I think andersons have it right.
If you got ahold of Dr. McGill’s Ultimate Back book-tail under means flextion in the L spine at the bottom of the squat.
He has gone to olympic training sites-with good strength coaches- and helped atheletes with squat problems.
All it takes is a certin load(your problem only happens when you go heavy)and at the bottom to get the full /low squat you flex.
You have some hip mobility problems/tight quads. Don’t stretch your hams get them stronger.
Stretch your quads.
Magnificent Mobility would help.
Dr. Tim
drtim, forgive me if I sound like an idiot for asking, but can you explain why you think I should stretch my quads and not my hamstrings? When I stretch the hamstrings the pain starts to go away. Also, I’m not very flexible at all with hamstring stretches.
Neural hypertonicity
Neural hypertonicity-The muscle feeling like its tight but it is stretched to tight ,not short tight
[quote]mthomps wrote:
I should also note that the pain I feel is NEVER in the middle of the lower back, it is always off to the side, from lower back to upper glutes.
Ok guys, I apalogize but I do not know what dominant QL means? Quad dominance? I have pretty friggen big quads.[/quote]
quadratus lumborum
Yes – but that’s “naturally” bad for your lower back.
There was a great thread on this back in the spring where CT weighed in on it. I think the thread was called “Tail-under squat.” Try to find it.
Yeah, well. . .my attempts at squatting low caused back problems.
I try hard not to ego lift. I figure that if squatting low is hurting my back, there’s not nearly enough benefit to justify the cost. At the low points, I’m probably getting very little muscle-building stimulus, or strength gains, either – just mostly strain on the joints at those angles.
Then look up Mike Boyle’s warmup article (“The Essential 8” was it?) and Google for other articles by Mike Boyle. And see what you can glean from the Maximum Mobility locker room thread.
Ask your local library to pick it up. They might.
[quote] About foam rolling: are these decent foam rollers?
http://www.performbetter.com/SearchResult.aspx_Q_CategoryID_E_235
If they are not can anyone reccomend me one that is around the same price range. [/quote]
I’m sure they are.
There are probably some rollers that are heavier-duty and thus longer lasting than others, but for personal use that will not matter. Just get your basic cheap foam roller.
Yeah, well, so does. . .life after college. 
Soft tissue work can be done anywhere. Not just the foot.
Stand near a wall and put the tennis ball between the wall and your back. Roll around your lower back till you find a spot that is painful and/or like a hard lump. Roll over it back and forth for about 10 seconds. Especially roll around the top of the pelvis (iliac crest). Roll all over your butt, including the sides. Look at a pic of the glute medius and the piriformis and roll those areas. Also the quadratus lumborum. Look for trigger points in the mid-back area and traps as well.
Trigger points in the longissimus (in the mid-back area) can refer pain to the area you describe.
Also the quadratus lumborum, glute maximus, glute medius, piriformis
Most likely, all of the above. That’s why I just roll everywhere, looking for painful spots and treating them.
[quote]mthomps wrote:
UPDATE:
I talked to a strength coach today. I asked him to critique my squat. He told me my form was perfect, actually complimented it.
I brought up the need for direct ab work with him, and he explained that its highly unlikely that not doing direct ab work is causing an imbalance between the front and back of my torso. He said loading a bar with hundreds of pounds of weight and forcing your abs to brace your spine while you squat down is going to work your abs alot more than crunches and leg raises. He’s said he himself hardly ever does it and usually doesn’t have any of his trainees do it either.
He said tightness in my lower back, glutes, and hams are likely the cause of the pain.
Well now I don’t know what to think about training abs directly. I’m getting conflicting advice everywhere. In my own personal opinion the logic of a heavy back squat and deadlift working your abs more than forcing your spine into flexion to do a crunch seems right.
[/quote]
If you are getting lumbar flexion in the bottom of the squat, he should not have complimented your form.
He wouldn’t be the first trainer to do so; several trainers argued about it with CT in the thread I mentioned above.
