Disc Injury - Death Sentence

Training Powerlifting
1

Hi there

I have just been given a death sentence and I am hoping that it may not be as bad as what I have been told.

Basically I sustained a disc injury to my low back while back squatting in July 04. I stopped training straight away hoping it would sort itself out.
After 1 month of not really training, I was SO depressed as I hadn’t been able to train but yet my back was no better. The thing is that I am an athletic performance coach and so was doing some type of movement showing my clients exercises but with VERY little weight.

By the way, I don’t blame the squat as an exercise for my injury, I was feeling as though I was REALLY weak in the squat so I wanted to make myself feel better by lifting some heavier iron but my ego and stupidity got the better of me and in the end it was more of a falling backward goodmorning.

Anyway I went to see a physiotherapist and a sports physician and it got a little better on a diet of no weight training and back stabilisation and anti-inflammatories.
But still EVERY morning I would wake up with low level pain in my LB and it still continues to this day (although now it is worse again).

I was evetually told I could get back into training but with very light loads - “YES!! THANK YOU” I shouted in my head. But it has gotten worse since resuming training with light weights about a month ago.

So I have just returned from another trip to my sports physician and it is not good news. Now just quickly to explain something … I am 23 years old and I LOVE STRENGTH TRAINING! I love squats, deads, cleans, snatches, etc. And I want to be STRONG - AS STRONG AS I CAN POTENTIALLY BE! This is a MASSIVE part of my life, it aint just a hobby, I have now made this into my career I train athletes 4 performance. But I have just been told that I have to do 3 - 4 months of back stabilisation(which I don’t mind doing if it will allow me to get back to lifting heavy iron) but the doc said even then I may never really be able to train heavily on squats, deads, etc again!

Now that is problematic. Please help. Have you ever had a disc injury and returned from it without surgery to being able to squat and dead and clean + Jerk, etc.
PLEASE tell me about it and how you did it because I am feeling like my world has just caved in and that does not feel good.

I have had no symptoms in my legs or feet so the seepage of disc fluid hasn’t come through the whole disc to the nerves.

Now I do know that most of these people(the doc + biokineticist I’m seeing tomorrow) do not lift iron and that they actually look down on people who do as ironheads beijng stupid injuring themselves without science. So I don’t expect them to understand how I feel. But I am sure that hopefully some of you are well informed regarding strength training and back injury and can give me some hope that this indeed is not a life sentence of sissy machine training in my future and pilates without ever again hitting the heavy iron with some big moves.

Sorry for the long post but I AM DESPERATE and I need to hear some good news(I hope there is some).

Regards a depressed iron lifter-for-life.

Graham Dean, SA.

2

I have multiple damaged disks throughout my spine that cause me a lot of pain.

I have herniations in the low back and neck, with wedged, compressed, slipped, dehydrated disks everywhere else.

I found that chiropratic care along with stretching and targeting the specific area with exercise brought me back to where I am. I spent several years doing very light deadlifts, hyperextensions, and pull throughs to strengthen my lower back. Lots of abdominal work as well.

I’m still a very competitive powerlifter, about 5-7 years after the injuries.

Shawn Lattimer

3

Hey there Shawn

Thanks SO much for the reply and the encouragement from your story that I can still do these things that I love doing sometime in the future.

See I don’t mind doing the ab work and stabilisation, etc. if I know that there is a chance to return to lifting using compound multi-joint heavyish exercises.

And the fact that you still powerlifting after those injuries is adefinite encouragement. R U pain-free at the moment or do you still live with back pain, but still do the exercises?

Thanks for your reply Shawn, I really appreciate it.

Regards,
Graham Dean.

4

The Reverse Hyperextension is an exercise that you’re going to have to do. This is a great exercise for strengthening the lower back and, I have found, the lower abdomen.

Also, I really like Bulgarian split squats. This exercise is a good substitute for your back squats… at least for awhile. Here is what I like about this exercise:

  1. Strong direct work to glutes and quads.
  2. Hip proprioception and balance is challenged.
  3. Strong hip flexor stretch in trailing leg.
  4. Spine maintains neutral position.
    I’m not saying this exercise is going to “cure” your low back, but I believe it can be part of the recovery process.

I hope these ideas can help you.

5

Hey,

I feel your pain man. I injured my back about 8 months ago doing a heavy session of deadlifts. It happened on the negative portion of the lift, when I was trying to control it to the floor without a “bang”…the gym trainers were pissed because the weights were slamming the ground.

I kept trying to lift through it, did some therapy for it this summer, it got better, and then I hurt it again when I went back to squats.

