Becoming Awesome with a Herniated Disc

OP: Have you seen Ben Bruno’s latest article, Finding Your Big 3? This is the perfect opportunity for you to evolve your training mentality. If you have an injury preventing you from doing any of the big four (squat/bench/dead/press) then you’re going to have to be creative and experiment. You don’t NEED any of those to become strong.

You can get strong using front squat and trap bar deadlift instead of back squat and barbell deadlift. Find a medical professional who has experience with athletes and get their opinion. That would have been the first thing I asked the doc if I was told to “NEVER load my spine again” - “What experience with athletes do you have? What if I make a living by loading my spine?” Don’t be a retard.

Keep your ego in check. If you do start back on squats etc, go super light and build your body up. Good luck.

As a former Herniated Disc sufferer you have to just find what works. Mine was so bad I wouldn’t have considered loading my back. But after surgery and still having a bulge on the other side I squat and deadlift freely. Just concentrate on form first and weight second. Try squatting and listen to your body. Experiment with deadlift form and variations to find what you can and can not do.

Hell you can program 531 with any movement. If you wanted to use leg press or split squats you could do it. Don’t limit yourself.

Some exercises that I found good were pull throughs and single leg hack squats. Standard single leg squat variations and lunges still caused me trouble. You will get back to doing squats and deadlifts but don’t go for it as soon as you feel pain free. Just because you aren’t currently feeling any pain will not necessarily mean you are totally recovered. I learned the hard way.

After about 8 months I found myself able to use some lighter weight sldls and front squats and now, almost 12 months after, I’ve discovered that zercher squats allow me to go as heavy as I can without any issues. I find that keeping the weight low and close to the midline, and only going to parallel helps to avoid any lower back pain.

Take it easy, experiment, and slowly build back up. Last week was the first time I’ve deadlifted heavy (for me) since i herniated a disc a year ago. I worked up to a single at 140kg but didn’t want to push too hard and go for more. This week I hit 147.5 and I’m hoping in the next couple of weeks to hit my pre-injury max of 150kg.

I’ve got 3 herniated discs L3-S1 and I can still do almost everything without pain. I didn’t start out this way and it has been a hard road. I tried physical therapy and a chiropractor but none of those really helped. I decided to start lifting again and did a crap ton of abdominal work and added kettlebell swings and I am more or less pain free with the occasional flare up. I can say this though; back squats in any variation pretty much leave me laying on the couch in the fetal position with a bottle of vicodine by my side.

I’ve bought a thick ass belt and that also helps but I have had to pretty much stick to front squats. I have no idea why back squats are the only exercise that bothers me probably has to deal with shearing forces or just the build of my body or maybe even my technique. Good luck!

[quote]knormxxx wrote:
I decided to start lifting again and did a crap ton of abdominal work and added kettlebell swings and I am more or less pain free with the occasional flare up. [/quote]

Agree with the need to do a lot of ab work. Avoiding pain is all about having good support from your core muscles. I would recommend avoiding most flexion exercises but have found knee raises, pallof presses, a cable weighted hip flexor stretch, and rollouts to be great. They all have heaps of ways to progress as needed as well.