Bodily Vitality

[august]

I hurt my lower back doing deadlifts, and even though I could lift pain free again after reducing load and taking short breaks, the injury reoccured. It has gotten to the point where I stopped pulling from the floor. Does anybody have experience with this?

Lower back strains are tricky because they can take forever to fully heal and are quick to reagitate if you're not careful. In my experience, heating the area before you work out and applying ice afterwards for about 20 minutes each helps more than you'd think. I'm assuming that you were doing barbell deadlifts - they're fine and I know a lot of people consider them essential but I started avoiding them outright for this very reason. Trap bar deadlifts are your best alternative if you still want to deadlift but need something less taxing on the lower back. If it still hurts doing those, I'd just supplement deadlifts entirely for some time with accessory exercises until the pain subsides.

[Hamamelis]

Lower back strains are tricky because they can take forever to fully heal.

If I can find a sensible way of doing it, I'll try heating my lower back before training. Thanks for the tip.

I mainly do Deficit RDLs and Good Mornings now for posterior chain training. I have gone without injury for 6 months now while doing this, but it still feels like my lower back is weirdly sensitive. On the plus side, I can really recommend Deficit RDLs, I would never have tried them if I hadn't been looking for ways to recover, but they give an outstanding hamstring stretch.