Hurt my back - why no warning?

Yesterday I hurt my back, and now I can barely walk. What's bugging me (apart from being effectively crippled) is the fact that it happened without warning toward the end of my regular workout.

On friday night I had to push-start a friend's car. Tiring, but not painful, nothing felt strained. Didn't feel sore on saturday morning either. On saturday afternoon I was doing my usual workout. Hindu pushups - no problem. Back bridging - no problem. Front bridging - no problem. I was nearing the end of my squats (with medium weight bar) when my lower back suddenly gave out. There was no warning whatsoever. No prior pain, just the usual muscular tiredness. I'm confused by this. Presumably I strained myself on friday without realising it and my workout was too much for my back. But why didn't I feel any pain/discomfort during the first part of my workout?

I'm a lean, healthy 36 year-old, I have an active job (tradesman) and I work out 3 times/week. For this to happen so suddenly is worrying.

 

I jacked my back up standing up from the couch this morning, it hurt so bad I had to pull over my car. I don't get it. Anyway, Dogfishhead Midas Touch, a nice Syrah, and some Mortin helped!

 

I pulled/strained my back well over a year ago by making a reflex grab for a bag of building sand...still not right.

Back injuries are the absolute worse

 

warning?

Some people have done research showing that as much as ~60% of low back pain may be attributable to minor disc injuries. Compression/torsion hurts the disc but only the outer layers are pain sensitive. You feel nothing until you do something that causes the pressure to push through to the outer layers. This may occur suddenly without warning. You quite possibly did other things than what you remember that contributed to your situation (e.g. sat in a car, sat on the couch, slept in a curled up position etc)

This is a simplified explanation but essentially explains the gist of what you may have experienced. It might have been the pushing the car that started things out and then at some point in the workout you set things off.

Hope this makes at least a bit of sense.

FWIW

LFD

 

Yes, I've heard. Thing is, I wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary when it happened. Regular weight, regular workout. I've lifted that bar literally a few thousand times before with no pain/injury. If I'd been lifting a heavy weight or been in an awkward position I could understand sudden injury, but not from a low-stress "toning" exercise. Like I said, I presumably did some damage pushing the car, but why didn't I have any warning, or discomfort during my previous exercises? I want to understand what happened, so I can avoid it in the future.

 

Sorry to hear that man. Not something I wish on anyone.

Back pain and injuries (aside from the immediate traumatic type) are usually a cumulative affair. This is why they seem to come on with no warning. Which makes them all the more aggravating. And as you know unfortunately - when they come on it effects every single thing... you start to realize how finely tuned and tied into all your movements your lower back is.

If you had injured it pushing the car you may not have had any warning as in pain or instability until you put it under load again. Even a light load may have been enough to be the straw that broke the camels back. Bad pun.

Now the key is rest... rest rest and more rest. Some slow gentle stretching and then when you can move and go through your daily tasks without the strain... time to work on strengthening it. Don't think just because you are back up to speed and moving around that you are in the clear... this is a common problem for back pain sufferers... much like when people get medicine from the doctor... take a few doses... feel better and then stop the prescription half way through. Obviously this creates massive problems later as illnesses become immune to the treatments. Back pain is largely the same in that you will feel ok back up to speed but your weakest link is still there just looking for a way to put you down.

For exercises once you are back to a normal schedule.. you can start to look at ways to strengthen up your lower back... Remember the lower back and glutes work in tandem so your entire posterior chain will benefit from strengthening. It doesn't sound like you're a slouch at all.... but maybe a change up in routine.

This vid covers many of the drills I regularly use for clients...

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccFHpn-_Dfk"]Lower back strengthening exercises - YouTube[/ame]

many clients are older, long time back problem sufferers... and to my satisfaction (and mine).. all of them have not had any back pain flair ups when I've run them programs that incorporate these drills! They are not dramatic looking... the pt doing the demo isn't a muscley MMA grunt... but the drills themselves really hit the posterior chain and are a good activation method for the glutes and quadratus lumborum... all of which work with the whole posterior chain hams/glutes/QL's.

