Herniated Disc

[Mantic]

Hi Sean - thanks your comments. Glad that your condition is improving. Yup, squats are essential I'd say : )

Hi Monk and many thanks for your exhaustive response. You've described the condition in greater detail than any other professional I've contacted - so cheers for that. I'm going to follow your advice and PM you the results, no need to tie the forum up, so that you can see how your remote sports injury case develops!

Seriously, huge thanks for your efforts - they are very much appreciated.

[Rugger]

I'm going to follow your advice and PM you the results, no need to tie the forum up, so that you can see how your remote sports injury case develops!

Hey, you aren't tying up anything, this is quality stuff, and the thread is stickied for a reason. I mean if you want to take it to PM that's fine, but what you've already said, and the exchange between you and Monk, is incredibly informative. Any additional information could be of help to anyone who comes here with the same problem in the future.

[Monk]

Sorry folks hadn't realised there were other people following this:

Mantic has only sent me one PM so far just requesting clarification of the exercises. I've copied and pasted my response below:

>You've almost got it:
>
>Sit on table in exaggerated perfect posture with legs dangling at the knee. (Thighs fully supported by >the table)
>Dorsiflex 1 ankle and then straighten that leg. Gently bounce the leg on the end of range position for >about 15 reps.
>Then repeat with the other leg exactly the same.
>
>Repeat this whole process 3 times per day. It's not much but don't be tempted to over do it.
>
>If you can get your leg straight at the knee sitting up right (ie with 90degree angle at the hip) with the >ankle dorsiflexed I would be inclined to reassess you but I would take it as a good sign.
>
>Hope this makes it clear. Let me know how you get on.


I guess it depends on Mantic but I'm sure he won't mind laying it all out in public for you, anyway I suppose the title of the thread is 'Herniated disk' so this is all relevant and I ought to charge for private work, after all this is a bit of a Marketing exercise for me!!

[billspaced]

Wow. Great initial post and follow-up questions and comments. I, too, had a similar issue (not sure "had" is the right word, as I don't think herniated discs ever become "un-herniated" without surgical intervention) - it kept me pretty much off my feet for months. The advice given here is great, by the way.

A couple things I did to improve: Inversion, physical therapy (ice, stretching, exercises, and posture), and heavy lifting. That last one really threw me - I thought for sure my symptoms would not go away by training heavy, but they did. I'm not suggesting that everybody try this, but it worked for me.

On the hamstrings question - great info given. One thing that hasn't been mentioned is the "foam roller." It's hard to do for the hamstrings, but it can help a lot. You simply roll your hams over a piece of hard foam. I don't know the physiology behind it, but it really is uncomfortable at first, but then you feel your hamstrings loosen up over time. It's worth a shot.

[Monk]

One thing that hasn't been mentioned is the "foam roller." It's hard to do for the hamstrings, but it can help a lot. You simply roll your hams over a piece of hard foam. I don't know the physiology behind it, but it really is uncomfortable at first, but then you feel your hamstrings loosen up over time. It's worth a shot.

Hey Bill... Thanks for the comment... you're right. Stimulating the muscles with pressure as you described does cause neural inhibition which will cause things to relax. Unfortunately I have never seen this work long term, the tone always seems to come back after a few hours... please tell me if you've had a different experience, I would be very interested to know.

This is however an interesting phenomen: If you get somebody to massage your legs they should be able (depending how good their palpation skills are) to identify specific areas of tight muscle. These areas of higher tone are the facilitated segments it is then possible to map out exactly where the injury is: ... let me explain.

Your spinal nerves contain hundreds of little nerves (think of a hosepipe full of pieces of cotton) These nerves are very highly organised and travel to specific locations within the muscle. Each individual nerve will then fire a bunch of muscle cells (size of bunches vary). Therefore if you find a bunch of muscle cells with higher tone you know that the nerve to that bunch is being stimulated further up the chain... possibly by the scar tissue. Now, due to the highly organised nature of the nerve fibres and if your embryology is good enough you can get an accurate idea of the actual injury site by mapping the location of the facilitation(s) within the overall muscle.

This has bugger all medical relevance but I think it's quite interesting!!