But if you have pain, you need the kind of trainer who is well educated about what causes pain and how to prevent it. Like Cressey, Robertson, Boyle, and Cosgrove, for example.
Direct ab training: The trainer was both right and wrong. YES your abs will have to work when you squat, BUT they might not always stabilize the spine optimally.
When you have lower back pain, don’t be doing lumbar flexion. Instead focus on core stability, where you get your spine into a neutral position and then resist forces that would otherwise displace it. This involves the coordination of many muscles, large and small – not just the abs. Certainly not just the flexion function of the abs.
Start with front and side planks. Pushups, done correctly with spine neutral and stable from start to finish, are good. Single-limb stuff, where the spine doesn’t budge, is good.
For example, the other day I did one-arm dumbbell presses (horizontal and vertical) keeping my spine rock-solid. I also did the fast band work, pushing and pulling. I got major soreness in my lower abs in the following days. There was no traditional direct ab work, but by keeping the spine stable against resistance, I was working that function of the abs as well as the other muscles that contribute to spinal stability.
Look for papers by Stuart McGill, as well as his academic book. He really knows what he’s talking about.
My lower back pain is related to my hamstrings and glutes being tight. As long as i stretch them out good everyday then its ok, but thats me.
my back is killing me too. i used to have that problem then it went away for months and now its back again. wtf??
it was pretty prevelant on my legs day last week and i was even having a hard time RDLing 225 when i usually use 315. i even avoided doing standing overhead pressing on my shoulder day because i didnt want to adgitate it.
today its the worst though after i did deadlifts. i hadnt done them in a couple months and i went back, i used to do 405x2 and figured since ive been bringing up my RDL and Rack-deads id improved my DL numbers. then i have trouble in the first and hardly got the second. i felt a ton of tension on my lower spine and i thought my form was fine. thats the thing with mine too, its my mid/lower spine. shit kills.
my glutes feel pretty sexy. it just seems like theres a lot of tension on my spine. like i want to take it and just pull it apart or have some little asian person walk and jump on it.
i think its also getting aggravated by a job where im standing the entire time, no sitting whatsoever and then at school all i do is sit down.
[quote]Dave1188 wrote:
My lower back pain is related to my hamstrings and glutes being tight. As long as i stretch them out good everyday then its ok, but thats me.[/quote]
See this is what I don’t understand. Being an INTP from the Myers-Briggs type indicator, I’m all about theories and analyses and intellectualism.
A number of people who know a shit ton more about this stuff than me on here have told me its not due to my hams/glutes. However, when I stretch the hams/glutes after the onset of pain, it goes away.
Perhaps I need to pick up some books on back pain/functional anatomy and research the shit out of this.
By the way, I took a video of a shirtless squat for you guys to analyze. I’ll have the video up tommorro night. (friend with camera is working all night tonight)
i dont know if i have a pelvic tilt or not, i just know that this past week my spine has been killing me.
[quote]mthomps wrote:
Dave1188 wrote:
My lower back pain is related to my hamstrings and glutes being tight. As long as i stretch them out good everyday then its ok, but thats me.
See this is what I don’t understand. Being an INTP from the Myers-Briggs type indicator, I’m all about theories and analyses and intellectualism.
A number of people who know a shit ton more about this stuff than me on here have told me its not due to my hams/glutes. However, when I stretch the hams/glutes after the onset of pain, it goes away.
Perhaps I need to pick up some books on back pain/functional anatomy and research the shit out of this.
By the way, I took a video of a shirtless squat for you guys to analyze. I’ll have the video up tommorro night. (friend with camera is working all night tonight)[/quote]
Get Stuart McGill’s book “Low Back Disorders,” and I promise it will satisfy any desire for theories and analysis and intellectualism. You can look at the Table of Contents and some pages through Google Book search.
Stretching ‘tight’ hamstrings often brings only a temporary relief of symptoms by activating the stretch reflex in the back extensor muscles. However, many hamstring stretches will actually reduce spinal stability, increasing the risk of future injury.
