I had posted a thread before about odd pain in my back.
here’s the original thread:
http://www.T-Nation.com/tmagnum/readTopic.do?id=2023505
What i’ve noticed the last couple weeks is that the weird sensation really seems to occur after I bench press, starting right after I complete a set…is there something about the arch you keep in your back throughout a rep that could cause this?
so you like it in a curled/flexed position, right? how does it feel bending backwards in standing? and how about doing a kind of push-up but keeping your hips on the floor/bed, hows that feel? when you say the pain is normally just to the right of the spine, how far right and do you ever get any pins and needles or numbness in the legs as a result of the back pain?
maybe go see a physical therapist and get them to assess your bench-press and see if any muscles are over-activated/over-working as a compensatory result of something. like I said in another thread about back pain, a lot of it goes undiagnosed, so dont expect to find the EXACT problem structure. how old are you by the way?
[quote]Tome-Rx wrote:
so you like it in a curled/flexed position, right? how does it feel bending backwards in standing? and how about doing a kind of push-up but keeping your hips on the floor/bed, hows that feel? when you say the pain is normally just to the right of the spine, how far right and do you ever get any pins and needles or numbness in the legs as a result of the back pain?
maybe go see a physical therapist and get them to assess your bench-press and see if any muscles are over-activated/over-working as a compensatory result of something. like I said in another thread about back pain, a lot of it goes undiagnosed, so dont expect to find the EXACT problem structure. how old are you by the way?[/quote]
Thanks for the reply! I’m 26.
yeah, my back is arched for bhe bench…when I’m standing if I bend backwards it feels fine. If I try pushups with my feet on the bed it feels…fatigued…is the only word I can use to describe it.
As for location, it’s barely to the right of my spine, it feels almost on the spine some days. Fortunately I’ve not gotten any pins or needle pains.
How’s your warm up before benching, depending on the source of the pain it could be solved by a good dynamic warm up before hand(i.e something out of magnificent mobility). Also we obviously can evaluate your arch without vids, but if it’s a fairly big arch you may want to try benching with less of an arch for a while and see if that helps.
[quote]AccipiterQ wrote:
I had posted a thread before about odd pain in my back.
here’s the original thread:
http://www.T-Nation.com/tmagnum/readTopic.do?id=2023505
What i’ve noticed the last couple weeks is that the weird sensation really seems to occur after I bench press, starting right after I complete a set…is there something about the arch you keep in your back throughout a rep that could cause this?[/quote]
I think I am having the same problem. The bench set will go fine but when I get up I have a strange feeling in my spine and then get pain off to the left or right side. Now, I have started getting it when I first wake up and get out of bed. I can stop it from hurting by paying attention to how I move and walk right out of bed. After about 30-60 minutes, I am fine. I can even deadlift with no problems. The pain is usually through the glutes and out to the hips. I went to the doctor and they took xrays and said the spine is fine. I go to a physical therapist this week. It sucks cuz the bench was going really well. I just got back to lifting after having another injury from doing the clean and jerk (illiotibial band problem) and then breaking a toe (freak accident-lol).
Sounds like a typical facet joint injury / irritation / sprain whatever you want to call it. The facet joints close when you move into extension and tend to be very sensitive and prone to centralization; this type of injury can linger on for a long time if you allow it to.
Really the only other injury that could cause this type of pain is spondylolisthesis, but that’s rare in your age group (much more common injury in teenagers) and even more rare to only have pain when bench pressing.
Loading the back in extension (i.e. arched) causes the pain and irritation, not necessarily compressive forces in general. This is why squatting / deadlifting don’t really exacerbate the problem, as they don’t really load the spine in large amounts of extension, just in neutral or a little bit of flexion is more typical for those movements.
Here is what you can do:
Sleep on your back; sleeping on your stomach practically guarantees that this will bother you throughout the day. Some people recommend taking this even further and sleeping with a pillow under your knees to take the lumbar spine out of extension completely, but I found this actually tended to be an irritating factor for me.
Only use a tight arch on your top set. You don’t need to get a big arch on warm-ups or even rep work if you are dealing with this type of back pain. For example, if you are following a program like 5/3/1, all your warm-up sets will have no arch (feet set fairly loose) and only on your top set for reps would you move into an arch.
You can still set your scapula to take care of your shoulders, but the arch definitely isn’t necessary for every single work set, especially if you are doing like a 5x10 (or any other set and rep scheme).
I would recommend avoiding doing tons of reps or sets at a high% of your 1RM. If you really want to bring up your bench press #s without torching your back, you can easily do 5/3/1 followed by a 5x8-10 of at 50-60% of your max, and only use an arch for your max set for reps. This lets you get plenty of back training in without irritating the injury site, and you can still make plenty of progress.
Of course, if you are just training for bodybuilding and don’t care about your bench #s, then there’s no need to jam a square peg into a round hole. Seated hammer strength chest machines of various angles work great and won’t irritate this problem. Incline benching also takes a lot of load off the facets and builds the chest just as much (if not better) than a flat bench in my book, since most guys struggle with developing the ‘upper chest’ anyways.
For rep work, you can even bench with your feet on the first rung or even bend your knees and put them on the bench itself (gasp, I know); this will take the load entirely off the facet joints. Same thing when you lay on the ground and do a floor press with your knees bent (though I feel this doesn’t hit the chest very hard or carry over much for a raw lifter as doing full reps would, at least for me).
Strengthen your abs with anti-extension movements; roll-outs, standing abs, etc - anything that strengthens the abs in preventing extension will carry over in a very nice fashion to flat benching.
Do incline bench work; you can get a lot of good bench work in without having to hold nearly as tight of an arch. Mentioned it briefly earlier but it could use a re-mention.
Walk around a bit in the morning before sitting down at your desk / in your car / for the day. Rolling out of bed and plopping down on the computer is not good. Make your breakfast, eat standing up, take a shower - find something to do. Running out of time or I would elaborate on this more, lol.
I had a similar problem once I started working with 300+ pounds on the bench. This now doesn’t bother me and I recently hit a 405 (raw) bench, pain-free.
Good luck