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As someone who has Spondylolisthesis [1], what has worked best is weight lifting. In particular, full body movements using the barbell: deadlifts (also SLDL),

As someone who has Spondylolisthesis [1], what has worked best is weight lifting. In particular, full body movements using the barbell: deadlifts (also SLDL), squats, and overhead presses (just be extra careful here). My pain has varied. The worst being when I needed steroid injections in the nerves that run from my spine down my legs. Now, I consider my pain negligible. I'm no longer a fan of static stretching. I have found it to mostly be a waste of time and to exacerbate any problems. In the context of lifting, I stretch by warming up with the barbell and incrementally add weight until I reach my working weight. In the context of BJJ, I warmup with movements like shrimping, gator crawls, rolling over my shoulders, etc. Additionally, getting over the mindset that if you have pain that you shouldn't move. The opposite is true. How you feel when you wake up does not dictate how you will feel the rest of the day. Doing some RDLs with no weight, engaging and warming up your muscles is the best cure to my back pain. I recommend checking out doctors, Austin Baraki and Jordan Feigenbaum, at Barbell Medicine [2]. They are big proponents of the concept of lifting for recovery and not letting fear keep you from recovering. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spondylolisthesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spondylolisthesis [2]: https://www.barbellmedicine.com/blog/pain-in-training-what-do/ https://www.barbellmedicine.com/blog/pain-in-training-what-d...