I'll dig up some stretches for the QL's etc. Also your psoas muscles (hip flexors) may be tight and the could be leading to weaknesses or stresses in your lower back. Just food for thought... it's a long term project (your back)... so just set up a game plan. I can't recommend enough the drills in that vid.

Get well.

 

Thanks to Slip and Late for the input.

Point taken, but the back-bridging/squats were intended to strengthen the lower back and glutes! Evidently, as you say, this time it was a bit much for a weakened back. I'll be looking through your exercises, sounds like just what I need.

You raise something I hadn't considered. I spend much of my time at work hunched over a bench or a job. Not painful, but could be placing my back under constant stress, waiting for a chance to flare up. My glutes are sore, but not painful, my quads and hamstrings are fine.

 

Saw a doctor yesterday. Seems it's a minor injury - more pain then strain. I'm still taking this seriously though! I have no desire to have this happen again, and any serious or long term injury of this nature would put my livelihood at risk.

Thanks again for those exercises Slip.

 

As much as we may laugh at and mock H&S departments, and their ergonomics surveys, this is why we have them. If you've got an H&S department it might be worth talking to them (or to HR) and mentioning your back injury. Explain that you're concerned your workspace may have contributed to the injury, and ask for someone to come and check it out, and help you get things sorted.

 

The best thing I can do for my working environment is raise my bench so I 'm not hunched over so often. When working on a job I'm probably better off kneeling than bending over, so I'll remember to do that in future.

 

Yeah this can be so easy to slip into. You don't even have to think about it. When I saw this thread I realized that even for myself I've sort slacked a bit on these type of drills. But man they feel good when you get the sets of them in. It's hard to put the finger on... but you feel more confident once you begin to work this area in earnest.

 

If you're standing at a bench and working... like you would be if your working motor parts or for that matter... washing dishes... it's very tough on the lower back. Especially over long periods. Your head is most likely looking down and tilting slightly forward away from your bases and spine and your feet will be right under your hips so you are leveraging roughly anywhere between 15 to 20lbs of head off your lower back.

Think of your spine as a long lever... the further off axis your head becomes the heavier it becomes.... with your lower back becoming the fulcrum point for keeping you from tipping over. I always try to get people to visualize it like a long pencil with an apple stuck on the end of it... if you hold that apple straight up and keep it over the axis of the pencil... no problem you can hold it up all day... but... the minute that apple sways off axis... you feel the pressure of the pencil you holding greatly increases as the apple comes off axis.. that is your lumbar spine. If I have to wash dishes given that kitchen counters at home here in China are low because people are much shorter usually than my 6'2" frame... I will take the time to put a small footstool under the sink and stand one foot on it... otherwise after a load of dishes I feel the twinge in the lower back.

Depending on your work set up at your bench you might try this... it will really take the pressure off the lower back by having one foot up slightly higher and forward of the other foot. Much like how you would stand at a bar with a rail. You don't have to stand like that all the time... but it's nice to have the option. I've seen so many guys in workshops that wreck their backs and they figure it's from heavy lifting when it's from prolonged standing with both feet square under them and looking down at the work table surface.

Just food for thought. The image below pretty much illustrates what I'm talking about... obviously you can't always be neutral but it helps to come back to it as often as possible.

 

Thank you muchly for that. I'd never considered having one foot forward/up and it will be easy to put a footrest/bar on my bench. I can easily see how it will make a difference to lower back stress.

I've long understood the importance of having a healthy back, which is why I made a point to include back exercises in my workout. But changing my work habits is probably of greater importance right now. I've got 25-30 years before retirement (and 28 years on my mortgage), I literally can't afford back problems.

BTW: the vast majority of the refrigerators/benches etc I make are mounted on a plinth to give the "toe space" illustrated in your diagram.

