That sounds rough. Maybe you’ve managed okay because you didn’t push them too much and let them heal? I feel like with an injury it can go a couple of ways, one is you keep on pushing through and that is fine, it might delay complete recovery but it’s not making it any worse, and the other is where you take an injury that would heal up fine in a certain amount of time and then you aggravate it to the point of it taking multiple times longer than it would have you laid off it.
And then there is the subject of dealing with an injury properly, I’ve made the mistake of not going to the gym, ending up weaker than before and then just setting up a cascade of long-lasting issues. Maybe you’d have the good fortune of being mature in how you’ve handled yours?
On the subject of your disk bulge, I have a friend who has had one and has only just started weightlifting. Any advice for being able to do so safely while still making progress?
Get a good physio! Basically it was really important to keep stretching and moving it as much as I could initially to avoid it from muscle guarding and degeneration. I had to (as much as I could) try to bend backward for 10-20 ‘reps’ every hour on the hour. These were very very small movements but important to keep my lower spine from being all fucked up, and also to ‘push’ the disc bulge back in. Then it was walking when I could tolerate it as my ‘exercise’ and from there I progressed to things like planks, dead bugs and bird dogs. I found bird dogs most beneficial. As soon as I could safely I started to load my bad again too, nothing crazy but important to get the muscles working. I attacked the Deadlift and squat in particular with a lot of ferocity after that and really learned how to brace
Also, the bulge generally comes from weakness of the core and poor posture, so both of those can be addressed with lots of core work, and lots of back work, perfect for weight lifting
I’d love to use a reverse hyper but in total honesty I’ve found an ab wheel and a back extension to be a great combo
For me, I didn’t experience it badly, but massage to relax the muscle to allow mobility exercises was the approach. Dry needling helped too. Basically anything to get the muscles to relax a bit to allow me to work on mobility
Not all, because think of the ab wheel as more of an anti rotation movement. You use your ab to stop spinal flexion, and then reverse the movement, whereas a crunch or sit up creates spinal flexion
Hey legend! I’m great, training has been tough but great. Just ended up not logging on here for a bit, but have hit some good marks.
Today I squatted 4 singles at 200kg in my burst open sleeves, and they moved better than the single in wraps a few weeks ago. Looking at once more week, then a deload and a retest and I really, REALLY want to squat 5 plates, but have to hit 210 first
Retested squat Max today, AND I FUCKING DID IT! 220kg
Came a bees dick away from dying but grinded it up. Vid on my instagram
Deads and bench to come and then probably looking at doing John meadows gamma bomb
This actually made me laugh at my desk