[QUOTE=wenshu;1200857]Forewarning if you are a hirsute individual, removing them can be an ordeal worthy of a little girl removing a band aid.[/QUOTE]
Or a good excuse for one’s new found hairlessness!
@ Weshu…the pain moves all over the lower back..it will feel like it’s coming specifically from one spot, then later it will be up, down or on the opposite side…
you know, I got to start icing it, maybe that’s why I’m taking so long to heal..I did a little heat…but I never ice any bruises, muscles or anything…I’m constantly told to, just never have…I got to try that…
[QUOTE=Kellen Bassette;1201030]@ Weshu…the pain moves all over the lower back..it will feel like it’s coming specifically from one spot, then later it will be up, down or on the opposite side…
you know, I got to start icing it, maybe that’s why I’m taking so long to heal..I did a little heat…but I never ice any bruises, muscles or anything…I’m constantly told to, just never have…I got to try that…[/QUOTE]
Be sure to put the ice in a T-shirt or pillowcase. You want some cloth between the ice and your skin or you will eventually give your skin frostbite.
This applies to store bought icing pads as well.
Don’t…
…should have been the first word in any response. At least don’t train until you figure out what is injured and how to possibly train around it.
and, you’re probably not going to figure it out here either.
try to find a real doctor who can treat you. or a real physical therapist.
taigikyan will probably have some good advice but since he can’t actually look at you…he’ll probably say find someone competent to diagnose you.
otherwise, scott’s advice will alleviate the pain and allow rest. though, icing is starting to come in to question in some circles (not arguing for or against, just saying that it is coming in to question)
healing poorly in, i’m guessing, your youth comes back to haunt you later on.
good luck.
[QUOTE=Kellen Bassette;1200742]
And listen to tgy if he posts anything, since he is a physical therapist, in hiding, I might add!:p[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=bawang;1200847]i agree. he has much wisdom and healing knowledge of a taoist hermit.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Oso;1201062]
taigikyan will probably have some good advice but since he can’t actually look at you…he’ll probably say find someone competent to diagnose you.[/QUOTE]
<sniff, sniff>
aw, shucks, guys…:o
that said, a few things (those who know, will now brace themselves for the long-term):
-
when you talk about injuring “the spine”, you are talking about bone, which basically means either a fracture of the vertebra, or to one of the appendages, such as the lamina, pedicle, or transverse or spinous processes; that’s it; and these things don’t happen unless you either have a very hard fall, blow, MVA, etc.; as such, these are generally atypical, especially without specific history suggesting these (and of course, they show up on x-ray, except sometimes they don’t if the fracture is small and the angle of the films not just right); so really, to talk about injuring “the spine” doesn’t really make too much sense unless you are talking specifically about a fracture
-
you can also have damage to spinal ligaments, but that’s also very uncommon, you would have to have some heck of a trauma, and you would have symptoms related to vertebral instability; a ligamentous tear, unlike a fracture, won’t show up on x-rays, you need an MRI to diagnose that; again, relatively uncommon (unless we are talking cost-vertebral ligaments, the ones that hold the ribs to the thoracic spine - more common than inter-vertebral ligamentous tearing, but again, relatively speaking, uncommon, and mechanism of injury usually is obvious - trauma such as from an MVA)
-
nerve entrapment / impingement is more common, typically at vertebral levels where you have disc degeneration - common areas include C4/5, C5/6, L4/5, L5/S1 - these are areas that undergo more mechanical stress by virtue of their relative positions at the bottom of natural kyphotic spinal curvature - they tend to take more abuse, the discs tend to be more easily degenerated and as such you get narrowing of the intervetebral canals through which the spinal nerve roots pass; mechanism of injury can be trauma related, but often it is insidious, and can creep up on you over time without an apparent cause; predisposing factors can be elevated body mass, sedentary lifestyle an smoking, but also the weekend warrior or 40 y/o who thinks he’s 20 (that would be me, lol); the thing about TRUE nerve entrapment is that clinically the symptoms are very clear, insofar as you have distinct sensory changes along the dermatome for the nerve root in question, altered deep tendon reflexes (DTR’s) and clear muscle weakness / wasting along the myotome; also, unlike muscle pain (which we’ll get to below), you typically can’t relieve the symptoms by positioning - although extension can work (which is what the McKenzie approach uses to a large, though not compete, extent), often nothing relieves the symptoms, which ALWAYS include radiation along the nerve root distribution; this situation is the ideal textbook indication for surgery, and without other co-morbidities, typically produces an excellent post-surgical outcome (elimination of symptoms without recurrence);
-
