I had been lifting for over 5 years when I injured my back. I was ironically showing my friend how to deadlift when it happened. I was in the middle of a set and did 5 good reps, and decided I wanted to do 2 more. I heard a pop in my lower back on the way back up on rep number 6 and that was it. I had sharp lower back pain on my right side for over 2 months before I decided to see the doctor.

I went to get an X-ray and I was diagnosed with Spondylolysis1, which is a fracture of the pars interarticularis, a small bony arch on the back of your spine, at the L5 S1 junction (last vertebrae before the sacrum). If pain was unbareable, there is a surgery that can be done to fuse the lower vertabrae, but if you can avoid it, it is recommended. I got a referral to physical therapy to strengthen my core so that my core strength could make up for any shortfalls in my lower back.

jpg Spondylolysis illustration2

I went through 2 months of PT along with many months of at home work and now I’m fully recovered. I am very weary of deadlift these days and don’t try to push myself like I once did. I continue to do some core work to keep the back pain from returning. I also noticed that my lumbar muscle around the damaged bone has become very tight. I got a massage a year or so after my injury and the massuse noticed a lot of tightness around my injury and manually worked it out and it caused my pain to return until the lumbar muscle tightened up again.

This section is to document the PT excersizes and stretches I’ve used to regain lower back mobility and strength in the past few years.

If you are having pain, please seek out help from a professional for an official diagnosis. None of this should be a substitute for professional medical advice.

  1. E. Syrmou, T. Pp, D. Marinopoulos, C. Tsonidis, I. Anagnostopoulos, and T. Pd, “Spondylolysis : A review and reappraisal,” Hippokratia, pp. 17–21, 2010. ↩

  2. https://orthoinfo.aaos.org/en/diseases–conditions/spondylolysis-and-spondylolisthesis ↩

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