How do you know if you have muscle injury, disc herniation or nothing at all?

[GorkemSahin]

My lower and mid back hurts sometimes. After I stay bent over for a minute or two, for example, while brushing my teeth, I feel like my lower back muscles are pumped like as if I was deadlifting for reps with a light weight. Then it goes back to normal. It slightly hurts when I bend over to pick something up too. I never had these before strength training and I'm pretty young at the age of 22. Male.

My form when squatting is highly questionable, terrible at times. Some people tell me to keep my back more vertical, and I do that, then some people tell me to stay more horizontal and use the hip drive, then I try to do that, and that hurts my back, then the people on the internet tell me to keep my back tighter, and then when I do that the feedback I get is "you're high-bar squatting with a low-bar on your back"... It's a vicious cycle.

I've been doing the SS for 3 months. I was very skinny, 60 kilos at the height of 180cm. I'm now 80 kilos at the same height and I added 60 kilos to my squats. I can't increase it anymore though, because I'm too worried about my form. You might have noticed that since I've been looking for a solution on the forums: My 5 reps of squats from different angles. What's causing my back to hurt?

So the question is, how do you know if your muscles are just fine and recovering, or if you managed to hurt yourself pretty badly by damaging the discs, or you just have a strained muscle or two?

[Mark Rippetoe]

These are all great questions. Thanks for posting them.

[GorkemSahin]

These are all great questions. Thanks for posting them.

I can't tell if you're making fun of me or actually approving my posts. :-/ I'm sorry if I'm spamming the forums, not my intention. I read your article regarding back pain, and the book, but I couldn't find an answer to the question above: How do we differentiate the causes of the pain?