Thread: back pain

heat won't help now , in fact it might make it worst, ....it will help later .
this type of injury unfortunately takes a long time to heal, but it won't stop you from working out.....just avoid squating for now. medicine (pills or cream) can help with the pain. and in the future , if your goal is to build muscle and look good , there is no need to squat heavy at all, unless your goal is powerlifting. I can squat a lot , but never train with more than 165 lbs and rarely go up to 220, my legs got much bigger since i decided to use low weight and high reps. Squats and deadlifts are great exercises if done properly and avoiding heavyweights and they can be your worst enemy if you go heavy, because the slightest mistake in your technique can cost you a lot..and anybody can make such a mistake.
As you start feeling better there are some exercises that will strengthen your back muscles around your vertebrates and in the middle of your back.

Sounds like you've got a giant muscle spasm going on. I'd suggest doing a good warmup w/ foam rolling - Joe Defranco has good stuff

I'd research foam rolling in general. Include ice on that tight spot - a bag of frozen peas makes for a good ice pack. If you can, I'd also suggest checking out a good massage therapist / chiropractor. Its not necessarily something that will work itself out immediately, but I think w/ some continued work, at a min, some foam rolling, and even better, some massage therapy, will help get that muscle to release.

Foam rollers have saved me before.
I used to use a rolled up towel but I got a foam roller and its awesome.
I sometimes use tennis balls for smaller muscles.

wouldnt they get even bigger if u squat high reps, but used high weight too

Originally Posted by bjg

heat won't help now , in fact it might make it worst, ....it will help later .
this type of injury unfortunately takes a long time to heal, but it won't stop you from working out.....just avoid squating for now. medicine (pills or cream) can help with the pain. and in the future , if your goal is to build muscle and look good , there is no need to squat heavy at all, unless your goal is powerlifting. I can squat a lot , but never train with more than 165 lbs and rarely go up to 220, my legs got much bigger since i decided to use low weight and high reps. Squats and deadlifts are great exercises if done properly and avoiding heavyweights and they can be your worst enemy if you go heavy, because the slightest mistake in your technique can cost you a lot..and anybody can make such a mistake.
As you start feeling better there are some exercises that will strengthen your back muscles around your vertebrates and in the middle of your back.

I did the same thing last fall man. I agree with Sassy, see a good Chiropractor that has a massage therapist too. I had the same thing, a knot in my back that I could feel pulling when I did certain movements.

My chiropractor told me that sometimes the back muscles spasm up like that to protect the spine. Like your body is afraid of the spine getting strained so it spasms like that. The body's reaction can be worse than the 'perceived' danger. He worked on me and did some deep tissue massage on the knot. It got the muscles to loosen up enough for him to adjust my back. But it will still tighten up again and there is gonna be some recovery time for it to totally return to normal. Get it massaged and see if it loosens up and relaxes a bit, if it does, do this once a day if you can (like getting somebody to massage it for you or using the foam rolling or a rubber ball to try it yourself). I was back to squatting again two weeks later, took it easy for about another three weeks before I was squatting heavy again.

Um yea. Get off of the forum and go see a doc. I'm a fan of ultrasound therapy over massage but if you don't have any in your area go for massage. foam roll yes.

foam rolling has been quite helpful, and using a tennis ball to try release the muscle spasm has been helpful to. thanks for the replies

Originally Posted by sassy69

Sounds like you've got a giant muscle spasm going on. I'd suggest doing a good warmup w/ foam rolling - Joe Defranco has good stuff

I'd research foam rolling in general. Include ice on that tight spot - a bag of frozen peas makes for a good ice pack. If you can, I'd also suggest checking out a good massage therapist / chiropractor. Its not necessarily something that will work itself out immediately, but I think w/ some continued work, at a min, some foam rolling, and even better, some massage therapy, will help get that muscle to release.

Well said ! I use all the above when my back tenses up like that. A product called bio freeze works great as well.

A while ago I had exactly a locked up muscle right along side my spine. It sucked. I was able to address it pretty quickly w/ my chiro + massage therapist. The whole reason locked up muscles occur is either from a sudden motion it wasn't expecting/hitting it just right w/ a loss of form, or ongoing result of existing push/pull imbalance. The quick jolt type things tend to be addressable pretty quickly. The ongoing result - for example I had shoulder surgery a couple years ago, and then re-jacked it at my last show - 18+ months ago. That re-jacking is such that my shoulder gets tired quickly when lifting. Because that muscle can't really do what I'm asking of it, the other muscles around it tend to step in to support / protect the sore muscle -- basically the secondary muscles start doing the work of the primary movers and I regularly end up w/ my upper right back muscles balling up. This typically causes my scapula to get pushed out and everything peripheral to that starts to get sore. That's the one that requires regular maintenance like that DeFranco workout + foam rolling.