IMPE, by FAR the most common sort of back / neck injury are the muscles attached to the spinal column; there are two types: the multifidi, which are the small little muscles running in between vertebra, and which are the major stabilizes of the spine during distal function - meaning that when you go to move an arm or leg, multifidi contract first to create a stable base off of which the peripheral musculature can function); the other type would be the longer muscles that attach to the spine in some way, like the extensor spinae, the psoas, the lats, the traps, quadratus lumborum, etc.; these muscles are active movers of the trunk, being less involved in stabilization;
a typical scenario is as follow: for some reason, multifidi get inhibited - either on one side or another - and stop functioning as spinal stabilizers because they fire too late in the stabilizing sequence or not at all (why they get inhibited can relate to things like postural usage, breath function, general state of inflammation of the body, local inflammation at a given spinal level, possibly organ dysfunction that feed back to the same somatic level, and, of course, trauma); at any rate, what happens is that now the peripheral movers (psoas, quadratus, lats) end up having to do the job of multifidi; as they are not designed as stabilizers, they become dysfunctional (locally inflammed, developing trigger points, becoming either hyper or hypo functional); this now put more stress asymmetrically on the spine, creating further multifidi dysfunction, and a vicious cycle ensues; of course, the organism compensates, and can even self-correct, but if you do something like lift a heavy load, twist quickly, get up out of bed the “wrong” way, drive a long time without stopping, sit at a computer all day, or any number of things, now you get to a point where a given muscle or group of muscles go into some kind of acute spasm (where as before they may have just been chronically tense) and you get symptoms such as pain, numbness, tingling, and reduced mobility;
sometimes this wil resolve on its own, other times it won’t - it depends on a variety of factors;
as far as icing, I know it’s the standard for an acute injury, however, I’m not so sure it’s always the best thing to do - there is some thinking out there that as opposed to RICE, you want to keep warm and move - (of course, not if there is tissue trauma that you need to stabilize to avoid further damage, like a fracture or avulsion); IMPE, I have treated “hot” sprains immediately with manual therapy that has resulted in immediate (5 min), full and lasting relief; again, this was in cases where the musculature was the primary issue, there was no tearing of ligaments or fracture, but weight bearing was impossible before, and full after what I did - no RICE there; but that’s obviously a topic that bears more discussion - just to say that RICE may not always be the only way to go…
as far as doing sit-ups - that really depends on what is injured, and on how you do sit-ups; for example, if you strain your psoas, and you do sit-ups in a way that is mostly hip-flexor dominant, than certainly you wouldn’t want to do it; OTOH, if you strain your back extensors, and you do sit-ups in a way that recruits anterior spinal segmental flexors, then there’s a good chance doing this will cause reciprocal inhibition of the spasmed extensors and basically “fix” the problem; so again, making a general statement about sit-ups being good or bad for a back injury is at best specious…so bawang and Iron fist are both correct in the sense that both scenarios are possible, and also incorrect insofar as they are over-generalizing
as far as posture: chronic postural habitus in certain cases can certainly lead to muscle dysfunction, and either cause symptoms directly or can set you up for injury when you move / lift heavy objects - again, it depends on factors like your intrinsic biomechanics, connective tissue, useage, movement patterns, state of mind - all sorts of factors - so again, it’s very risky to generalize;
so back to the original question: as I always say, I haven’t examined you, I don’t know what you did, but it SEEMS like it’s musculature, just based on what you describe; again, i haven’t examined you, so I could be wrong;
the best thing, as always, is to go get evaluated by a COMPETANT manually-oriented health-care practitioner - PT, chiro, osteopath, tuina guy, Rolfer, etc. - there are many approaches, and each has skilled practitioners; there are also, of course, people who are quacks and suc at what they do;
for me, it’s simple: I personally believe that for manipulable lesions (e.g. - injuries that don’t involved fracture, avulsion, stuff that needs to be repaired surgically, etc.), you should have immediate and lasting relief of at least 40% in the initial treatment - people who know what they are doing should have no problem getting results of this degree; personally, I’m not happy unless I get 60 - 70% relief the first time, and also with recurrence of no more than 30% in most cases (that depends a lot on the patient in between sessions); so if you go to someone and they treat you 3 times without discernable effect, move on…
ok, good luck
OKAY!!! Who opened their BIG mouth and invited tgy in???:mad:
Bookmarked in case of future injury…
lmao 
…
Thanks for all the advice and info guys, I appreciate it!..I haven’t git back into a regular training regiment yet…as much as I wanted to, I do feel like it’s making progress though…I’m hopeful 
[QUOTE=Scott R. Brown;1201083]OKAY!!! Who opened their BIG mouth and invited tgy in???:mad:[/QUOTE]
yeah, that know-it-all never shuts up…
Don’t ice for more than 15-20 minutes at a time, though.
