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Brian Carroll
Good morning, My name is Shafiq Blake and I have a few questions. So I just bought your book gift of injury and it hasn’t came in the mail yet, but I was wondering what you thought of me doing stuff like push up, dips, and pull ups at my house while recovering from a disc injury around the l5/s1 area? I’ve tried to work around the injury and have been injured for 5 months but sometimes after going to the gym and lifting I’ll have a little bit of a worse burning lower back pain after my workouts?
Hello,
First of all, thanks for the question. But patience is key. I would also suggest checking out Back Mechanic to help compliment GOI and 10/20/life. I would suggest avoiding anything other than walking and stabilizing your core, with moving perfectly.
What you are doing is recreating the injury over and over aka picking the scab. Don’t do this!
Hey Shafiq,
I was in a very similar situation (sadly a lot worse) due to spine injury. Traditionally, during times where I tried to recover I would do a lot of body weight exercises thinking this would alleviate the pain, when in reality it was just “picking the scab” and would cause me to start my strength phases with a sensitive spine. I recently came back into sport after aggravating and re-injuring my spine (L2-L3 herniation, L5-S1 herniation and 4 bulges). What Brian is saying above is tried and true and what you will find in Gift of Injury and Back Mechanics is verbatim what I used. I won’t tell you how to run your program but I prescribe these books to all my lifters, clients and friends with and without back issues so that they an get a deeper understanding of the spine before continuing training. Try to address that back issue first before progressing into any other movements. Brian helped me come back from the serious spine issues I mentioned above, so I promise you this isn’t a sales gimmick, rather, its a process backed by science and experience. Hope you heal up brother and thank you for visiting our QnA.
Check this book out:
Cheers
MDLP
Definitely stay away from anything that is aggravating it. One of your goals should be to identify exercises you can do without pain and start getting strong at those. Anything that doesn’t cause pain is something you can develop while you keep figuring out the injury. If you haven’t yet had a period of more than at least a month with no pain you may have to reduce to just walking for a bit to desensitize the area.