My back has not been "right" since about September of last year and I've been trying to work around the problem. It all seemed to happed around the same weekend that I worked hard in the yard on Saturday and played Senior Olympic basketball on Sunday. No injuries that I know of so the timing might be coincidental. After that, I did a lot of swimming to keep active and slowly worked my way back into the weight room. I'm pretty sure that my problem was in the L5 area - lower right side for me - and I saw a chiro several times which gave some temporary relief. I was never in bad pain but my some momentary twinges mostly and a general feeling of being unstable. When I finally got back to doing some squats and deadlifts again, my back started feeling a lot better! I do a lot more stretching but I've had back tightness problems for a long time which seems consistent with the shortening of muscles associated with too much sitting.
I'm pretty much convinced that my problem has more to do with what I'm doing right this moment (dammit!)... crappy posture, sitting in a chair typing on a keyboard! Maybe this has been a good thing because I am a LOT more aware of my posture these days, while seated especially. Coincidentally, I just picked up a copy of Stuart McGill's Ultimate Back Fitness and Performance from our library and I'm pretty interested to see what he says!
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