I was very lucky because I stumbled into the care of perhaps the best orthopedic surgeon at one of the best hospitals in the world and after an L5-S1 spinal fus

I was very lucky because I stumbled into the care of perhaps the best orthopedic surgeon at one of the best hospitals in the world and after an L5-S1 spinal fusion he all but commanded me to take up strength training after decades of being a sedentary computer nerd. He gave me a list of personal trainers who specialize in post-operative strength training and told me to choose (or, the implication being, die-- not a literal death but a slow decline in to frailty potentially worse than death). My personal trainer sat down and developed an extremely personalized, hyper-detailed plan for comprehensive strength training. She spent more time with me in one week than every single physical therapist I have ever seen in my entire life combined. Nine weeks post-operation I was bodyweight squatting, then squatting with dumbbells, then squatting with a bare barbell, then weighted, now 1x my bodyweight with a goal of 2x my bodyweight. I'm in better mental and physical shape in my 40s than I've ever been and now psychomotor tasks both simple and complex are accomplished with an ease I've never known before. My surgeon told me I had one of the best, fastest, recoveries he has ever seen in his entire career, only eclipsed by athletes who did the same thing, starting from a better position. Both my surgeon and my trainer assert that everyone, from the extremely obese to the elderly to paraplegics to people with "avian bone syndrome" to normal healthy adults should be strength training and I believe them. Highly recommended. The only bad part is that I could afford all of this. Insurance will pay for physical therapy but not strength training and the fact that many people who need expert, highly-individualized, strength training guidance will not be able to afford it upsets me. edit: I am 100% convinced that if I had been prescribed strength training instead of lidocaine patches, dry needling, and physical therapy during previous medical encounters for my back, it is highly likely that I would not have required surgery.