I seriously hurt my back last Monday. Carrying out deadlifts, I wasn’t completely focused on the lift and when I stood up rather than use my legs / glutes to take me through the exercise I left this to my lower back. I immediately felt an uncomfortable stretch of the muscles in my lower back and a sharp, uncomfortable nervous feedback. Dropping the weight I carefully lowered myself to the ground, trying to assess how injured I was, how safe it was to move, where it hurt and what to do next.
Monday night’s sleep was really challenging – to the extent that I ended up taking a combination of paracetamol & ibuprofen to reduce the swelling / pain to allow me to sleep and help the healing process. When I did eventually wake up on Tuesday morning I could barely move without sharp aching pangs of warning pain. Part of me found it quite amusing as I rolled, incredibly slowly, around on the bed trying to work out how / what part to move to get me closer to getting up. Getting onto the floor was an achievement, but now I was puzzled as to whether I could walk or not. It felt like I couldn’t put any weight / rotation through the base of my spine / top of pelvis at all. Thankfully with some patience and the aid of 2 broomstick handles I was able to use my upper body strength to pull myself up and slowly hobble around. This then led onto the problem of:
- What exactly had I done
- How to help everything get better.
I was in two minds about going to A&E as I was fairly certain it wasn’t a skeletal/ bone injury, but also didn’t know enough about discs to rule something disc related out. Thankfully Jen had a massage booked with a great local woman, who has a fairly spiritual attitude to her work. She gave me a really gentle and slow myo-fascial release treatment, which was perfect as my intention was to calm the injured area, to give it permission to let go of the tension I was holding to protect the damaged area and hopefully free me up to get some easier movement.
Sleep on Tuesday night was tough – and on Wednesday I went to a local Acute Trauma Unit, where as expected I was put under a lot of pressure to take pain medication (which I had no intention of doing as I wanted to feel progress and what I could / couldn’t do). An aside from all of this is the worrying over-dependance on pain medication under nearly all circumstances. I’m almost certain we are capable of bearing pain far more easily than we now expect and it fundamentally removes / blunts engagement with the healing process. We’ve taken a really important and valuable tool and turned it into a mallet – where everything looks like a nut to smash to bits with pain medication. That aside I was given a wonderful piece of advice that set off a light bulb in my head. It was suggested that I lie down on the floor and also move (which was then supported by take pain relief so you can move comfortably!) I realised that the combination of lying on the floor would put my skeleton in a really favourable position to help relax the muscles / shift the tension / compression relationship that was now dysfunctional due to overstretching when lifting. Walking would then put really gentle movement back into the lower back, allowing blood flow and strengthening.
Getting home I lay down outside for an hour. As soon as I lay down, pillow under my head, legs bent, feet flat on the ground, I felt my whole lower back let go. Finding a higher level of comfort than I had for the previous 2 days was invigorating I set my alarm for an hour, lay there, alarm went off and I went for a walk around the house (well hobble slowly with my broomsticks as crutches). I then returned to lying down and resting my back. That night sleep was fine – until the morning when having been on a softer surface for the previous 8 hours it felt as if I had gone backwards a few paces. Discomfort and pain came back, so I got down on the floor and this again worked it’s magic and made me feel significantly more comfortable.
So what then followed for the next few days was a mix of floor / bed sleeping at night and during the day spending an hour lying on the floor, followed by a walk of progressive nature day by day – currently I’m up to an hour for my long way and have halved my initial walking times from last Thursday. Mornings I’d listen to a healing meditation and focus my attention on my lower back. Evenings I’d add in the tens machine & ice for 20 minutes.
Whilst doing this I did some research on lying flat on the floor and came across the idea of Constructive Rest as part of the Alexander technique – which I really enjoyed learning about. The posture I had found to be so effective something that is recognised and taught as a really efficacious method of tuning into and calming down your body. Another aspect I begun to play with was the position of my lower lumbar / pelvis, subtly lifting would engage or support my back in a nuanced fashion and allow an even deeper level of relaxation. This then chimed with a supportive piece of advice I received on the Scholar Program:
“Try adding just a touch more height almost to the point where your hips/pelvis are barely in contact with the ground and relax into it so that you aren’t flexing to keep everything from the waist down ‘up’. After about 8 seconds or so the muscles relax and the tissue will take over the load through the relaxation and gravity does the work for you to reduce that tension plus signals for some better fascial tissue generation/change in phenotype of collagen.”
All of which has been accompanied by UTMB this weekend – live streamed on YouTube was really good, if not a little too good when I gave myself a tele headache on Friday trying to watch all of the 100k CCC race, which is far more tele than I ever normally focus on.
It’s been a week since I hurt myself and I feel I’ve made really solid progress, using the floor / walking method of rehab. I’ve got a physio appointment on Friday AM to ensure that it is all going in the right direction and nothing more serious than a torn muscle that is knitting itself back together. Then onwards to get marathon fit for Valencia, all of which great base training for UTS 100km Snowdon next May.
