old male who is a big fan of your program, but my form on the press is awful, since I've only increased the weight on the bar 30 pounds in five months. I thought I had good form when I tried focusing on retracting my shoulderblades and I thought maybe taking as big of a breath as possible before pressing would give me more tightness and allow me to push against more air, but as I did my set, I nearly fainted, threw forward the bar and on my last rep, my spine went into hyperextension and I injured something in the lower portion of my thoracic spine. I didn't feel it at first, but when I moved on to do my deadlift warm up set, it felt like someone was stabbing my spine with an icepick. I then went home and it didn't bother me for a few days. Now the pain is back when I'm not physically exerting myself, but putting my spine into flexion. It's a sharp pain, maybe a two on a scale of one to ten. I had my friend step on my back because I heard that helps with back pain, but I think it made it worse. Slouching also hurts, so I avoid that.

What I want to know is should I stop the program for a few weeks to make sure I don't aggravate the injury any further. Also, if anyone has experienced this, your story would be appreciated.

Also, Coach, I wondered where your surname came from and looked it up. Apparently it has French origin, did you know that?

[Mark Rippetoe]

Coach Rippetoe,
I'm an 18 year old male who is a big fan of your program, but my form on the press is awful, since I've only increased the weight on the bar 30 pounds in five months. I thought I had good form when I tried focusing on retracting my shoulderblades

Who told you to retract your shoulder blades? Some dumb guy?

Also, Coach, I wondered where your surname came from and looked it up. Apparently it has French origin, did you know that?

Fascinating.

[Dave Longley]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_(given_name)

Just in case you were curious about your first name too.

[Steve Hill]

Fascinating.

Your use of this word identifies you as a Star Trek fan. Did you know that?

[GHOSTWOLF]

No one told me to, but my form was awful, nothing seemed to work and I thought maybe it would help.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Your use of this word identifies you as a Star Trek fan. Did you know that?

Yes. Fascinating.

No one told me to, but my form was awful, nothing seemed to work and I thought maybe it would help.

The book would help too.

[ColoWayno]

Your use of this word identifies you as a Star Trek fan. Did you know that?

You sir, have a predilection for irrelevancy.

[Mark Rippetoe]

And a high level of expertise therein.

[tdood]

I ripped a chunk of skin from my right ring finger while practicing weight-for-distance(highland games even) the other day.

My wife told me to ask Mark Ripafinger and she started cracking up.

[kinski]

GHOSTWOLF,

I'm gonna offer some advice because everyone else is mocking you. Just keep lifting, seriously.
Re read the chapter on the press, and just keep at it. As far as it only going up 30 lbs in 5 months, make sure you are eating enough and sleeping enough (obviously). If your not able to sleep more or do not want to gain weight as fast as you may need to be, try giving two full days of rest between every workout. If this doesn't work, do a different program, because your gonna need to eat and sleep a lot to do this.
Also, make sure you are deloading and micro loading (you'll need 1.25 lb plates; they are cheap). These two things let me push out another 15 weeks of progression on the bench and press.
I highly doubt you've truly injured yourself. I recommend you keep pressing because of a similar experience I had with the squat.
For most of my SS stint i squatted high bar because my elbows were hammered from my low bar squat technique, which hurt my bench.
Fast forward 3 months post SS, and high bar squats hurt my knees because of a stupid squatting accident.
I decided to re learn the low bar squat and make some adjustments, and WALLA! no elbow tendonitis 4 months later! I also learned how to high bar squat with out pain recently from doing front squats on my deadlift day. You know what I learned? To push my knees out REALLY FUCKING HARD while squatting (something rip said many times in the book).

Moral of the story? All of this technical shit is clearly laid out in the book. The problem is without coaching, your gonna have to learn through trial and error. The only way to do that is to keep getting under the bar.