Thursday, July 4 - Bench assistance day - deload
Close grip floor press
280x3x2
Military press
190x4x2
Neutral DB pushups
+super mini band x7x2
Floor pause tricep extension
145x4x2
Duffin upright row
25x12x2
Barbell curl
85x12x2
I’m getting anxious to get back to some serious training.
More problems.
It seemed as though my aches and pains were going away, this morning I woke up feeling a little bit stiff in my hips and lower back but nothing major. I figured I would be fine so I went to train as planned, and it’s still a deload so it should be easy.
First, squats for 6 doubles with 315lbs on the transformer bar, I felt a little stiff (not painful, just tight) warming up but by the end of this I felt fine, my hips felt the best they have since all this shit started.
Next I was supposed to do some deficit deadlifts, the plan was to work up to 450x2. I pulled 135x5, then 225x5, no problems so far. Then I loaded 315 and pulled one rep, as I stood up I felt my lower back cramp up. I held the bar for a moment and dropped it because I knew it wouldn’t feel good to put it back down like normal. It’s nothing major, the way my hips felt last week was probably worse overall but it’s definitely not what I wanted.
I feel a bit better after moving around and taking a shower, but I’m not too happy about this. I’m not even sure what the problem really is, my back and hips felt fine up until last Tuesday and since then it’s been one problem after another.
The funny thing is that there is a bench-only meet in August at the same gym as my last meet, I thought of signing up but after thinking about it I decided I really wanted to get my squat and deadlift up too so I decided against it. But right now it looks like benching is all I can do at the moment.
Oh well, I have had my back cramp up worse than this a few times before, I will get over it. I just don’t want to waste any more time when I could be training.
I was looking at this trigger point thing on another site, glute medius can cause low back pain and my glutes were messing around the other day so I tried working on the glute medius with a lacrosse ball, made a huge difference. Then I stretched my glutes and hip flexors, more relief. Right now it just feel like the left psoas is a bit tight, just like a few days ago. It’s one step forward, two steps back.
I think the problem is too much tension in the glutes and hip flexors, if I can sort that out this should hopefully go away.
You need to find the cause and get ahead of this. Maybe the way you sleep or sit or stand? I always make sure to alternate sides that I sleep on with a pillow between my legs and that has helped a bunch I think. Also never rule out a Doctor or PT/
Doctors here are useless, all they can do is prescribe drugs or do surgery. A good PT might be able to sort this out, but again they are few and far in between and the bad ones can fuck you up. I have one of Stuart McGill’s books (Ultimate back fitness and performance), that might have some solutions.
All I know is that I had issues with my hip flexors on and off for a long time, mostly the left side but it was nothing serious, my back would be a little achy but nothing severe and nothing that would stop me from lifting. It was like they would start acting up for a bit and then for a couple months they would be fine. The thing is that lately my hip flexors haven’t bothered me at all, it’s just that one day that I killed my glutes and then my whole torso and hips was cramped up after standing at work all afternoon.
There is this theory that muscles get tight because they are weak, I don’t do any direct ab work, which in any cases is hip flexor work, so it’s possible that doing a little bit of hip flexor work would help balance things out.
Right now I don’t even feel too bad at all, relative to how it’s been for the last week and a bit. I just got back from work, my lower back is slightly sore (very minor) but I can feel that the the left hip side flexors (psoas I’m quite sure) are tight. I just need to figure out how to make this go away and stay away.
I read a bunch of articles about back issue on Squat University, based on the tests it looks like I have some degree of extension intolerance (right at this moment, but not normally) but probably also iliopsoas syndrome, at least on the left side. Basically I just need to start doing some hip flexor exercises to fix this, and that’s what I already started thinking from what I read elsewhere. It seems like I can still squat, at least somewhat light weights, but deadlifting is giving me trouble. Maybe I will just ease up on the deadlifts and focus on squatting for the next couple weeks until this gets sorted out.
It looks like my left psoas is stuck in a spasm. I wish I didn’t try deadlifting on Friday because I felt much better up to that point. I’m going to have to take it easy for a while until this gets sorted out, but at least I can still bench.
Two years ago I had something like this happen, one day I was at home with my kids and it rained hard all day so we stayed inside and I sat most of the day. By the end of the night my back was a bit stiff but I just went to bed. Next morning I went to deadlift, I was going for a new 5rm and when I put down the 4th rep I felt something tighten in my back but I didn’t stop to think and just pulled another rep. I got it a few inches off the flor and my back locked up, I was messed up for over a week. I did a bunch of stuff to stretch and release my hip flexors and QL, once I got the left psoas to relax all the pain went away. This episode here started off differently, but it seems like the same thing again.