ceedan 7y ago
> Additionally, getting over the mindset that if you have pain that you shouldn't move. The opposite is true. Amen
- xwowsersx 7y ago
  Exactly!! I always do the stuff that most people would think is the WORST thing to do when your back hurts - like hyperextensions, deadlifts, etc.
  - ceedan 7y ago
    I "took it easy" for like 4 months and my back pain only got worse during that time :/ lesson learned
    - xwowsersx 7y ago
      Been there and I see it time and time again with other people, usually when they have back problems. It's sad to see. I'm empathetic and understand why people feel that way, but "putting your feet up" for an extended period of time is almost always the worst thing for you. If/when I get some minor tweak, I make sure to get back to moving as quickly as possible.
  - btilly 7y ago
    This comment scares me. My wife did a deadlift when she shouldn't have. Next thing we know she spent a week unable to move and came close to not being able to walk again. Ever. Turns out that the possibility of your vertebrae popping out and pinching the spinal cord is NOT to be taken lightly. It hasn't happened to you, but if a bunch of people with back problems take your advice then you WILL cripple someone. Yes. Exercise is the best thing for a back. But know what is wrong, what works, what helps, and what doesn't. Don't just be a cowboy and pray.
    - xwowsersx 7y ago
      You're absolutely right and I should've stated the caveat that you have to know your body. There's a difference between some discomfort and something really being wrong. I have enough experience to know when it's the former and when it's really time to pack it up and go home. If I can't execute with perfect form, I stop. And I'm always reducing the load a lot when I'm rehabing something minor. Never be a cowboy. You really just have to know yourself. It's easy to just to convince yourself to refrain with the excuse that you're injured or whatever when really it's just laziness - only you can know the reality if you're honest with yourself. Also, just because you can't deadlift doesn't mean you can't do SOMETHING else. It's rare that you cannot move at all and some movement is better than nothing.
      - btilly 7y ago
        And now we are in agreement. We agree that exercise is the best thing for a back. With good posture getting an honorable mention. We agree that a lot of things that a lot of people think are bad can actually be helpful to most. What I can add to it is that when you have a back problem, it is critical to understand what the problem is, what makes it worse, and what makes it better. The right expert is extremely helpful in this. How to find that expert I can't help you with, but I am very glad to have found Scott Neubauer at http://www.coastalhealthandfitness.com/ http://www.coastalhealthandfitness.com/ and happily recommend him. I know from the people I have sent to him that the testimonials at http://www.coastalhealthandfitness.com/category/testimonials http://www.coastalhealthandfitness.com/category/testimonials are much more typical than I would have believed possible. The typical experience seems to be that the patient walks in, describes symptoms, he asks the patient to move and observes, has them lie down, does a little body work, and then he gives 3 exercises that target the underlying issue. The patient goes away, adds those exercises to their routine and the problem goes away. Personal examples that I have seen follow this problem include a knee problem that I had lived with most of my life, my step-son's back that was injured months earlier in football, or my mother-in-law's dowager's hump that had been there for 10 years. One visit, and a week later the problem was gone. A year ago it was still gone. He likes to think aloud so there is a constant stream of what he is thinking as you go through this. (I also find him very funny, so the chatter is enjoyable.) Furthermore he is aware of his limits, if your problem may require something that he can't handle (eg x-rays), he is quick to tell you to go elsewhere first.
- therealdrag0 7y ago
  "Movement is medicine" is the mantra I tell myself and others.
xwowsersx 7y ago
Absolutely! Been powerlifting consistently now for about 4 years and the best thing for my back has been making it (and my entire posterior chain) stronger. If and when I do get some minor tweak, I focus on slow, really deep squats and hyperextensions which gets the blood flowing and usually resolves any issues pretty quick.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mc3 7y ago
This is ridiculously anecdotal, but I asked a yoga teacher how to make it more comfortable to sit with legs straight in front, and I was expecting some kind of static stretch. She said to do leg swings back and forth, which I remember I did years ago in Taekwando. I find doing those leg swings really nice for loosing up the hips and all that and as an antidote to office sitting. I also like that I don't need to stretch per-se. Ymmv, I am not a physical therapist etc. etc.
crescentfresh 7y ago
Was listening to a podcast that was talking about fitness - the name escapes my memory at the moment - but I remember the guy said something interesting in passing: that a 100% bodyweight fitness regimen is fantastic and would be all you need ... except it doesn't develop lower back strength. For that he said, you need weights. He didn't elaborate anymore than that but anecdotally I related to that statement, all I do is at-home bodyweight fitness (can't afford a gym membership atm) and yet I still from time to time strain or carry lower back pain from random activities.