Currently, I am in my 4th week of rehab at a functional performance center in Tempe. Before this 4 weeks of therapy my back was killing me, I couldn’t bend over, or sleep sometimes.
The therapy has really loosened up what used to be an extremely right side tightness in my back. There is now only a dull ache in my lower mid back when I sit down.

I have been researching the hell out of the spine, lower back health, and recovery tecniques. I have read loads of info. about the disks too. I hope my injury is purely muscular…after 2 more weeks of therapy, if I have even a tiny level of pain, I am getting an
MRI.

Here are some tips that I can give to you from my experience:

  1. Don’t try to work through the pain. This is what I did for the first two months of my injury because I thought it would be like every other injury I had ever acrued. I moved to sumo deadlifts to not stress the back as much, but I was still working through the back pain. Don’t let your ego and the fear of losing size/strength keep you from lightening your load. If I could go back right now, I would have stopped lifting altogther for a few weeks, just doing light movements and stretching to faciliate recovery, instead of trying to maintain strength/size. You don’t want to add on months to your recovery by not letting it heal, like me.

  2. Read all of Eric Cressey’s stuff here on T-nation. He talks a lot about the importance of hip flexor flexbility and glute activation. Also, read Mr. Spine here on T-nation.

  3. Since you are sure you have a disk problem, check out VAX-D. It is a new form of healing the disks, supposedly more advanced and much better at aiding recovery than traction or inversion. It is all about decompressing the spine. I just went to a free consultation at the Arizona Back Institute, who use this treatment. I’m sure your state does too.

  4. I am confident that you can still train your upper body, I would avoid overhead stuff though. Focus bringing up some muscle groups that won’t tax that disk at all. Make improvements in that area. Avoid leg training for a while, at least with heavy weights. I know that my be hard, but trust me, in the long run, it will work out for the better.

I have a lot more to say but I have to go now, time for some homework and my back is getting stiff from sitting down to long! Sorry if everything is jumbled together, I just wanted to get some stuff out there. I’ll be back on later.

-Chris

6

Dominate,

Without knowing which disc and to what degree it is bulging, it would be difficult to give you more specific information. The fact that you have no leg symptoms is a very good sign. A good spinal stabilization program is very important for long term relief. The reverse hyperextension recommendation from a previous post is good.
You will be able to squat and deadlift again provided you take precautions and lift with your muscles and not your ego. Take this as an opportunity to perfect your form and to fix any weak links in the kinetic chain. The most important thing for the prevention of disc injury from squats and deadlifts is to maintain the normal lumbar lordosis throughout the movement. If you can keep the spine from flexing forward during the movement, there is less tensile strain on the disc fibers, therefore decreasing the chance of injury. Abdominal bracing is important as well, as it reduces compressive forces in the lumbar discs. This does not mean drawing your belly button in, instead, try this: place your hands just above your pelvic bones over your abd obliques, with your thumbs around the back and the fingers running toward your belly button. Now push pressure inward with your hands, next contract the abdominal muscles so that they are resisting this pressure. If you are doing it right, all the muscles under your hands should stiffen. You should be able to inhale and exhale while holding this pressure, not just while holding your breath.
Also, stay positive and don’t fall into the woe is me, victim mentality, as that is a prescription for chronic pain. There are thousands of high level athletes with disc bulges. In the end you will probably come out of it as a better coach in that you will make sure your athletes use perfect form in these exercises and not progress them to quickly to the point that form breaks down and injury occurs.
Feel free to PM me with any add’l info regarding your injury and therapy and I would be glad to help you out.

Take care,
Ryan

7

I prolapsed my L5 disc in 1998. It took a whole year to recover fully. I had severe back pain and sciatic pain in my leg. At times the pain was so bad I wanted to die.

I can now squat 200+ kgs, without a belt. I love squatting. But I have to be careful.
You can recover. But you will have to listen to you your body. Get in the pool, stretch and do lots of ab work when your body is ready for this phase. Then you can slowly increase the types of exercises you do. But you will have to be very careful with squats, deadlifts, cleans and heavy overhead work. Log your weights, don’t train these exercises to failure, and increase the poundages in very small increments.
Don’t give up hope. I recovered from not being able to stand up or sit for more than 90 seconds at time and spending 3 months a prisoner in my parents’ home, to representing my country in sumo wrestling, playing rugby, and lifting heavy weights again, within 18 months. This may seem like an eternity to you, but it isn’t, it’s just an interlude.]
Dean Thompson.

8

Hi Kenmen, Chris, Ryan + Dean.

