I’ve been on a year plus journey with this. My back pain was lower back and every few months I’d “throw out” some part around my shoulder blades and be flat in my back for a day or two. It got pretty bad.
I went to physical therapy for two months because that’s all insurance would pay for. My spine was weak and lacked stability. They had me doing stretches for back mobility and core strengthening. I continued that when insurance ran out and added in a lot of walking and other light weights and calisthenics.
It’s been a long journey and I’m only half way to where I was. The worst part is I did it to myself by becoming sedentary for to many years.
Best of luck for your continued recovery. Keep at it.
I can’t tell you to do this because I don’t know your medical history, but slowly working your way up to medium weight training can also be a game changer. Re: squats, Romanian deadlifts, pull ups, dead hangs.
Deadlifts are what caused my bad back, and also, surprisingly, what fixes it. The difference is that a 120kg deadlift caused it, and a 50kg deadlift fixes it.
Exercise is great, but don't lift too much weight. Prefer more reps instead.
Upper back and neck pain for me. Went to a Phys. Therapist and got a set of exercises. It was largely muscle weakness from bad posture - something many, many people will likely suffer in the coming years thanks to staring at screens on handhelds.
Mine was because I have the posture of a lump of VERY wet clay.
Also, losing weight helped a lot - less to carry around and hold in the right places.
Prolonged sitting deconditions the gluteal muscles, and other muscles often compensate, which can overload them and alter hip/pelvic control. When tissues are strained, the body initiates repair via inflammation—a normal phase of healing. Routine NSAID use can blunt aspects of musculoskeletal healing in some contexts, so it’s worth using judiciously and with clinical guidance. With reduced movement, fascia can lose glide and become stiffer, limiting mobility. Over years, chronic abnormal loading may contribute to osteophytes (joint margins) or enthesophytes (at tendon/ligament insertions). Targeted strengthening, mobility work, and load management from a PT typically help.
Computers have been more in the realm of the younger generations for a long time now, and young people can handle bad posture and other things more easily than the elderly can. I mean we're waiting on them to reach the age where their body can no longer handle it.
My dad had a business installing mainframes when I was young - back when mainframes were still installed in individual businesses, you know. At the time I was a kid, but I know we always had some of the first tech on the block, so I doubt many had tech before me.
I'm reaching the age where I can no longer handle a bad posture - I assume this is going to start getting bigger in the next 5-10 years. I could be wrong, I dunno, but I don't think so.
I recommend McGill's Back Mechanic book, which is an end-user focused distillation of his academic work.
It suggests simple tests to discover exactly where your pain is coming from and then appropriate exercises to mechanically strengthen the right area and a few workarounds to avoid stressing that area in regular life e.g. alternate ways to pick up light items from the floor.
McGillcs big three are three simple exercises that are generally good for those with no patience for ordering a book and intros to them can be found all over YouTube.
There's no need to do them heavy for health purposes. The problem with most back pain is people do nothing. Capping them at around 100kg is probably more than enough and will also prevent other injuries.
The nice thing is that it's _very_ easy to get to a lifting weight that's considered super heavy in normie reckoning, but a warmup weight for folks that lift regularly. In other words, you can get to squatting 50kg/100lb (one 15kg plate on a side) in a couple of months where you won't even think twice about that much weight, but it's still a huge weight to be squatting. Stopping there, and not chasing the gains is a perfectly good way to work your body out on a regular basis.
The absolutely liberating feeling that comes with the noob gains is incredible. Knowing you can lift those weights, safely, without injury, was an incredible experience for me. I topped off at a hair below 100kg squats before life got in the way.
Yes, I'd say anything you can get with noob gains is fair game. By noob gains I mean everything you can get from just increasing the weight a bit every time you hit the gym.
Once you need more complicated programming to make progress, your noob phase is probably over.
For what it's worth, I got up to 170kg backsquats at about 72kg body weight back in the day. The most complicated programming I did was a weekly cycle. ('Texas method'.)
But that was only down to thighs parallel to the ground. Years later I worked more on my flexibility to be able to squat all the way down (but with less weight).
When I turned 50 I started capping my max weights because I was more worried about long-term joint and ligament health than ultimate strength. I no longer lift above two plates (225lbs) for anything, even though that is well below my deadlift, squat, etc.
It's been a couple years, now, and honestly I wish I'd made the change sooner. I haven't lost any functional strength, and my recovery is a lot smoother. Haven't had any injury since, either.
I’m almost 30 and made this change about a year ago.
I now rotate between high rep (sets of 20 rep max) and medium weight weeks (sets of 8-12 reps). My joints haven’t ached in a while and I’ve become much less prone to random muscle tweaks. Mike Isreatel has an excellent intro to high rep training [0]. It produces pumps and mind-muscle connection like nothing else!
I actually went too far into the high rep/volume training direction for several months, but realized I needed to reincorporate medium weight lifts when I started losing a bit of grip strength. I am now super content with my current rotation cycle!
I'm over 50, and I am back chasing the 1,2,3,4 plate standards at a lower bodyweight than when I first achieved it.
The only change I've made is two train only twice a week, rather than three or four times. Thinking of doing the split in Radically Simple Muscle, though, where it is 2 heavy compound lift days per week and a 3rd bodybuilding/machine day.
Similar, though I would also add shrugs or reverse flies to get those traps. If I let my traps get weak I get a lot of pain in that region, especially after long periods of sitting
For me it was the combination of deadlifts and couch stretch, because I found my hip flexors were fighting to tilt my hips forward. That combination essentially 'cured' any back pain I had. It's not a real cure because if I'm inactive it comes back but so long as I'm moderately active I have no pain
Goblet? Or is this something new? Deep goblets are great for opening the ankles and hips/SI area in ways that have helped my back. Some combination of improving mobility in other reasons prevents my back from overcompensating I guess
2 kids under 4 (and another due next month) fixed my back pain. Turns out that constantly picking up babies and toddlers is the exact amount of exercise my back needed.
Be careful, I'm currently in treatment for a shoulder that has given me significant trouble and I suspect it was due to picking up my (bigger and heavier than average) son. Not that I have hard evidence, but it was pretty much the only frequent physical activity that could strain my shoulders when the problems started, as I didn't exercise apart from long walks.
Not GP but my husband suffered from absolutely debilitating back pain that limited his activities drastically. He went to PT. The fix was consistent exercise and stretching. The cause was muscle weakness and imbalance. He has to maintain it, otherwise the pain starts again.
Aside from resolving the cause, I had to use a foam wedge knee bolster to stabilize me while I slept for an unrelated injury, and I was amazed how much that almost immediately also reduced my lumbar pain.
Swimming 100%. I was injured far enough I had problems even with walking and load bearing activities, but I was able to swim which enabled my recovery.
Weak glutes are a common symptom from sitting too much and then other muscles around the hips compensate which causes multiple issues with hip tilt and gait.
For upper, I'd highly recommend adding rear delt flys and face pulls at twice the frequency of any chest or shoulder workouts. Most people have overdeveloped front delts and underdeveloped rear delts and that can cause severe imbalances.
Also for upper (especially if you get neck pain or upper back pain between shoulder blades): Traps (shrugs, reverse fly, and/or face pulls are my preference)
With my husband (and probably most people who already already suffering with pain) the pain was too much to walk, and walking was very much counterproductive, so this is bad advise, especially the l "focus on resisting the urge to tell me why it can’t be done" part. It's not the type of pain that you can just power through. He said the pain caused his legs to physically stop working. He had to do PT exercises first and build up to walking.