Monday, July 8 - Main bench day
Bench press - sticking with the wider grip for now
355x3 - could do another rep but the plan was 3. Setup felt a bit off because my back is still fucked up, but got it done
CAT bench
310x3x5 sets - 2 min. rest
Slingshot bench - black slingshot
405x4 - This was harder than I expected, I was going to go for 6. Next week same weight, more reps
Dead bench - chest level
Worked up to a somewhat challenging weight - 275, 295, 315, then 4 more singles with 315, 90 sec. rest
Incline DB flys
55’s x11, 9, 8 - not pushing this as hard as before, just doing an extra set instead. Pec were kind of tired from the benching.
Band pushdowns
light band over 2 bars x 14, 10, 1 bar x 8 - triceps are done
Neutral grip chin ups
I was going to do them with 25lbs added, I did a couple reps for a warmup but it felt weird on my back. So no weight then: 7, 6, 8 - even without the weight it felt weird, like some muscle isn’t working like it should (lats?) but I tried bracing hard on the last set and it felt a bit better. This was shit though, way below expectations. At least I can still bench
As far as my back, it doesn’t really feel like anything is cramped up anymore at this point but it still doesn’t feel right. All I know is that I felt almost normal on Friday until I pulled that 315 warmup. My guess is that I re-irritated whatever the original issue was or maybe even made it worse, despite the fact that I felt alright at that point. Maybe when I was all cramped up after that last real squat workout 2 weeks ago I moved in some odd way that messed my back up and it just got progressively worse from there, or maybe there was already something going on but I didn’t feel it. Apparently close to half of adults have bulging or herniated discs with no symptoms, so who knows.
For tomorrow, I’m going to try to do some light squats and that’s about it. Like 315x5x5. Squatting made me feel better the last few times, also according to Stuart McGill it’s safe to lift with an injured disc, it can still tolerate compressive loading as long as you stay neutral. The problem with deadlifting is that I have to bend over a lot which is more shear force, and worse I was trying to do deficit DLs. SSB squats have me fairly upright so those should be a safe choice, and if it doesn’t feel good I will stop.
Tuesday, July 9 - handicapped squat day
SSB squat
315x5x3 sets - I was originally thinking to go for 5x5 but I don’t want to push my luck. Unracking and walking out the weight doesn’t feel good, not really painful but uncomfortable. Squatting actually feels very good, especially as I descend into the bottom of the squat. Felt alright by the 3rd set, and felt good after this.
The thing is that my abs are bracing like 10x harder than normal and while my legs can obviously tolerate a lot more it actually feels like my abs are fatiguing and getting sore. Right now when I bend over or pick something up my abs brace like I’m attempting a squat PR, so maybe all that is tiring them out.
Inverted row
12, 10, 8, 8 - I don’t want to do any sort of hip hinge movement because that can’t help right now and chin-ups feel weird, and sort of row with weight won’t feel good either. These actually felt very good, and maybe it’s because I’m injured but they also felt harder than I expected. I haven’t done these in a very long time.
Back issue update:
At this point it looks like my left SI joint is irritated. That makes sense since this all started with pain that seemed to be in my upper glutes and the SI joints are right inside of there. At first I didn’t have anything that I would even describe as “back pain”, my back only started to hurt after my hip flexors tightened up. I don’t seem to have any muscles in that area that are tight or spasming at the moment and once I get moving around I just have a sort of nagging discomfort in that area.
I fucked up my left SI joint about 15 years ago and it used to bother me now and then until I started training hard and learned to lift with proper form and bracing. I honestly can’t remember the last time my SI joint bothered me, maybe 4-5 years ago.
I bought some CBD oil yesterday, it definitely relieves the pain and achiness and should also reduce any inflammation. I’m also doing the McGill big 3 and stretching my hips/hip flexors since tightness in there can irritate the SI joint.
This whole time I have been thinking that this had something to do with those banded RDLs. I was doing them for high reps because if I go heavy it feels weird on my back, despite the fact I have done normal RDLs with over 500lbs. The thing here is that I have a band (doubled super mini) pulling back against my hip bones with about 100lbs of tension plus 185 on the bar on top of my own bodyweight. Not taking moment arms and actual lbs. of force (which would be way higher), that’s going to be over 400lbs of straight weight + bands squeezing my SI joints in a direction they aren’t really designed to operate. Then doing Bulgarian split squats when my “glutes” (SI joints?) were already feeling beat up can’t be good with all the pelvic imbalance going on there.
Anyway, I will survive. At worst I will start benching 3x/week.
What happened way back was that I was doing Arnold presses and alternating arms. I didn’t know anything about bracing and stuff like that, I was trying to squeeze out another rep and I leaned sideways and something (which I’m quite certain was my left SI joint) popped. I was messed up for a couple weeks but I got over it. I trained on and off for years (bodybuilding-style stuff) but work and other things always got in the way so I wasn’t consistent back then.
