a month ago i worked up to what would have been a difficult five reps with 405 but on the first rep i felt a pop about two vertebraes right above the tailbone and got a fair bit of pain. i was able to complete the rep though. i thought it would take a few days to heal, but it took two weeks for me to be able to bend over in a somewhat natural looking manner w/o pain. i still feel and dull agravatting pain whilst sitting and flexion is the major source of pain. if i sit for a long time i will arch my back to ease discomfort(which is actualy a neat thing to remember).
i think the injury was caused by me not knowing how to warm up proper. i did it soon after waking up, starting with 295, and made it my first lift of the day. i did not want to do alot of sets warming up because my conditioning is terrible.
also my form might not be perfect, the area that got messed up is where i have been feeling the most pressure, i did tend to squat a bit to try to keep my back straight, maybe it did the opposite.
i want to start deadlifting again because that is my only good lift
You might have a Spondylolisthesis which is a fx in the vertebrae on the spinous process. It happens in the area you are describing often around L5/S1 area. The psoas attaches on L5 and can pull the vertebrae forward resulting in a fx or herniated disc. However it could be a number of things from ligament tears to a herniated disc. I would go see an ortho or AT and have them do an eval on you so you can figure out what it is. Good luck
age? ht? wt?
what exercise were you doing exactly?
do you have any pain radiations into your buttock or down your legs?
is the pain worse on trunk flexion or extension?
is the dull pain more on one side or central?
do me a favor, lie on your back with legs straight out and head touching the floor. Have someone lift your left leg first from the leg (keeping the leg straight)…do this slowly…is there any pain in your lower back? or radiations? now repeat with the opposite leg.
it definitely could be disc issue or facet. If its a disc issue, there are exercises you can do to help yourself out. Sounds like you need to work on your core stabilisers as well.
23 years old, 5’7"(that is why i wear boots), 183 pounds, training two years, single and looking.
i was doing regular deadlifts, no shoes, warming up to five heavy reps.
lifting my leg does not really hurt. though doing that leg raise exercise hurts when it gets high enough.
the pain comes from flexion. i was able to arch my back w/o pain in a few days to bench. the pain stays in its own area rather well, but when sitting for a while an aggravating pain seems to grow around the area.
i started squatting again so i guess it is getting better, less weight, more reps.
but i am still curious how my spine was actualy injured. i used to deadlift isometricaly w/o injury.
perhaps it was because i was going on for eight weeks. i was about to take a week off from deadlifting when i had turned my previous one rep max(405) into my five rep max.
thank you to the responders
A pop is characteristic of an end plate fracture. The end plate is a fibrocartilage structure that attaches the disc to the bone of the vertebral body. An end plate fracture occurs under compressive load, and allows some of the disc (the nucleus pulposis) to squirt into the vertebral body. If a large amount squirts into the vertebral body the disc loses height and entraps the nerves leaving that vertebra (it is for this reason that end plate fractures are often misdiagnosed as disc herniations).
A disc herniation requires the spine to reach full flexion (either once with a large compressive load, or many times with sub-failure loads - such as driving with a fully flexed spine) - this shouldn’t be the case with your dls.
The fact that intervertebral discs are hydrophilic might have contributed to your injury. Hydrophilic means that while you are lying down sleeping they absorb a certain amount of water. In the morning your discs are swollen. They do lose height once you begin standing and are generally back to their normal height within an hour or so. By deadlifting soon after rising you may have increased the compressive force of the disc on the vertebral body beneath it.
Take home message: Reduce the compressive loading on your spine for a while (bone heals quickly, but if you continue to hammer it the bone may heal in a compressed state, or you may make the injury worse). Also reconsider deadlifting and squatting heavy within the first hour after rising.