When you have low back pain, but it’s not severe and you can still function, you have a chance to learn how to stop doing the movements that cause the damage, and do movements/learn new movement patterns/activate muscles that will protect the spine from damage. Now is your chance. If you do the wrong things now, you may suffer severe and disabling damage to your spine. If you stop damaging it, let it heal, and figure out how to cause as little damage as possible, and increase its stability to protect from damage, you will be MUCH happier in the end and enjoy a longer lifting career.
When I was in your position, years ago, I listened to “common wisdom,” which was not wise. I stretched. I did crunches. I did hanging ab raises. Etc. Believe me, it did not help. Oh I thought the stretching helped at the time, because of that temporary relief of muscle tension feeling. After several years, the accumulated trauma to my spine reached a tipping point, and I became completely disabled. I could not even sneeze, or bend over the sink to brush my teeth, or put on my own socks. Eventually, and thanks to T-Nation I might add, I found McGill’s book. McGill is one of the top experts on the spine in the entire world. I did everything he recommended to fix it, and avoided everything he said to avoid. And IT WORKED. There’s absolutely no question in my mind that abdominal bracing, planks (etc.), and walking are better for the spine than stretching and traditional crunches.
So, get yourself copies of McGill’s books ASAP.
Want the sparknotes for spine health?
(Basically what I’ve gathered form reading MANY articles and a textbook by Mcgill on the matter)
Mobilize the hip musculature to an optimal length, activate “dormant” gluteals, and strengthen your abdominals around a neutral lumbar spine.
How?
Strengthening
-planks
-birddogs
-curl-ups with neutral spine
-side planks
-deadbug variations
Flexibility
-squat-to-stands, squat-to-stands, and squat-to-stands
-stretch what is tight. . . the hip is too complex to give a one-size-fits-all answer
Activation
-Gluteals
–supine bridges
–clams
Your goal is to get as strong a core as possible (yeah, I said core) and get as flexible as you need to be. Pick dynamic mobility drills over static stretching, but static stretching is effective for decreasing excessive neural drive to muscles, so it should be used in specific instances as well. I remember EC mentioning that hamstrings tightness can actually be a protective mechanism in compensation for inactive glutes by posteriorly tilting the pelvis in the gluteals’ stead. This means that, if tight hamstrings are causing your sacrum to ‘tuck’ at the bottom of a squat, glute activation should certainly accompany hamstring static stretches.
BTW, I’m a college student and I’m certainly not infallible, however I have read a good deal on the subject, and I’ve found the former information to be affective in my own case. Check out the my log. ~5 weeks after a disc injury and I’m back to ~parallel~ box front squatting.
Wow - this thread is amazing. I am suffering from low back pain that was brought on by a too deep front squat with bad form ending in me hitting rock bottom and losing the arch in my back. It pulled my right lower back muscle and I’ve been struggling with constant pain for over 3 months now. I started with hamstring stretches and they made it feel better temporarily - after some more reading I realized that I needed to strengthen my hamstrings, not lengthen them.
as well, I had a severe case of APT and I started adding in lots of hammy/glute activation and ab work and work and the pain has gotten to a manegable level. I saw a chiropractor recently and he informed my that the right side of my back was dominant and that my hip was being pulled out of place, with the left side dropping cause the right side was doing all the work. So I’m ready to attack this problem. I’m starting a regimen of core work and lots of foam rolling and tennis ball work on my quads glutes hamstrings and lower back. this thread has been immensely helpful. ive also ordered magnificent mobility because my original problem started because of a lack of flexibility in the hips, and I’ve also picked up that McGill back health book.
ive also got problems with both my elbows and im seeing an ART guy for it, as well as a weird lower neck problem. i absolutely cannot wait to get back in the gym again. im glad im so much smarter at training and injury prevention now, i just wish i knew all this stuff before i got hurt!
edit: cannot get video to upload right now