Anyway, it’s not like my SI joint was totally messed up after that but from time to time I would have some back pain and most of the time it was centered around the SI joint. It didn’t bother me for several years, the only issue that is sort of related is that my left psoas was bugging me on and off. It would be fine for months and then I would get some low back pain, but not in the SI joint and I dealt with it with myofascial release and stretching. I was looking into some stuff about psoas/iliopsoas syndrome and coincidentally I was already regularly doing the stretches (hip flexors and external rotators) that are the main part of at least one treatment protocol.
Right now my back feels pretty good, I just got home from work and if I had done my regular squat workout and the spent most of the afternoon on my feet I would probably be more stiff and achy than I am now. Squatting (with moderate weights) seems to actually help for some reason and probably the CBD oil helped things calm down, I’m going to take that in the morning and before bed for the next while. I’m just going to ease back into squat/dl training gradually, like some linear progression type of stuff rather than thinking I feel good and go heavy and blow out my back or SI joint. Hopefully I can bench 450 by then, then I can say it was all worth it.
You’re a doctor so maybe you can give me some feedback on this.
I have been reading stuff to try and figure out what the problem really is, I came across something on sacroiliitis:
The most common symptoms of sacroiliitis include some combination of the following:
Except for the fever, those are my symptoms exactly. The absolute worst thing is getting out of bed in the morning, it seems like my muscles are too relaxed and once I put pressure on my left SI joint then my hip flexors and who knows what else tighten up. It feels terrible but once I’m on my feet for about 5 minutes it calms down and I just feel a bit stiff. It was worse before, but right now it seems like half the problem is just anticipating the pain, I expect certain things to hurt at this point.
So I’m thinking I must have irritated my SI joints more than they could tolerate in that one squat workout, and then once it was already better I aggravated it again by trying to deadlift. Hopefully it will calm down on its own. I don’t think I have any sort of SI dysfunction because it didn’t bother me at all until that one day, and it seemed to me that both sides were irritated but the left was worse, possibly due to my previous injury.
I just went for a walk and now I feel OK, I don’t want to bend over if I don’t need to but nothing hurts. My abs are sore, and my obliques are even more sore, what I was saying about bracing like crazy when I squatted yesterday is no joke.
How does a SI condition lead to fever? That’s pretty weird and also scary cool
Maybe inflammation, nerve irritation, something like that.
Thursday, July 11 - Bench assistance day
Close grip bench
315x5 - This ties a PR, but I possibly could have squeezed out another rep plus I haven’t done any close grip benching (only floor press, which is close but not the same) lately so it looks like I’m definitely ahead of where I was previously.
Close grip 2 board
345x5, 4 - This is a weak spot for me, It’s only a slight overload and I’m at least equally strong with 1 board and much stronger at 3.
High incline bench - medium grip, about 60 degree angle (higher than my usual incline when I do it)
225x7, 6 - this is harder than I expected, barely stronger than military press. I feel my pecs working hard on this but I guess it’s an angle they aren’t used to. I don’t want to do any overhead pressing for now because it’s more strain on my back/SI for little benefit when there are other options. And who knows, this might be exactly what I need for my bench since it feels like a major weak point.
Floor pause tricep extension
165x8, 6, 5
Underhand band pull apart
super mini band x25, 20, 17 - I got tired of hitting myself in the balls on those Duffin upright rows. Not appropriate unless you have testicular atrophy.
Barbell curl - extra strict, slow eccentric
65x15, 12, 8 - I wanted to do these while minimizing strain on my back, these were way harder than the way I did them before. I know I wasn’t terribly strict before towards the end of each set, but this makes me think I was cheating more than I realized. I would have done these leaning against a wall but due to the small, crowded space I’m in it would have been more trouble than it’s worth.
Back/SI update:
Today I feel pretty good, only really uncomfortable thing was getting out of bed but I wouldn’t even call it painful, just uncomfortable. Taking CBD oil and going for a walk about an hour later makes my back/SI feel like nothing ever happened, but the thing now is that it’s like my nervous system has gotten used to certain things hurting so with stuff like bending over to pick up something everything tightens up, like I’m automatically bracing. My obliques are sore too, they are working way harder than normal.
At this point it looks like I’m getting over this, but I just have to make sure I don’t irritate it again. Moving forward I think I will have to go easy on lower body volume just to be safe, doing harder sets (short of technique breakdown) but less total reps is probably safer than a whole bunch of volume with a bit less weight because the total tonnage would be less plus putting more force into the bar even if it’s lighter can add up to similar forces on the spine/SI joints. And those banded RDLs that seem to have been a factor in all this, I did 45 working reps that one day.