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  Feel free to add any of the dozens of lower back exercise you'll find if you google "bodyweight exercises lower back" to your regimen rather than take some guy's word for it. Even the pushup uses lower back muscles, like any plank.
  - Scaevolus 7y ago
    Without progressive overload the maximum strength of the muscle is very limited. Doing a bunch of pushups or planks will improve your ability to do that exercise, but you can't do pushups for a year and expect to squat 300 pounds-- the muscle growth just isn't there.
- hnick 7y ago
  I think Joseph Pilates would disagree there! The classes I've taken all focus around strengthening the core muscles in the lower back area.
- dnw 7y ago
  I think it was Pavel Tsatsouline on Joe Rogan #1399
  - crescentfresh 7y ago
    THAT WAS IT! I hardly listen to Joe Rogan so couldn't recall this one. Thanks.
ellyagg 7y ago
Indeed. My wife broke her back in college before we met. Since then she'd had chronic back pain and she figured that's just what she'd have to live with. What fixed it for her was hip thrusters, which are targeted toward the glutes, but also work the lower back to some extent. To that last, I've wondered how much glute weakness is the factor in back pain. I don't know why it necessarily would be, but a long time ago I saw a study where high school kids with chronic back pain were 100% cured by quadruped hip extensions. Of course, those also work the back to some extent, but it's another exercise that's prescribed for the glutes.
- ceedan 7y ago
  quadruped hip extensions have helped me a lot, too I've tried hip thrusters in the past when I knew less about how weak my glutes were. I'll give them another try. ty for sharing
- yomly 7y ago
  I have spent a year working on combating my back pain and I can tell you that the musculoskeletal system is exactly that - a system. The joints and muscles all work in concerted effort to move and this idea of isolated muscular contraction is a bit like pure functions in Haskell: ultimately pretty useless without IO. The core and spine is crazy complex. For starters I've learned a whole bunch of new muscles: glute medius/max, QL, serratus, interior/exterior obliques, multifidus, upper/lower/transverse abs, inner thighs, quads, hamstrings, hip extensors/flexors, lats, spinal extensors/flexors, rhomboids, upper/lower traps, pecs minor/major, levator scapulae... That sounds like I've just rattled off some anatomy but literally all of those network together to mobilise your spine and any one of those being out of whack can cause cascading and coupling issues of other nodes in the network. Glute weakness for sure is one of them so could any of the other ones...
  - wutangson1 7y ago
    This is very well articulated, but very disappointing to see so-called expert in their field orthopedic doctors advise their patients with the exact opposite.
  - 7y ago
polishdude20 7y ago
Me reading the first line mentioning weight lifting. My thoughts: "I wonder if Baraki and Feigenbaum will be mentioned?" Didn't fail to deliver. I've found that when I get back pain a set of deadlifts for a day or two fixes things right up
hnick 7y ago
> I'm no longer a fan of static stretching A physiotherapist once told me in direct words that (in his opinion) flexibility without strength is useless. He'd treated some people that were into Yoga and similar activities, and their flexibility caused injuries doing normal activities, I assume because things were just moving around too much without proper internal support. I've personally found muscle exhaustion to be the best cure for my back pain. I don't know why, but I figure a) exhaustion and soreness signals being stronger than the pain, and/or b) pain being caused by muscle tension/grabbing and exhaustion removes strength from this.
- YZF 7y ago
  Tom Kurz talks about this (the relationship between stretching and strength) in "Stretching Scientifically". Generally you weaken the muscle when you stretch it so its important to combine stretching with strength training. Static stretching is pretty mild though. also re: Yoga ... there's lots of Yoga practices that combine strength with flexibility... Yoga tends to pop up as something that has been proven to be beneficial for back pain while pretty much everything else is as good as placebo (including surgical intervention). People that sit all day tend to have shorter hamstrings (because the muscle is contracted all day) so I think stretching is important. An imbalance in leg muscles can tilt your pelvis and propagate up to your back...
  - seppin 7y ago
    > also re: Yoga ... there's lots of Yoga practices that combine strength with flexibility... Yoga tends to pop up as something that has been proven to be beneficial for back pain while pretty much everything else is as good as placebo (including surgical intervention). Pilates is strength-focused yoga. It saved me from needing back surgery. Please if anyone out there is suffering from chronic back pain please look into Pilates.
  - hnick 7y ago
