For the last couple of months, every so often the right side of my upper back would flare up. Now it’s pretty consistent. My girlfriend said my right spinal erector is significantly shorter than my left one, and is inflamed.
Some basic information about me:
-205 Pounds, recently dieted down from 225
-Been working six day weeks between meat, and produce department in a grocery store. It’s fairly physical
-I lift and do cardio 4 days a week
-College student
I spoke to one of the bigger guys in my gym today, and he suggested rolling my back on a yoga ball. I’ll be doing this for a while to see if it helps. Tomorrow I will be trying to get an appointment with a doctor for next week Monday
-Training upper back feels fine in the gym, hurts afterwords
-bench pressing hurts immediately when above 185 pounds
-Haven’t tried squatting anything heavy, not going to either.
-Training arms has not bothered it
-I do not deadlift regularly
I’m 99% sure it’s a repetitive strain injury.
Has anyone experienced something like this? What helped? Everywhere else online is trying to make me buy an ebook.
I had extremely tight erectors a while back.
In fact, I think it might be why I finally decided to make an account on here and stop lurking, just to ask a question about it.
I found lacrosse balls and massage helped a little.
Working on my squat form helped a little.
The thing that finally killed the problem for me was conscious bracing of the abs.
You say you have a physically demanding job, so I’m sure it could apply to you as well.
Every time you go to lift a box or something, treat it like a lift, squat down, BRACE YOUR CORE, then lift.
I can’t tell you how much this has helped me.
While some soft tissue release will work, I highly suggest you take care of releasing and stretching your hip flexors. Usually find that if the right side is inflammed, the the left hip flexor is very tight and restricted.
Give that a shot.
After that, some people have issues because one side of their erectors is more developed muscularly than the other (from repetitive motion to one side), there are some prescriptive exercises that you can use to balance out these muscular differences. If you find that, PM and I can give you the exercises to balance out the development between the sides of your spinal erectors.