Thank you all SO much for your input and advice. I am feeling a bit better today about the whole thing as I have read some very inspirational stories of people who have had much worse injuries than myself get through them and return to heavy lifting(albeit eventually). So ja, everyone I really appreciate your input and I am taking all of it to heart and will be VERY cautious and methodical in my rehab and stabilisation work and I will add weight very slowly in the beginning when I can work on the bigger lifts again.

Thank you all. By the way Kenmen - those bulgarian split squats are HARDCORE hey, I have done them in the past and they fry my quads even without too much weight!

By the way, I can definitely see the lessons I will learn and already have learnt through this injury and recovery process. I DO BELIEVE I WILL BE A BETTER COACH 4 IT! So that is GOOD news.

I will update you guys on my recovery.

Regards,
Graham Dean.

9

Hey Graham,

I am curious about your symptoms. What sort of pain and where has it been in your body, exactly…middle back, one or the other side, does it feel like its on the spine, are your surrounding muscles tight?

I ask because I still haven’t got an MRI on mine, the doctors all say its a muscular problem. I also have no pain in my legs, but I have read that some disc herniations do not results in any leg pain.

-Chris

10

hey man, i’m just another guy with a messed up lower back. i haven’t gotten an mri yet (too expensive), but the back doc did some tests & thinks i herniated a disc & this is causing a nerve to be pinched, which in turn causes the burning in my lower back & the numbness in my left leg. anyways, i keep hitting the weights & keep reinjuring it. but like you, i love it too much too quit. besides, when i’m going good for a while (hitting the weights), my back pain tends to go away. but then i’ll make a mistake in form on ME day & bang, back to square 1.

i always take a few weeks off after these reoccurances. then lightly go back at it. something i am going to do from now on though, use a belt once i go to about 80% of max on squat or deadlift. i haven’t used a belt in years, but after reaggravating my back 3 times this year, it’s time. my last incident was coming up from a box squat, if i had been wearing a belt, it might have saved me from some error i must have had on that rep.

also, like the others said, hit the lower back & abs hard. i really wasn’t hitting my obliques hard & heavy enough, i will do this now to try & help out my situation.

i hope you have a speedy recovery.

11

Hey man,

Be careful working through it. I don’t know if its such a good idea. From what I have been told, if you don’t let a disc heal properly, it gets degenerately worse over time, causing more and more of the fluid to spill out.
You don’t want to seriously fuck yourself up in 10 years man.

I know that it is hard to put away the squats and heavy leg/lower back training. Especially after hitting it hard for so long, without any sort of injuries. It becomes engraved into your life. If its any comfort to you, even a long rest period of not training legs isn’t going to effect the size of them that much. Sure, your strength will go down, but who is counting? I haven’t done heavy squats or deadlifts for several months, and my legs are roughly the same size and I await the time when I can hit them hard again.

12

I’ve been there too and I really feel for you. I tore up a disk in my lower back in 2001 while deadlifting a measely 185. I was out of lifting for about 2 months. While I’m not a doctor, I thing there IS light at the end of the tunnel. The key is to get back very gradually with very light weights. My injury occured in late June. I couldn’t lift until August, and even then, I did sets of 12 reps until about November, but recovered enough to set new PR’s in the bench and squat by Feb of 2002.
Just take it easy and don’t let yourself get too depressed. I think it helps to have interests other than lifting, so that even if you can’t lift for a while, you can still enjoy life. You have to keep balance in your life.
I also agree that trunk stabilazation and strengthening movements are the key to getting on the right track. View this as an opportunity to fix your weaknesses so that this doesn’t happen to you again.
Best wishes, keep your head up.

13

Hey there Chris

My symptoms R basically pain in flexion in the low back mainly along the spine. I have also felt stiffness in a band across my low back but it is more along the spine.

Hey Newfie

Man, don’t cover up the symptoms by wearing the belt. That will only worsen your situation when you come off the belt. Rather dig deep now(like me) in the rehab and stabilisation stuff so that you come back in a month or 2 with a really solid, strong and safe low back.

I wish you well recovery-wise aswell, thanks for the post.

Yeah Felix

Thanks for the advice and encouragement man. I have already been through the depressed phase, etc so at least that is past. I went and visited a biokineticist today and have now got a solid, basic rehab programme from him so I will be hard at work strengthening up and stabilising my low back, I will also work on upperbody strength and then also work REAL hard during this time to shed some unwanted centimetres around the midsection, etc.

So I will dfinitely use this opportunity to turn my weaknesses into strengths.

Thanks everyone,
Cheers, Graham.