Quote:
Originally Posted by UConnJulie
I totally agree with everything Ian said above ... with the additional recommendation to really work on your body mechanics ... learn to separate hip and lower back movements (so that your lower back is not moving every time you move your hips). Most back injuries are aggravated more by daily movements like bending over to brush your teeth and sitting in poor posture moreso than the lifting you are doing.
And just my opinion, but your program could use a little variety ... that's an awful lot of squatting which puts a large compressive force through your spine (ie BAD for disk problems) ...
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I agree with UConnJulie. You program needs some work. It is very unbalanced.
You first need to diagnose the problem as the location of the bulge will have a large impact as to what exercises you should do and what you should avoid.
It sounds like you have some spinal stability issues here. This is most like due to many issues which would need a thorough assessment to figure out which apply. I'm guessing that you have a very weak or nonfunctional inner unit. Most likely you could have a sever lack abdominal function. You're probably not using your TVA correctly. You could have very weak transverso-spinal mulsculature(multifidi, etc). I'm going to take a guess and say that your posture probably needs some work.
#1 Stop doing all axial loading. Stop any exercise that causes pain as this is a clear sign that you are only making it worse.
#2 You are going to have to retrain your inner unit to stabilize your spine(TVA, Obliques, transverso-spinal musculature, etc).
#3 You are going to have to fix your posture as this could be the reason the injury occured.
#4 Learn proper lifting form. This will help you to not put your spine into faulty loading positions and minimize spinal compression. This is a must.
You really need to start from the ground up here. Planks are much too advanced of a core exercise for you to do. You are going to have to start back at square one with tummy vacuums, horse stance, and some lower abdominal exercises like forward ball roll.
I would strongly urge you to find a qualified practitioner that can teach you how to use your inner unit properly. The longer you aggravate the injury, the worse it will get.
There are guys who can squat and deadlift(all dynamic movements) excessive amounts of weight, yet they have back pain doing any stabilization like while brushing their teeth(Just as UConnJulie said). This is because they have a very strong outer unit(spinal erectors, rectus abdominus) and a very weak inner unit. Happens much more often than you would think.