[kerosene]

This was a great find.

I have herniated disc too - and pretty bad sciatic pain in my leg. I didn't have a single incident accidetn I coudl recall - the back started being bad about Mar 08 and got worse through summer 08 - MRIs in the autumn confirmed that the disc is bulging and pressing the nerve.

Doctor gave me cortisone orally, then shots in back - to calm the inflammation. As the problem was already pretty stabilized I had doubt that it give anything but temporary relief. Then doc gave me 3 wonderful options:
1. live with it - it will never go away
2. have surgery where they nip a bit of the disc off
3. epidural into the back that will allow the inflammation to go away - my friend said that getting drunk sounds like a better solution when costs are considered and I agreed. If 2 months of cortisone etc. didn't make a change in any direction.

When I asked the doc about physical therapy extension (pulling your back) etc. always the answer was "you can try but it will not help."

Had a friend surgeon check the MRI images and show them to his buddies he said yes maybe surgery but try everything else 1st. Never went back to my doc and stopped pooping pain killer when I ran out. Worst of the pain went away - comes back every now and then. Over the winter my only exercise was kayakin once a week and had a break from it too. I knew that I had to strengthen my back and abs but lack of mobility and pain has been preventing much of that.

Now finally I feel recovered enough that I can start adding more exercise. That's how I found 5x5 website and I am happy to hear that recover is possible and maybe even likely.

My current plan of action is
general low impact cardio and core exercises with some general stuff push ups etc. with lot of stretching. I am meeting with a trainer once a week and he gives me a pretty exhausting circuit training routine - he i swell aware of my back. Weekends kayaking for an hour when time allows. SO far (week into it) back has been feeling better - can't run though - the pounding is too much. Can't get my fingers even close to my feet - hard to distinguish from sciatic pain and hamstring tightness.

In a month or so I might start 5x5 with very conservative progress plan.

[Mantic]

Hi guys, sorry for the long absence. Just had our third baby (a boy this time) so been somewhat busy. However, I thought I'd drop by and let you know what the situation is.

For now, and for the last couple of months, I've been training as usual : 4 days a week heavy weights and 1 cardio session. I'm supplementing this with jump rope (skipping if you will) but it's early days and I've only just got my rpm up to 140 skips per minute. I altered my programme, for a couple of months, to what I call Hard and Fast (lifting the weights with maximum, controlled speed with slightly higher reps - still not to failure). But now I'm back doing a "lift heavy for low reps but not to failure" programme.

So to cover the highlights :

Strength - stronger than ever and continuing to make gains.
Fitness - improving, slowly.
Flexibility - improving, slowly (I'm really referring to leg / back here as my flexibility everywhere else is pretty stable).
Pain - no pain and only minor discomfort on second day after doing squats / deads. The mornings make for a fair bit of tightness but nothing like the pain I was putting up with before.

My core strength is stronger than ever by a long shot - I can now do one hand extended up press ups (lie in a press up position but have you're arms extended along the ground above your head, press up from there). These caused me major back pain before but slowly my core has improved to the point where they're pretty straightforward.

Flexibility-wise I'm doing more dynamic stretching now - Monk helped me a lot there and his advice is top notch.

So all in all, a major improvement. My advice to anyone (especially Kerosene) is don't listen to everything your doctor / GP tells you. I was given the same doom and gloom story from almost everyone, even from the NHS provided Sports Injury Therapist. You have to remember that most people don't exercise and if they do, it's pretty low key. Consequently, doctors and health specialists usually get to see (let's be honest) failure mediocre bodies, so it's hardly surprising that the results are equally pedestrian....

Rather than running, try jump rope. You'll burn more calories per minute and the impact is usually less (you're spreading the impact over both feet rather than one). Also, you learn a new skill which can look pretty cool : ) Run a search on Buddy Lee - the guy is a jump rope genius. After a few months, chances are you'll be running again.

There's a wealth on information on this forum, which can take a time to digest, but the results can be wonderful. My advice is to take your physical training seriously, take your mental training equally seriously (ie read, learn, apply) and never place another person's short-comings on yourself : just because someone else can't get pain free through exercise, doesn't mean that you have to go down the same road.

