That’s high praise Mark! Truthfully, Thompson’s lyrics practically rose me. He was the first strong guy I came across who was like You don’t have to be hurting and in pain all the time.
I think busting out the lacrosse ball a couple times a week is a good way to take care of yourself and keep the hips and back loose. Controversial glute guy Bret Contreras said that most of the compression type back problems that people have are caused their own tight, short muscles cranking down and limiting motion. Not actually being flattened by barbells. So for me, it’s like a no-brainer to roll things out regularly. Hopefully the physio will have more specific and direct advice/solutions.
Regarding overhead stuff, maybe try to roll out your lats and pecs/ serratus area. Sometimes these get tight, restrict shoulder movement and then your back has to extend more and get in a bad position to pick up the slack.
I like the idea of rotating back squat and leg press as accessories to give your back a rest.
Thanks a lot for all the well wishes and suggestions, it means a lot.
Now leading up to the workout I was in 1/10 pain and 3/10 discomfort - pretty much a no brainer to train but lately it has been hard to listen to my body and I have a bad handle on that. A lot of anxiety was going around in my head because just yesterday I was in legit back pain! So I went back and forth about training, not training or just rehab training. I was still completely undecided when I arrived at the gym and just set out to feel my body out, I took abut half an hour before I touched a barbell. I rolled out all areas around my hip, did some hip mobilization drills, which interestingly revealed that my internal hip rotation on the left side is a good bit worse than on the right side. I started the training with core stuff and then went on to deadlift.
27.08.19
1 planke
3 x 1 min
2 single leg hip bridge
3 x 12 per leg
3 deadlift
up to
3 @ 130 kg
2 @ 150 kg (last beltless set)
1 @ 165 kg
5 x 1 @ 180 kg . played around a bit with hip height but all sets felt crisp and not hard. Not as easily as this weight has moved 2 month ago but I havent worked at this weight for a bit. Speed was good though (see below)
2 beltless deficit deadlifts (standing on 10 kg bumpers)
3 x 5 @ 150 kg
I didn’t do this variation beltless to make it harder, there was just no way I woould get into a decent position with the belt on.
3a chest supported db row
3 x 10 @ 30 kg
3b seated leg curls
3 x 15
4a behind the back barbell holds
3 x 35 sec @ 100 kg
4b side planke
3 x 45 sec each side
5 a bit of stretching for the lats and hip flexors.
Notes:
was it the right call to make this a normal session? Should I have sat it out anyway? Will my back be worse again tomorrow? I don’t know. I stopped the deficit deadlift sets at 5 reps before they would get hard and before there would be any chance of form breakdown.
everything felt ok so far during the session. What I did notice is that my left side (like the oblique/ lat area) felt a little weird/ tight/ over activated) - not painful though. I didn’t experience back pain but as I said before I am pretty anxious atm and as @MarkKO has pointed out before, I have been dealing with some issues for a good bit of time now and want it to end…
sorry for being so whiny lately. I shouldn’t make such a big fuss about it, this just comes at an emotionally difficult time and I am struggling with that anyhow. I don’t have a lot of people I can or want to talk about so this is my dump for that stuff.
the rest of the week will be different, no matter how I feel tomorrow. No standing overhead and front squats will likely be split squats or something. Event day will be changed into cardio or crossed out entirely
thank you if you made it so - turned out to be a long entry, haha
Dude, you’re not whining. There is at least one genuine issue with your back.
Look, from where I sit you rolled the dice with that session and got lucky. I get it, though. You felt almost no pain or discomfort so why not train pretty normally? The problem is that because you don’t know what the issue is, just going by pain or discomfort on the day won’t necessarily tell you what you need to know.
I say that because that’s what I did with my back a few months ago. It didn’t work out well, until I stopped everything for a week and just did rehab work.
