Updates on my back health (going great!)

Since the last email I sent out about my back, I’ve made some big lifestyle adjustments and made huge progress that I haven’t seen with my back in the entire time I have had pain. I wanted to share for any of you out there who might be dealing with something similar.

Of course, this is not meant to be medical advice. This is my own personal story of what has worked, but if you have pain, I highly recommend going and seeing a physical therapist who can give you a proper diagnosis. This can speed up the process a lot.

Herniated disc?

Now, I’ll preface this with, I never got an MRI.

I know, I know. I can already hear the comments about why I should have gotten one.

The reason was because it wasn’t until the last 1.5 months that I realized my issue this whole time was probably a herniated disc. The only reason I didn’t opt to get an MRI was I didn’t want to deal with the cost of the MRI, for something that wasn’t going to change my protocol to fix the issue.

Getting the imaging really wouldn’t have told me much of anything that I didn’t already know, other than how bad the herniation might be. Had I realized this a year ago, I probably would have done it. But with the knowledge I have now, it didn’t seem necessary to spend the money for an image.

So, of course, I can’t confirm that it’s actually what I had, but I have had every single symptom that a herniated disc would have, so it seems likely.

• Sneezing felt like it would throw my entire back out

• Sitting would eventually make my lower back feel extremely compressed and I would feel the need to lift myself up with the arm rests to relieve pressure

• Very difficult to bend over without pain

• Radiating pain into my hip

• Constant fatigue of my lower back

If anything, I’m annoyed I didn’t get one just because now I don’t have a before and after to show the progress.

Step 1: Significantly increasing my step count. (not optional!)

This might be one of the things I heard about a lot over the last 2 years when it came to back pain, but it felt….too simple. So, I never took it serious.

After dealing with enough pain this year, I finally got fed up and said I needed to try something new.

Last month I started doing mandatory walks in the morning, and lunch. Evening was optional, but I still did it most days. I needed to stop sitting so much and get my steps in.

This has taken my average step count up to 15,000+ a day. There was not a single day in the last 30 days that I didn’t get at least 10,000 steps, and the vast majority of those days were 13,000-16,000 steps.

The reason I did three walks a day was to break it up and prevent myself from sitting as much. Occasionally I did one really long walk if it’s all I had time for, but I think in general it is better to do multiple smaller walks.

I also recently bought a walking pad to place under my standing desk. That way I have no excuses on rainy days, and it gives me another reason to not sit during the work day. I’m actually shocked how easy it is to work at my computer while walking. I anticipated it would be more annoying.

This alone has made probably the single biggest difference to my back pain out of everything I have tried in the last two years, which is why I’m frustrated I didn’t do it sooner.

Step 2: Core exercises every day

A big part of healing a herniated disc is core exercises. I’ve had a list of core exercises that I’ve known about, but I haven’t always been great about doing them. I’d do great for a week or two, see some improvement, and then stop (don’t do this!).

The exercises have consisted of the McGill big 3 (you can look these up, they are everywhere) as well as regular planks, and dead bugs.

Now the amount of sets and reps I should do wasn’t something I always managed to get done in a day, but I tried to always make sure I did some of it to keep making progress.

I’ve had times in the past where if I couldn’t do everything, then I decided I might as well do none of it. This time I changed my attitude and made sure I did at least some of it. Even if that meant I only did a few regular planks for 1 minute, 45 seconds, 30 seconds.

There’s a quote from James Clear that I really liked for this.

When I started focusing on these, I could barely hold a plank for 30 seconds without shaking like crazy. Now I’m over 2 minutes.

My core has never felt stronger than it does right now. I’m actually surprised how big of a difference I can feel in my core stability in only 30 days.

Along with the walking, this should be helping stabilize my spine and getting pressure off the disc.

I did also have some glute work 3 days a week (couldn’t tolerate more) since mine were previously quite weak.

Step 3: Isolated back extensions

I learned about these from Low Back Ability on YouTube. When I first started doing these (many months ago), I was trying to hard to progress these quickly. The goal is to get up to a two minute hold, and I was trying to knock that out day one. Then I would try and do a second set (waste of time) when I only needed to do this 3 times a week.

My initial approach resulted me having pain the next day because my back simply wasn’t strong enough to do the load I was trying to give it. My ego was just too big and wouldn’t let me do less.

If there’s something I’ve learned about physical therapy and healing injuries, small exercises are far more helpful than you think, and you don’t need to push it like a body builder to see progress.

Anyways, last month I decided I was going to set aside my ego and make progress slowly without pain. I started off doing 30 second holds on Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

Then the next week I went to 40 seconds, then the next week 50 seconds, etc.

Yesterday I had my first day of crossing a 2 minute hold (which I’ve never done) and no pain the following day.

These have been great for strengthening my lower back, and all I had to do was set aside my ego and let the progress stack up weekly rather than trying to rush the process.

Step 4: Progress tracking

To take all of this even more serious, I decided to log information every day.

• My step count

• How many hours I slept

• The list of exercises I did that day

• Rating my back pain on a scale of 1 to 10

• A description of what I did that day

This was so that I could start to find trends in what was working and what wasn’t. Thankfully in my cases, I really didn’t have to make any adjustments during the last 30 days. But it was great for keeping me accountable to doing my exercises and hitting my step count. Once I got to the end of the day, if I knew I hadn’t done enough core work, it usually got me to go do more, because I knew I’d have to write down that I only did 2 exercises otherwise.

My pain at times last month was around a 7/10. This last week, I was averaging 1/10 or 2/10 which is the lowest amount of back pain I have since the first time I hurt my back.

It’s great to write it all down and see the progress happening.

Doing this did also get me to increase my sleep to about 8.5-9 hours on average, which I’m sure has helped.

Step 5: Don’t over do it.

I suppose this is really more like step 0, but whatever.

I had to play less Pickleball to not overload my back. What I ended up doing was a lot more 1 on 1 testing / drilling and only a few times a week playing intense. I had to finally accept that if I wanted this fixed, I wasn’t going to be able to give 100% every time I stepped on a court.

Reducing the load on my back was probably a key part in letting the recovery go quicker. Any time I noticed my back getting tight in the last 30 days, I stopped my session. In the past, I would have just played through it (dumb).

I’ve slowly started increasing my play time during the week and I’m seeing great results. I’m able to play harder and finish a session without pain. In the past, I pretty much hurt during and after every single session.

What now?

Like I said, this is the most improvement I have seen in two years, so I’m not stopping what I’m doing any time soon. This is usually the part where people pump the breaks on their physical therapy exercises, but I’m going to double down.

I want to make sure I never experience this again and finally get on with my life without back pain being a big part of it. I anticipate that I’ll need at least a few more months of what I have been doing before I can expect to push my back as hard as I would like to.

I’m still being cautious about how I bend over to pick things up, how quickly I bend, or how I lift heavier objects. I may not need to be as cautious now, but there’s no need to rush it this time.

Now that I’m seeing how much progress I’ve made going slower, no need to speed up.

I think one of the other things I had to learn was that you may not see progress immediately, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t working. I think it’s easy after a week to say “I’m still in pain this is a waste of time”, but sticking with it makes all the difference.

If this helps at least one other person out there stop dealing with the same type of pain I’ve dealt with, I’ll consider this an accomplishment.

But for now, I’m pumped to see this level of progress and getting closer to a day where I don’t think about it anymore.