First Set of Squats After Bulged Disk

Hey all, I just wanted to post a video of my first set back after a very annoying injury. I bulged a disk a fews months ago and have been going to rehab after experiencing nerve pain. Now that the symptoms are gone and I have done well in therapy I am ready to start nice and slow back to where I was. Let me know if these squats look good or if I should make the " box" higher until my mobility improves.

Orourkei,

This is what I think:-

  1. You need to keep your chest high on desent, it’s almost facing the floor.
  2. Adjust your grip so that your hands are closer together, this will aid keeping your chest high.
  3. Adjust both feet so they are shoulder width apart and your feet are at 1 and 11 o’clock.
  4. You’re spot on get a higher box too.
  5. Lose the weight off the bar and really focus on your technique - go right back to basic’s

Looks like your almost deadlifting, but with the bar on your back. Try the trapbar it’s a great tool for teaching a good squat pattern.

Please post another video when you have made the adjustments.

Is that low bar or high bar squat? I want to say low bar due to your feet position and the way your knees do not move during descent, but the bar seems to be placed on what would generally be high-bar positioning.

It looks as though your chest almost becomes perpendicular to the floor when you go down. Essentially, you look as though you’re leading with your chest, not your hip. For high bar, you want to sit down. For low bar, you want to sit back. But both require you to keep your chest up as high as you can so that you’re not placing any undue pressure onto lower back.

With the low bar you’ll have a lower chest in relation to your hip simply because of bar placement forcing you to angle your upper body so that the bar remains at the center of your feet. High bar should have virtually no such angle because any movement of the upper body will move the bar away from the center of the feet.

Everything you do screams low bar squat besides the actual bar placement, and I think that’s why your upper body is bending so much. I don’t think mobility is necessarily an issue; though it’s difficult to tell unless you go deeper.

In any case, figure out which squat you want to do and adjust accordingly. It’s not a good idea to try to do low bar squats with high bar placement or high bar squat with low bar placement.

This is another angle from the same day. I was focusing on powerlifting before the injury so I am working with a low bar squat. Im not sure why you found the bar placement to be too high ,its not sitting on the traps maybe it was just the angle of the first one(or maybe my understanding of lowbar placement is incorrect). I will take some move videos and try to sit more upright

Ya, I think it was camera angle.

Looks perfect from the second video.

1)agree with runneruk about trap bar or maybe goblet squat for form
2)im no pt but why box squat? isnt that going to put allot of pressure on spine/disc, i would think that would be bad for you injury
best of luck with your return to training

Davy, thanks. Its more of a squat to a box rather than a true box squat. I’m just putting it there so I don’t go any deeper. My hips have a tendency to tuck at that point. This is a good example of what my squats looked like before the injury, the pattern is pretty consistent. The injury happened during a max deadlift. My spine went into flexion right around my knees but I kept pulling to lock it out and Ive been dealing with it ever since

It seems you are a longer limbed lifter, but it looks a lot more like a good morning than a squat. The bar is out ahead of your hips, this is going to put excessive force on your lower back. I would wager as a result of squatting that way, you have/had a much stronger lower back than your hamstrings/glutes. You probably injured yourself as a result of that imbalance.

Sit back a little more and keep your chest more upright.

Hello orourkei, I have a bulging disk in my lumbar region also. I was wondering what you did too help your bulging disc as it has been bothering me for a couple of months now and I am desperate for help. Ive already been to 4 different doctors. What did you do to help your bulging disc recover? Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

[quote]666Rich wrote:
It seems you are a longer limbed lifter, but it looks a lot more like a good morning than a squat. The bar is out ahead of your hips, this is going to put excessive force on your lower back. I would wager as a result of squatting that way, you have/had a much stronger lower back than your hamstrings/glutes. You probably injured yourself as a result of that imbalance.

Sit back a little more and keep your chest more upright.[/quote]

x2

In addition to that, you have the bar past your toes!!! That’s a huge no no. The bar should travel in line with your midfoot and it should drop straight up and down like a plum line.

What you have there right now is squat-morning to a bench.

Absolutely don’t squat like that if you don’t want more back problems.

edit: My first guess is that’s it’s either a technique error in which case you just need to regroove your squat or it’s your hip external rotation and possibly hamstring flexibility and your compensating my putting the bar farther forward.

I’m not sure the bar does goes in front of his toes - draw a line straight up from his toes - there’s not too much in it tbh.
Back position looks good, not much wrong here IMHO ?