    Yes there are all types of yoga from pseudo-religious through to extremely practical. I've done some holds in some classes that would've been amazing for strength (they left me sweating). As the other poster said though I prefer pilates, and in particular pilates reformer (with the bed) seems very good for back pain since in a lot of exercises you can support your back to varying degrees depending what you need at the time. The springs means it's not technically just body weight but it seems about right for me, at this time. I'm definitely a short hamstring sufferer who could stretch more and need to work that in.
krzat 7y ago
I believe that strenght training is something everyone should do, like brushing teeth. Back pain is only one of many things that it solves.
mechhacker 7y ago
I've had a similar experience although I've never been diagnosed with anything. When I went to a back specialist, he said he wasn't worried about my localized back pain because I had no sciatica. But, he did say to not "squat or deadlift anymore". I listened to him for 4 years and I had a constant, low grade ache. At some point in my 30s I got tired of the ache and decided I would just try to do squats and deads and if I hurt myself, so be it. Within a week of re-introducing them, my back pain faded away. Every now and then I get a painful tweak, but recovery is often on the order of a week. If I ever get Sciatica symptoms I will re-evaluate, but so far so good.
davedx 7y ago
I've had the same experience. About a year ago my wife and I joined a gym (again), and this time we stuck with it. One of the primary reasons we joined was to find some good back exercises to prevent us putting out our backs constantly (having 4 kids does this to you...). I've made deadlifts my top priority, do them at least once per week without fail, and often do squats when time and energy permits. Instead of putting my back out and being crippled for a day at a time once every few months, I now live with a "positive" no pain, no gain ache in my whole body after frequent workouts, and I'm so much stronger than I was in general. Highly recommend this approach -- just as OP said, be careful with the powerlifts and get a trainer to show you how to do them properly before you start. Injuries here can suck as much as putting your back out (or more).
os7borne 7y ago
What about stress on joints with such recovery method? My dad has had problems with his knee for a long time, he's done lot's of stuff to improve his situation. Whenever he tries lift, he feels great, but the stress affects him after some time. I know the solution you mentioned is what works best for you, but genuinely wondering if the stress acts negatively too.
- netfl0 7y ago
  The philosophy of this approach is stress and adaptation. The adaptation is what yields the improvements in muscle, tendons, and ligaments. The adaptation does not occur without sufficient stress. I had the same results as poster above. It’s pretty cool.
- frankish 7y ago
  Basically what @netfl0 replied: stress, adapt, recover, rinse, and repeat. Right now I follow a variation of the Texas Method, which is an intermediate program: Squat 5RM: 355 lbs Bench 5RM: 275 lbs Deadlift 5RM: 425 lbs Press 5RM: 165 lbs Monday is volume day: 1. 5x5 squats at 90% of 5RM (~325) 2. 5x5 bench at 90% of 5RM (~235) 3. 3x10+ SLDL at 225 lbs Wednesday is recovery day: 1. 2x5 squats at 65% of 5RM (~265) 2. 3x5 press at 90% of 5RM (~135) 3. 3x10+ pullups Friday is intensity day: 1. 5RM squats 2. 5RM bench 3. 5RM deadlift I recommend Starting Strength program if a beginner [2]. Full disclosure, I overdue it a bit by: * doing BJJ on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday * biking to work about 5 miles each way * daily 16 - 24 hour intermittent fasting and lifting at the tail end of my fast even for 5RM PRs Note that I added these on gradually and it is definitely difficult to maintain, but I always opt for the challenge and have been able to add 5-10 lbs to my 5RM weekly when I get quality sleep, stick to my routine, and don't drink (I'm more into edibles anyway). Still, I think these extras just goes to show how much stress/recover/adapt a body can take. Highly recommend Mark Rippetoe's books Starting Strength [3] and Practical Programming [4]. He really knows what he's talking about. I also recommend Alan Thrall for easier access to improving your form on Youtube [5]. [1]: https://www.t-nation.com/training/texas-method https://www.t-nation.com/training/texas-method [2]: https://startingstrength.com/get-started/programs https://startingstrength.com/get-started/programs [3]: https://aasgaardco.com/store/books-posters-dvd/books/starting-strength-basic-barbell-training/ https://aasgaardco.com/store/books-posters-dvd/books/startin... [4]: https://aasgaardco.com/store/books-posters-dvd/books/practical-programming-for-strength-training/ https://aasgaardco.com/store/books-posters-dvd/books/practic... [5]: https://www.youtube.com/user/athrall7 https://www.youtube.com/user/athrall7 edit: formatting
Ntrails 7y ago
> Additionally, getting over the mindset that if you have pain that you shouldn't move. The opposite is true. This cannot be stated often enough, not moving is going to make things worse not better over time. However, it is hard to do the right thing here. I am not without sympathy
relativeadv 7y ago
Really happy to see this as this top comment!