But for now I’m taking it easy, plan is to squat 315 for a few sets of 5 tomorrow. Once I can go 315x5x5 with no pain of discomfort, plus move the weight explosively, then I can start increasing the weight.
Friday, July 12 - Injured squat day
SSB squat
315x5x5 - Squats moved slow and I took my time, but I got it done. It feels like all the antagonist muscles must be contracting when I squat because I feel my legs and glutes working hard but the weight isn’t even moving fast despite it being light. I had the same thing before after doing tempo squats (terrible exercise). I’m going to stick with the same weight until it moves like it’s supposed to.
Inverted row
bw x14, 11, 9, 8
Band bad girl
doubled mini band x20x3
super set with
Band hip flexor march
mini band (tied off)x15x3 - these are kind of hard, I guess my hip flexors are weak for real.
Bad girls because weak glute medius is associated with SI joint issues and I can tell that my right side is stronger than the left. The left adductors are also stronger than the right. I already knew I had some sort of strength imbalance between the two sides but from what I could tell my squats and deadlifts were symmetrical, I had an issue with my hips shifting back in the winter but that was because my adductors were giving me shit and I fixed that. It’s not like I have major imbalance issues, but there is something there and now I fucked up my SI joint so it’s a good idea to sort that out.
About my back/SI joint, seems like I’m getting better every day. Even getting out of bed wasn’t bad today. I’m probably 80% better, I just need to get to 100% and stay there. And I feel good after squatting, nothing hurts and no significant discomfort. I feel like I got a good workout even though it was so light.
Good write up Doc. I like the “Signs” thing. Just earlier today I “tested” my internal hip rotation. It sucked, which is a sign of a tight piriformis. When I tried a piriformis stretch it was super tight. Cool stuff.
Nothing really to add, Chris thinks I’m a charlatan anyway.
Thanks for your response. I should mention that today I feel a major improvement in symptoms, this morning I felt pretty good but this afternoon it seems like I’m back to normal. I’m a bit apprehensive about stuff like bending over to pick something up off the floor, but there is no pain or discomfort and I don’t feel anything in my SI joint anymore. So hopefully the inflammation/irritation is gone, I just need to not get too ambitious too soon and I think I will be OK.
What you are saying makes a lot of sense, but the problem is that for me to go to private doctors and get x-rays or MRIs is going to cost me a fortune, I simply can’t afford it and if that was the only option then I would have to quit lifting. If I were to go to a regular doctor and get a referral to a specialist it would take several months for that, and several more months for an x-ray and close to a year for an MRI. It would be nice if those things were real options, but at this point they aren’t. I could go to a doctor for pain pills, but that’s it.
Im going to do the McGill big 3 every day for now, when my back or whatever was hurting that actually made it feel better right away and it should help stabilize anything that wasn’t stable before. Its boring, but it works.
I would post it if it wasn’t for certain people on here I don’t want to have to deal with. Would you mind giving me yours instead
Its too bad there are no private messages on here.
By the way, excuse the lack of apostrophes and question marks, my keyboard is acting all weird suddenly. É is what I get with a question mark and è is an apostrophe, I must have some French hackers messing with me or something.
Are you Brad SchoenfeldÉ (French question mark)
Donèt be so hard on yourself, I just donèt agree with some things you say.
How many “reps” would you recommend doing with the big 3? Lately I have been doing 3 10 sec. holds on each side for each exercise, I’m not sure if trying to increase that would help. I was reading McGill’s book “Ultimate Back Fitness and Performance” and he says that first you need to improve stability (which is what I’m doing) and then go on to build endurance. He talks about progressing in a reverse pyramid fashion, like 6 reps, 4, 2, and then gradually add reps to each set. I’m just not sure how much more is actually going to make a difference for me, my impression is that my issue is not caused by a lack of core stability but rather too much of the wrong exercise (banded RDLs) and possibly combined with some degree of pelvic imbalance.
Not really, I think I gained about 2lbs since April but that’s not significant.
I sent you an e-mail…
He says to add reps rather than increase time to avoid cramping. In the past I tried doing a whole bunch of McGill curl ups and my abs cramped up like crazy, he’s right that moderation is required.
That’s why I was doing Bulgarian split squats, I know I have some minor imbalance between left and right sides. Seems like the adductors and VMO on the left side are working harder, on the right it’s the glute and vastus lateralis. And my left hip flexors are the ones that get tight, rarely the right.
This is just based on my observations and assessments of where I get sore and what gets tight, it doesn’t seem like a huge imbalance but it’s something. When you combine that with 45 reps of an exercise that is putting pressure on the SI joint in a way it’s not meant to take pressure, that can cause some problems.