Back pain

Recommend something like the 7 minute HiiT workout (it's a 7 minute circuit which you can do as many times as you want) to get your heart rate up and after stretch your glutes (back ache is rarely your actual back that is the cause), I use a foam roller which I also recommend having on hand.

I goto my osteopath often with back problems and the above is always my "homework".

mcgill big3 for all things low back

world's greatest stretch for hip flexor (and upper back in general)

anterior pelvic tilt stuff (mainly couch stretch, planking and glute exercises, but worth paying attention to it all day)

I was gonna say squats and deadlifts, but without gym access that might be pretty tricky :(

Cheers all, that's given me a few things to look into.

Have a look at the "couch stretch" which is great for your quads/hip flexors. Can be done against a wall or a settee.

like many others, sitting and working on the sofa and minimal exercise (i might do a brisk 3 miles of a morning, possibly a 12 mile bike ride weather permitting, but not nearly enough) has exacerbated my lingering lower back ache. been trying these exercises, hopefully i'll see a difference. her accent is like nails on a chalkboard.

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/nhs-fitness-studio/chronic-back-pain-pilates-exercise-video/

Fuuuuuck

Was just gardening and put my back out. Collapsed to the ground and had to phone my wife to come and get me. Can’t stand upright. She had to walk in front of me with my head resting between her shoulders just to get back into the house. I haven’t had to leave the house in over a month and typically I am booked onto a first aid at work course tomorrow. Currently not sure if I can attend.

Can barely shuffle around the house. And am in agony. Fuckety fuck.

That sounds awful, James. Hope you find a therapy that works. Here's to speedy improvement.

Cheers

Shock has worn off and now a heads ache and waves of nausea have kicked in.

Thankfully the course have said I can postpone if I am not fit to attend tomorrow.

I've had about 6-7 episodes like this over the past decade or so when my back just 'goes'. It is absolutely debilitating and usually takes about 7-10 days to get back to anything close to full range of motion, in my case it requires prescription anti-inflammatories. I also had to get moving as soon as possible; the more I walked (well, hobbled) the better I felt. Best of luck and hopefully the pain eases quickly.

Not medical advice, just a comment.

There’s growing evidence in sports medicine that return to light activity as soon as possible is better for recovery, particularly with (some!) back injuries. Also, there’s growing evidence that taking too long to return to activity is bad for a full recovery. This might be common knowledge already but it’s a departure from what I’ve seen and had a lot of doctors advise: rest for X number of days then return to light activity. It seems that what we should be doing to optimise recovery is using our bodies as soon an injury has healed enough that light activity doesn’t continue to damage it, which isn’t necessarily a set amount of days or weeks.

That's certainly true of the advice I've received from the last two physios I've seen, they've both championed active recovery. In my case it basically boiled down to doing the prescribed mobility exercises as soon as I could perform them with no more than 3 in the 1-10 pain scale and walking as much as possible every day.

And one year later my back has gone again. I wasn’t doing anything exciting, was on the phone and hitched my trousers up and bam. Fuck knows why, have lost a considerable amount of weight and been doing more yoga, core work and resistance band work this year. Now sitting in a hot bath feeling sorry for myself. Was meant to be doing heavy lifting today - collecting firewood and preparing building site and pallets for a delivery of materials today. Fuck fuck fuck

Ouch.

Mine went into major spasm last week, but I managed to ease it off with a very painful hockey ball session.

I hope it gets better soon!

When it's disc based, what's the scan I need to request to clarify? MRI?

Preemptive back ache, sounds rough. Maybe schedule in an afternoon of Netflix and see if your back takes the bait?

MRI was what I had. Clearly showed a herniated disc.

Cheers

@dancing james it's weird with exercise and back pain. Not sure if I can pinpoint any correlation for myself, but I've come to the conclusion that yoga does me no good back ache wise. Neither does Pilates. Lifting helped most in the past, but every now and then I do a bad one and that makes a negative impact for a few days. Least I feel back pain is when I do hard interval sort of stuff, like 30/30s, regularly. Which I don't atm, and now my back is sore.

Hope you get better soon.

Cheers

It seems to have receded and was just a day and a half of agony. What offends me most was I didn’t do anything exciting or overly strenuous. Right now I am in about the best shape I have been in years yet could be so easily scuppered hitching my trousers up (because I have lost weight so they are too loose)!

Yoga can't help with real, long-lasting injuries, though, can it? You can get extremely fit and all that, but if you still have a back nerve/disc problem, it will come out from time to time. Or so I thought, not really knowing anything about it, just mindful of the limitations of yoga.

Lumbar MRI as @aggi says but you should be guided by a medical professional/physio on this (you won't get one without doing that anyway).

Sorry to hear that. What was the diagnosis last year?

@Oliver Schick it can help but it can't fix.

I should probably document my issues and hopefully resolution in this thread or at the sciatica thread at some point but it's going to be quite long!

If it's disc based then likely that it's protruding for some time and then the day of high levels of pain is when it finally decided to impinge on your nerve.

Yep. I have a couple of degenerating discs. Yoga/core work helps stabilise and strengthen around this but as you say there are days when the bulge presses up against the nerve. It’s a long term issues 5 years ago needed steroid injections to get me to a point where I could do rehab work to reduce the symptoms. It just comes back to haunt me at inopportune moments - though to be honest there is never a good time to be incapacitated and in pain doing normal things like breathing!