 

I recently started writing a blog because I want to help people not to make the same mistakes that me and many other martial artists have made, and which almost ended our martial arts careers. If I can help one person not to go through horror of thinking that he will never train again, then this will all be worth it.
I would like to make people who are training martial arts aware of this simple fact: If you are from an urban background, and you are in your twenties, then you are too old, too week, to deformed, too stuck in bad habits to be able to fallow the traditional training regimes without injuring yourself beyond repair. This doesn't mean that you can't practice and learn martial arts. This just means that you have to be very very careful how you do it, and you need to do a lot of preparatory work before you learn a single form. If you want to have a long martial arts career that is.
Few days ago I saw a video in which a Chinese bagua teacher is telling his class that they are all too old to train martial arts. The camera went around the room, and you could see that the average age of a student was early twenties. The teacher then proceeded to explain what he had meant:
The reason for starting young, is that as a kid, you can still stand and move in a natural way. You are not deformed by years of bad habits. This is when the fundamental practices are taught to reinforce this naturalness and openness. You are too old, so I would suggest you help yourself and give each other a massage before you start training, to align your bones and your joints... And then make sure that your body alignment is absolutely correct at all times, or you will injure yourself...and so on and so forth.
Here is the link to the video that I am talking about:
http://www.youtube.com/user/hejinghan#p/u/1/fZXJ5tBHWbI
If you are not a kid, you need to start by straightening your muscles and undoing the damage caused by years of doing things unnaturally. You need to relearn how to stand, how to walk, how to move, how to breathe. You need to open joints, strengthen and stretch muscles and tendons, rebuild cartilage and ligaments, open chi channels. Traditional martial arts training regimes were originally designed to be taught to manual laborers, peasants and solders. These were people who were already supper fit, strong and supple. They were able to sit in a Wing Tsun fighting stance without injuring their knees, because their glut and thigh muscles we strong enough to support them. But people starting to train martial arts today are not those kind of people. They don't work in fields all day. They sit in offices working with computers all day. They can't open their qua without ripping their psoas muscles apart. Their sacral joints are completely stuck. They can't generate power from their stomach, because they don't know how to breathe from their stomachs. They will instead try to generate power from their lower back and injure their spine. Or worse they will try to twist their body to the side, without being able to open and close their qua, and will either rip their knee ligaments or worse their spinal discs. Very few people learning martial arts were first taught how to stabilize their knees, in order to keep them over their second toe at all times, before they were taught how to do stances or walk, or kick. Maybe they were told that they should do so, but were never told how to do it. As a consequence, many martial artists end up with bad knee injuries.
As the Chinese teacher had said, you need to undo the damage first. You need to bring you self to a level where your muscles (all your muscles), your ligaments and your bones are strong enough, and your joints are open enough. And then you start with martial arts training. From my experience in various martial arts, this is not done, and dangers of doing things wrong are not emphasized enough. This is why so many people have to stop training when they are in their thirties. They get knee and back injuries that basically make them crippled and unable to continue training.
In order to open the joints, stretch and strengthen muscles, tendons and ligaments, all martial arts have developed at least some basic opening and stretching exercises. The reversing of bad habits needs to be done gradually, slowly, all the time listening to your body and changing the direction, kind and intensity of the practice as appropriate. But a lot of times the muscles, tendons, ligaments and bones are so stuck, that no amount of stretching and relaxation can do any good. And trying to push the body to stretch and open will definitely lead to injury which will then bring you straight to physio table or if you are unlucky to operating table. So sometimes it will be necessary to look for help outside the martial arts circles. And believe me, it's better to look for help before you get injured then after you get injured. Maybe acupuncture or deep tissue massage, or osteopath session, will be needed to correct, open or realign parts of your body. All the above body works are designed to speed up the process of rebuilding, realigning and opening of the body. And if you can afford them, use them. Also deep tissue massage and other forms of muscle and tendon hand manipulation can be learned by everyone. Internal martial arts practice should always incorporate massage as a way to speed up martial practice progress. So if you have a chance to learn any massage technique, do so. It will only enhance your martial arts practice.
In order to strengthen and repair your body, you also need to take care of your nutrition. Eat good balanced food. Don't drink (too much), don't take drugs (too much). Make sure you have enough protein, minerals and vitamins in your diet. Bad nutrition means bad bones, ligaments and muscles. It means lack of energy, it means slow recovery after injuries and heavy training sessions, it means stiff joints and muscles. It means poor senses, reaction times and awareness. Make sure you take plenty of omega 3 acids and glucosamine. These food supplements will help the process of rebuilding the damaged cartilage and bones.
So train smart, recognize and accept your limits and your weaknesses. This will get you a lot further than concentrating only on your strengths.