Let us know how you get on!

[guru]

Congratulations Mantic on baby's arrival. Must've been a busy father.

Kudos to you for training throughout.

[Mantic]

Ha! Thanks for the compliment Guru. I took a month off training with the first, three weeks with the second and only a week with the third. Not sure what would happen if we had a fourth..... : )

[StevieB]

My advice for ALL back issues is to read the works of Dr Stuart McGill.

Also, Cressey is currently writing a series called "Lower Back Savers", he's written 3 0f 4, and its good.
You'll find that here:
http://ericcressey.com/articles

I slipped/prolapsed/herniated a disc in march of this year(3 months ago), happened when Deadlifting (with probably bad form) in the morning.
- was also a case of failing to check my ego at the door as I attempted a PR after I achieved everything I set out to do in my workout. One rep too many!
Had physio and hardcore anti-inflams and painkillers for 2 weeks then progressively started working out again.
I'm back to powercleaning 80kg, but haven't touched the DL yet.
My back feels great though, every other day I do:
Cat-camel, Bird-dogs, Side bridge and curl-ups as suggested by McGill and it has done wonders for me
cheers!

[rossi]

Question for Mantic and the others with slipped disks: what caused it to slip? Training exercise or something else? Perhaps you could tell us what happened so we can try to learn from it and avoid it.

[Mantic]

Hi Rossi, sorry for the delay in replying, I'm only here now and then.

I did my back in as follows.

1. I was running out of time with my training sessions (trying to cram too much into a session really) so I had to get rid of exercises that I thought were of less use - so I chucked out some of my core training exercises. That's foolish mistake ONE - on its own not a major problem, as long as you're getting a decent amount of core training elsewhere.

2. Squatting form was poor - like most people, I had been instructed by people who knew nothing about squatting, so my form was really not that good. As a result, I did not enjoy squats. I struggled with them for years and slowly gave up. That's foolish mistake TWO - squatting should form part of the backbone of strength training.

3. Needing a 'replacement' for squats I adjusted my power rack so that it could be used as a smith machine. I then used it for vertical leg press. The main problem with my jury rigged kit was that the back pad I made was not supportive enough and the exercise had to start at the lowest point of the movement (the hardest point). That's foolish mistake THREE and it's the final nail in the coffin, so to speak. No core training through core specific exercises and now none as a by-product of another exercise (like squats). I now have a core that's getting weaker and weaker.

You can see that after several months I had the makings of a really thoughtless injury. I had gone in with the best intentions - "adjust my training to compensate for reduced training times and find an alternative for squats". However, what I had done instead was remove nearly all my core training and start training with a questionable exercise in the worst possible way. I got strong in vertical leg press - I ended up doing well over 700 lbs (320+ kilos) but all I was doing was working towards doing my back in.

There's nothing that wrong with the vertical leg press, when it's used as an assistive, not primary exercise - especially as long as you start at the top of the range of movement. But I broke these rules and suffered as a consequence. Fact is, if I had learnt how to squat properly, then I am all but certain that this would never have happened.

I hope that this helps some of you guys out : never forget the big picture "why are you training?". Look at each exercise you do, each session you do, each month you do, each year you do and ask yourself, is this working me towards my goal? Is this helping me out in the long term? Then ask yourself, is something missing? Is there something that I can include that will make my goals a reality with less risk and more certainty? The mistake I made was to forget the big picture - I stopped squatting when I should have started squatting, because what I was doing before sure as hell wasn't squats!

One of the best pieces of advice I can give is, if you've never had decent squat training, get a copy of "Starting Strength" by Mark Rippetoe and Lon Kilgore. An awesome work!

Good luck!

[Mantic]

Oh and thanks StevieB - there seem to be some very interesting articles there - I'll trawl through them this week : )

[Monk]

Reminds me of something one of my old biomechanics lecturers told me.

"Other than blows from external forces eg a kick or a fall, there is no such thing as a sudden onset injury. Traumatic onsets are just the inevitable pop which results from chronic accumulation of muscle and structure imbalance!" ie All injuries have a chronic cause!!

[Mantic]

Bump