I would strongly urge you to leave out anything that that involves any kind of spinal loading, any kind of hip hinging and any kind of pressing until you figure out what the problem is and how to fix it. I know that takes away pretty much all your training but think about it. It leaves you a huge number of rowing variations; any number of lower body machines exercises; tons of band work for your shoulders; and any amount of arm and delt work with dumbbells or machines.
That’s still plenty of scope to build muscle and get stronger, without much risk of making whatever is fucking up your back worse.
As usual you are speaking the truth. Thanks for putting in your perspective, I have followed your documentation of your own back issues closely.
This is a hard pill to swallow but it makes a lot of sense.
Okay, I’ll listen to you and do my best to stick to that plan. That means two training weeks without spinal loading at least (that is counting in my physio big time).
Would you do bench pressing in this situation or stay away from barbells altogether?
Left side still feels weird (tight). No back pain today which is a win. I’ll stick to the plan and only train without spinal loading for the next 1,5-2 weeks or as long as needed (which I hope will not be any longer than that)
I don’t think it’ll take too much longer than that, but it may take longer than you’d like.
I’m not completely sure how your training is set out (if you’ve posted about that, forgive my oversight), so the following is just based on the snapshots of your posts that I’ve seen.
You work at a fairly high intensity - probably more than 70 per cent of your work sets are over 80 per cent of your max. I don’t know much about strongman training at all, but this seems like something that’ll add up a lot of fatigue very fast.
You do a fair amount of volume along with that higher intensity. This will increase fatigue too.
Compared to how much pressing you do, there is relatively little rowing. It seems more like a 2:1 press to row ratio or something similar. I actually suspect this might be the root cause of your problem. Your press is really pretty good. Not elite, sure, but decent. So your back is going to be working hard stabilising all that, except if it’s comparatively weaker than your pressing muscles it’s going to be under a shit ton of stress all the time. Then you add frequent fairly heavy deadlifts into the mix and your whole back is working overtime, and the stabilizers that work when you press (traps, rhomboids, lats) are called in to hold the bar close. So there goes even more strain.
So it might sound counterintuitive to increase your back work a bunch, but if you do it with a correspondingly large reduction in pressing and deadlifting you should be able to bring your back up to strength.
I’ve just recently stumbled over a you tube channel called squat university.
That dude is brilliant, and have some very good videos about stretching and mobility.
I found a little tiny gem in one of them.
It’s about back mobility and stability. You don’t want mobility in the low back, you want stability. You want mobility in the upper back and mid back.
So work on mobility in the mid and upper back, and stability in the low back.
I meant to do a write up any way so the question ist definitely valid. My training during the season looked like this
Deadlift day. Linear progression and very intense. I tried to push it!
Upper body day. Less intense but still intense.
Event day. This was adjustable in intensity but the closer the contests came the more intense it got.
This is what I am doing now or rather what I plan on since I haven’t come around to a lot of it
1. Deadlift day: I follow Matt Krock’s “the simple deadlift program’” (available on Tnation). I have used the program in the past and found intensities to be very low. So to try and still have a shot at my deadlift goal for the year, I use a higher TM. The numbers seem realistic If I am healthy. Layout for the day ist as follows:
Deadlift
Deadlift variation. I used the beltless deficit for the first phase and I plan on using snatch grip, paused and banded deadlifts. Usually 2-3 sets
Row 3 sets, chest supported
Alternating between hamstring curls and hip thrust
Grip
Cote
2. Upper body day
This was more hypertrophie based these past weeks but also rather intuitive.
Push Press. I did 4 x 8 the last workouts which leaves at least one rep in the tank for each set.
Hicks Press. Did also a 4x8 which left at least 2 reps in the tank
Lat pull down 4-5 Sets
Arms, delts and a row variation (3 sets)
3. Squat day
This is new because I didn’t squat much in season.
For front squats I plan to follow a protocol I got from @strongmanvinny2 (originally for overhead though).
Front squats: 6x5, 8x3, 6x2, 6x1
I plan on alternating leg press and back squats 2-3 Sets of 8
Light hip and core assecories
4. Event day
Well nothing much happening here atm.