ceedan 7y ago

> Additionally, getting over the mindset that if you have pain that you shouldn't move. The opposite is true. Amen

xwowsersx 7y ago
Exactly!! I always do the stuff that most people would think is the WORST thing to do when your back hurts - like hyperextensions, deadlifts, etc.
- ceedan 7y ago
  I "took it easy" for like 4 months and my back pain only got worse during that time :/ lesson learned
  - xwowsersx 7y ago
    Been there and I see it time and time again with other people, usually when they have back problems. It's sad to see. I'm empathetic and understand why people feel that way, but "putting your feet up" for an extended period of time is almost always the worst thing for you. If/when I get some minor tweak, I make sure to get back to moving as quickly as possible.
- btilly 7y ago
  This comment scares me. My wife did a deadlift when she shouldn't have. Next thing we know she spent a week unable to move and came close to not being able to walk again. Ever. Turns out that the possibility of your vertebrae popping out and pinching the spinal cord is NOT to be taken lightly. It hasn't happened to you, but if a bunch of people with back problems take your advice then you WILL cripple someone. Yes. Exercise is the best thing for a back. But know what is wrong, what works, what helps, and what doesn't. Don't just be a cowboy and pray.
  - xwowsersx 7y ago
    You're absolutely right and I should've stated the caveat that you have to know your body. There's a difference between some discomfort and something really being wrong. I have enough experience to know when it's the former and when it's really time to pack it up and go home. If I can't execute with perfect form, I stop. And I'm always reducing the load a lot when I'm rehabing something minor. Never be a cowboy. You really just have to know yourself. It's easy to just to convince yourself to refrain with the excuse that you're injured or whatever when really it's just laziness - only you can know the reality if you're honest with yourself. Also, just because you can't deadlift doesn't mean you can't do SOMETHING else. It's rare that you cannot move at all and some movement is better than nothing.
    - btilly 7y ago
      And now we are in agreement. We agree that exercise is the best thing for a back. With good posture getting an honorable mention. We agree that a lot of things that a lot of people think are bad can actually be helpful to most. What I can add to it is that when you have a back problem, it is critical to understand what the problem is, what makes it worse, and what makes it better. The right expert is extremely helpful in this. How to find that expert I can't help you with, but I am very glad to have found Scott Neubauer at http://www.coastalhealthandfitness.com/ http://www.coastalhealthandfitness.com/ and happily recommend him. I know from the people I have sent to him that the testimonials at http://www.coastalhealthandfitness.com/category/testimonials http://www.coastalhealthandfitness.com/category/testimonials are much more typical than I would have believed possible. The typical experience seems to be that the patient walks in, describes symptoms, he asks the patient to move and observes, has them lie down, does a little body work, and then he gives 3 exercises that target the underlying issue. The patient goes away, adds those exercises to their routine and the problem goes away. Personal examples that I have seen follow this problem include a knee problem that I had lived with most of my life, my step-son's back that was injured months earlier in football, or my mother-in-law's dowager's hump that had been there for 10 years. One visit, and a week later the problem was gone. A year ago it was still gone. He likes to think aloud so there is a constant stream of what he is thinking as you go through this. (I also find him very funny, so the chatter is enjoyable.) Furthermore he is aware of his limits, if your problem may require something that he can't handle (eg x-rays), he is quick to tell you to go elsewhere first.
therealdrag0 7y ago
"Movement is medicine" is the mantra I tell myself and others.

xwowsersx 7y ago

Absolutely! Been powerlifting consistently now for about 4 years and the best thing for my back has been making it (and my entire posterior chain) stronger. If and when I do get some minor tweak, I focus on slow, really deep squats and hyperextensions which gets the blood flowing and usually resolves any issues pretty quick.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

mc3 7y ago

This is ridiculously anecdotal, but I asked a yoga teacher how to make it more comfortable to sit with legs straight in front, and I was expecting some kind of static stretch. She said to do leg swings back and forth, which I remember I did years ago in Taekwando. I find doing those leg swings really nice for loosing up the hips and all that and as an antidote to office sitting. I also like that I don't need to stretch per-se. Ymmv, I am not a physical therapist etc. etc.

crescentfresh 7y ago

Was listening to a podcast that was talking about fitness - the name escapes my memory at the moment - but I remember the guy said something interesting in passing: that a 100% bodyweight fitness regimen is fantastic and would be all you need ... except it doesn't develop lower back strength. For that he said, you need weights. He didn't elaborate anymore than that but anecdotally I related to that statement, all I do is at-home bodyweight fitness (can't afford a gym membership atm) and yet I still from time to time strain or carry lower back pain from random activities.

hombre_fatal 7y ago
Feel free to add any of the dozens of lower back exercise you'll find if you google "bodyweight exercises lower back" to your regimen rather than take some guy's word for it. Even the pushup uses lower back muscles, like any plank.
- Scaevolus 7y ago
  Without progressive overload the maximum strength of the muscle is very limited. Doing a bunch of pushups or planks will improve your ability to do that exercise, but you can't do pushups for a year and expect to squat 300 pounds-- the muscle growth just isn't there.
hnick 7y ago
I think Joseph Pilates would disagree there! The classes I've taken all focus around strengthening the core muscles in the lower back area.
dnw 7y ago
I think it was Pavel Tsatsouline on Joe Rogan #1399
- crescentfresh 7y ago
  THAT WAS IT! I hardly listen to Joe Rogan so couldn't recall this one. Thanks.

