The evening I hurt my back, I sat on the couch wondering how long it was going to last.
Earlier that day I’d been bench pressing and felt something strange run down my leg.
I knew right away it was bad. I went into the other room to find my girlfriend, and I was freaking out.
It lasted three years.
What I never counted was the five years before that set. My back had been bothering me the whole time.
I stretched it, foam rolled it, watched the YouTube videos, pushed hard again, and it came back.
I thought that was a normal part of training, so I never went to see anyone about it.
Pain is the last page of the story, not the beginning.
By the time something hurts, your body has usually been working around a problem for a while.
It finds another way to get the rep done, and that can go on for a long time without any pain at all.
Then you keep adding weight, sets and effort on top of it.
So if the plan is to wait until it feels good and then load the bar like you used to, you’re likely putting the old training back on top of the same thing that led to the pain.
Looking back, how long it would last was the wrong thing to be asking on that couch.
The better question was what had to happen after it calmed down, so I wasn’t back there again.
I filmed what that looked like for me.
Hope you’re moving well and brewing better. ☕
Gabe