The plan is to bring my strict log press up. Also do very light carries for speed and endurance as the season is over and I see no point in pushing these right now.
Log strict press 4-5 sets superset with log rows
Light carries.
That leaves us with 14-16 sets of pulling, 10-15 of those being rows and 12-13 sets of pushing, 8 of those being overhead. So I’d say you aren’t wrong about the ratio not being ideal, @MarkKO but it isn’t far off either. I can certainly do better. The point about the back working on overtime is correct though. Everything you do in strongman seems to tax the back. Deadlifts obviously but also overhead pressing, even with good technique and then you want to do squats and events as well.
Started with a bit of myofascial release work and mobilization of the upper back and hips
1a planke
3 x 60 sec
1b single leg hip thrust (other leg crossed, so the bottom position was a stretch for that side)
3 x 12
2 banded smith machine shoulder press (paused at chest) - I concentrated on not arching my back at all and used No supportive equipment
10 @ 11 kg + bands
10 @ 31 kg + bands
2 x 10 @ 41 kg + bands
10 @ 46 kg + bands
8 @ 51 kg + bands
4 chest supported db row
5 x 10 @ 30 kg
5 db floor press (pause in bottom position)
3 x 10 @ 30 kg
6 chest supported row machine (pause at full contraction)
3 x 8
7 seated face pulls
3 x 12
8a skull crushers (went past my head, don’t know if that is correct but feels good on the elbows and gets you a big rom)
3 x 15 @ curl bar + 20 kg
8b seated db curls
3 x 10 @ 12,5 kg
9 stretching
Notes:
I feel like a got some really decent work done despite the adjustmenst
rowing feels the weirdest atm. Pressing feels fine, especially without the stabilization aspect of doing it standing.
@mortdk definitely a good core exercise as well but what’s wrong with good old plankes?
30.08.
1 leg press
15 @ 202 kg
15 @ 242 kg
15 @ 282 kg
12 @ 322 kg
Changed my foot position which allowed for more rom and a sick quad pump.
2 lying hamstring curls
3 x 15 @ full stack, focusing on constant tension and keeping the hip pressed down
3 glute kick back machine thing
2 x 15
4 hip abduction
2 x 15
5 hip adduction
2 x 15-20
Notes:
I was too lazy to do more. Got a leg pump
This was one of the emotionally most difficult week/ two weeks in recent times. The back injury as minor as it is, was the last drop into a full container and it made me snap. It may just be all the stress that is acting as fuel for my depression. I don’t know. There are a few good things to look forward to though. Things might get better.
Swimming.
Went to the outdoor pool this time which is much longer. I figured this pool is most likely 50 meter and the Indoor one that I have been using a few times is 25 meter.
Did 13 laps in 25 minutes(so 26 laps for reference to my last swim Trainings)
Mostly I dislike them because they are quite easy to do, you can almost relax in the position and stay there for a long time. I think done that way it puts some strain on the lower back.
If done with a flexing of all muscles as hard as you can, keeping the lower back neutral, I think it’s a good exercise. But then you can’t hold it for a minute.
But I know a lot of people likes to do planks.
Nice swimming man.
EDIT: you could try squat universitys youtube and see what he thinks about the plank, or the dude on AthleanX he has several videos regarding the plank, but I think the one named the truth about planks is quite good. Have a look.
That is a plank done wrong! I flex my glutes, quads and abs as hard as possible and my core starts shaking after a short time. Quality over quantity with stuff like this. I get what you are reffering to though.
Not sure if you’d still agree if you saw it. I feel very unathletic while I am at it, haha
Back felt the worst it has in a week. This is seemingly random. Some days I can barely sense that there is something wrong, some days something feels off and some days it straight up hurts and may radiate to other parts of the back.
Started with myofascial stuff on the hips and upper back.
1a single leg hip thrust (other leg crossed)
3 x 12
1b dead bug (with band under the lumbar)
3 x 10-12