ellyagg 7y ago

Indeed. My wife broke her back in college before we met. Since then she'd had chronic back pain and she figured that's just what she'd have to live with. What fixed it for her was hip thrusters, which are targeted toward the glutes, but also work the lower back to some extent. To that last, I've wondered how much glute weakness is the factor in back pain. I don't know why it necessarily would be, but a long time ago I saw a study where high school kids with chronic back pain were 100% cured by quadruped hip extensions. Of course, those also work the back to some extent, but it's another exercise that's prescribed for the glutes.

ceedan 7y ago
quadruped hip extensions have helped me a lot, too I've tried hip thrusters in the past when I knew less about how weak my glutes were. I'll give them another try. ty for sharing
yomly 7y ago
I have spent a year working on combating my back pain and I can tell you that the musculoskeletal system is exactly that - a system. The joints and muscles all work in concerted effort to move and this idea of isolated muscular contraction is a bit like pure functions in Haskell: ultimately pretty useless without IO. The core and spine is crazy complex. For starters I've learned a whole bunch of new muscles: glute medius/max, QL, serratus, interior/exterior obliques, multifidus, upper/lower/transverse abs, inner thighs, quads, hamstrings, hip extensors/flexors, lats, spinal extensors/flexors, rhomboids, upper/lower traps, pecs minor/major, levator scapulae... That sounds like I've just rattled off some anatomy but literally all of those network together to mobilise your spine and any one of those being out of whack can cause cascading and coupling issues of other nodes in the network. Glute weakness for sure is one of them so could any of the other ones...
- wutangson1 7y ago
  This is very well articulated, but very disappointing to see so-called expert in their field orthopedic doctors advise their patients with the exact opposite.
- 7y ago

polishdude20 7y ago

Me reading the first line mentioning weight lifting. My thoughts: "I wonder if Baraki and Feigenbaum will be mentioned?" Didn't fail to deliver. I've found that when I get back pain a set of deadlifts for a day or two fixes things right up

hnick 7y ago

> I'm no longer a fan of static stretching A physiotherapist once told me in direct words that (in his opinion) flexibility without strength is useless. He'd treated some people that were into Yoga and similar activities, and their flexibility caused injuries doing normal activities, I assume because things were just moving around too much without proper internal support. I've personally found muscle exhaustion to be the best cure for my back pain. I don't know why, but I figure a) exhaustion and soreness signals being stronger than the pain, and/or b) pain being caused by muscle tension/grabbing and exhaustion removes strength from this.

YZF 7y ago
Tom Kurz talks about this (the relationship between stretching and strength) in "Stretching Scientifically". Generally you weaken the muscle when you stretch it so its important to combine stretching with strength training. Static stretching is pretty mild though. also re: Yoga ... there's lots of Yoga practices that combine strength with flexibility... Yoga tends to pop up as something that has been proven to be beneficial for back pain while pretty much everything else is as good as placebo (including surgical intervention). People that sit all day tend to have shorter hamstrings (because the muscle is contracted all day) so I think stretching is important. An imbalance in leg muscles can tilt your pelvis and propagate up to your back...
- seppin 7y ago
  > also re: Yoga ... there's lots of Yoga practices that combine strength with flexibility... Yoga tends to pop up as something that has been proven to be beneficial for back pain while pretty much everything else is as good as placebo (including surgical intervention). Pilates is strength-focused yoga. It saved me from needing back surgery. Please if anyone out there is suffering from chronic back pain please look into Pilates.
- hnick 7y ago
  Yes there are all types of yoga from pseudo-religious through to extremely practical. I've done some holds in some classes that would've been amazing for strength (they left me sweating). As the other poster said though I prefer pilates, and in particular pilates reformer (with the bed) seems very good for back pain since in a lot of exercises you can support your back to varying degrees depending what you need at the time. The springs means it's not technically just body weight but it seems about right for me, at this time. I'm definitely a short hamstring sufferer who could stretch more and need to work that in.

krzat 7y ago

I believe that strenght training is something everyone should do, like brushing teeth. Back pain is only one of many things that it solves.

mechhacker 7y ago

I've had a similar experience although I've never been diagnosed with anything. When I went to a back specialist, he said he wasn't worried about my localized back pain because I had no sciatica. But, he did say to not "squat or deadlift anymore". I listened to him for 4 years and I had a constant, low grade ache. At some point in my 30s I got tired of the ache and decided I would just try to do squats and deads and if I hurt myself, so be it. Within a week of re-introducing them, my back pain faded away. Every now and then I get a painful tweak, but recovery is often on the order of a week. If I ever get Sciatica symptoms I will re-evaluate, but so far so good.

davedx 7y ago

I've had the same experience. About a year ago my wife and I joined a gym (again), and this time we stuck with it. One of the primary reasons we joined was to find some good back exercises to prevent us putting out our backs constantly (having 4 kids does this to you...). I've made deadlifts my top priority, do them at least once per week without fail, and often do squats when time and energy permits. Instead of putting my back out and being crippled for a day at a time once every few months, I now live with a "positive" no pain, no gain ache in my whole body after frequent workouts, and I'm so much stronger than I was in general. Highly recommend this approach -- just as OP said, be careful with the powerlifts and get a trainer to show you how to do them properly before you start. Injuries here can suck as much as putting your back out (or more).

os7borne 7y ago

What about stress on joints with such recovery method? My dad has had problems with his knee for a long time, he's done lot's of stuff to improve his situation. Whenever he tries lift, he feels great, but the stress affects him after some time. I know the solution you mentioned is what works best for you, but genuinely wondering if the stress acts negatively too.

netfl0 7y ago
The philosophy of this approach is stress and adaptation. The adaptation is what yields the improvements in muscle, tendons, and ligaments. The adaptation does not occur without sufficient stress. I had the same results as poster above. It’s pretty cool.
frankish 7y ago
Basically what @netfl0 replied: stress, adapt, recover, rinse, and repeat. Right now I follow a variation of the Texas Method, which is an intermediate program: Squat 5RM: 355 lbs Bench 5RM: 275 lbs Deadlift 5RM: 425 lbs Press 5RM: 165 lbs Monday is volume day: 1. 5x5 squats at 90% of 5RM (~325) 2. 5x5 bench at 90% of 5RM (~235) 3. 3x10+ SLDL at 225 lbs Wednesday is recovery day: 1. 2x5 squats at 65% of 5RM (~265) 2. 3x5 press at 90% of 5RM (~135) 3. 3x10+ pullups Friday is intensity day: 1. 5RM squats 2. 5RM bench 3. 5RM deadlift I recommend Starting Strength program if a beginner [2]. Full disclosure, I overdue it a bit by: * doing BJJ on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday * biking to work about 5 miles each way * daily 16 - 24 hour intermittent fasting and lifting at the tail end of my fast even for 5RM PRs Note that I added these on gradually and it is definitely difficult to maintain, but I always opt for the challenge and have been able to add 5-10 lbs to my 5RM weekly when I get quality sleep, stick to my routine, and don't drink (I'm more into edibles anyway). Still, I think these extras just goes to show how much stress/recover/adapt a body can take. Highly recommend Mark Rippetoe's books Starting Strength [3] and Practical Programming [4]. He really knows what he's talking about. I also recommend Alan Thrall for easier access to improving your form on Youtube [5]. [1]: https://www.t-nation.com/training/texas-method https://www.t-nation.com/training/texas-method [2]: https://startingstrength.com/get-started/programs https://startingstrength.com/get-started/programs [3]: https://aasgaardco.com/store/books-posters-dvd/books/starting-strength-basic-barbell-training/ https://aasgaardco.com/store/books-posters-dvd/books/startin... [4]: https://aasgaardco.com/store/books-posters-dvd/books/practical-programming-for-strength-training/ https://aasgaardco.com/store/books-posters-dvd/books/practic... [5]: https://www.youtube.com/user/athrall7 https://www.youtube.com/user/athrall7 edit: formatting

Ntrails 7y ago

> Additionally, getting over the mindset that if you have pain that you shouldn't move. The opposite is true. This cannot be stated often enough, not moving is going to make things worse not better over time. However, it is hard to do the right thing here. I am not without sympathy

relativeadv 7y ago

Really happy to see this as this top comment!