More than 20 minutes at once is pro-inflammatory which is the opposite of what you want.
Most guys tend to sit on their arse and only work out like crazy now and then. For those that work hard all the time, they seem to be more prone to get silly with it.
I am a lazy man. Ugly and lazy. I would get into a hard fight and by the next day feel like I was frozen in my joints. I got smart and did what Bruce did, and I bought myself a sack full of Tinse Units. They are small little boxes full of batteries, and they have a wire or actually 2 wires with a sticky pad on each one. I stick one on either side of the muscles that were spasming and turn it on. It shocks a little, but it makes these muscles relax and stop spasming. Quick fix if it is only spastic muscles. Worth the money and time looking for one. They can be had at most medical supply places and anyone can buy one.
Bruce Lee used to have one in each pocket. He hooked them to his lats, pecs, six pack, or even his glutts. He stood there jumping all over. It exercised target muscles that he wanted to enhance and he could go about his business day and not have to do the exercises otherwise.
[QUOTE=IronFist;1201825]Don’t ice for more than 15-20 minutes at a time, though.
More than 20 minutes at once is pro-inflammatory which is the opposite of what you want.[/QUOTE]
Yeah I forgot to mention that, thanks for including that! Its actually 15-25 mins, so I always say 20 mins.
[QUOTE=Lee Chiang Po;1201834]Most guys tend to sit on their arse and only work out like crazy now and then. For those that work hard all the time, they seem to be more prone to get silly with it.
I am a lazy man. Ugly and lazy. I would get into a hard fight and by the next day feel like I was frozen in my joints. I got smart and did what Bruce did, and I bought myself a sack full of Tinse Units. They are small little boxes full of batteries, and they have a wire or actually 2 wires with a sticky pad on each one. I stick one on either side of the muscles that were spasming and turn it on. It shocks a little, but it makes these muscles relax and stop spasming. Quick fix if it is only spastic muscles. Worth the money and time looking for one. They can be had at most medical supply places and anyone can buy one.
Bruce Lee used to have one in each pocket. He hooked them to his lats, pecs, six pack, or even his glutts. He stood there jumping all over. It exercised target muscles that he wanted to enhance and he could go about his business day and not have to do the exercises otherwise.[/QUOTE]
That’s TENS, Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation
Aren’t TENS useless except on comatose patients or something to prevent atrophy?
I know they’re sold as fitness products but I thought that was just a scam.
…and don’t forget to consult the meridian charts…don’t want to ice over top of the chi flow…
[QUOTE=IronFist;1201957]Aren’t TENS useless except on comatose patients or something to prevent atrophy?
I know they’re sold as fitness products but I thought that was just a scam.[/QUOTE]
We usually used them for pain management. They were very prevalent some 25-30 years ago, but they have fallen out of favor. Medicine is frought with fads too.
Not so much muscular
It sounds as if you have a structural problem around L4, L5 sacrum and SI joints . They are in the Low back Pelvic area , and it is common in those that do construction landscaping etc, which makes it difficult to perform good mechanics when lifting or moving things. So see some one who can correct the lumbar and SI joints most likely a Posterior Innominate Rotation and L5 Sacral torsion and counter rotation at L5 and opposite Counter rotation at L4. After the structure is Corrected stabilize the core , do not do sit ups. Slowly progress to High Level Core Stabilization exercises, Ice the LB after all w/o and be careful for a while it comes back real easy. KC
[QUOTE=kwaichang;1202244]It sounds as if you have a structural problem around L4, L5 sacrum and SI joints . They are in the Low back Pelvic area , and it is common in those that do construction landscaping etc, which makes it difficult to perform good mechanics when lifting or moving things. So see some one who can correct the lumbar and SI joints most likely a Posterior Innominate Rotation and L5 Sacral torsion and counter rotation at L5 and opposite Counter rotation at L4. After the structure is Corrected stabilize the core , do not do sit ups. Slowly progress to High Level Core Stabilization exercises, Ice the LB after all w/o and be careful for a while it comes back real easy. KC[/QUOTE]
Certainly possible…It’s about 6 weeks since I got hurt now and I have gotten a lot better. I’m back to training, but just Muay Thai. I still don’t trust myself to do spins or crescent kicks yet…those are the movements that set it off…I can do Teep and roundhouse all day, can even work the clinch and just get a bit sore, but one lotus kick would put me right back in pain…I’m just going to wait it out until there’s no pain from those type of movements.
if it is spinal injury the cheapest rehab method is lots and lots of pull ups. it brings nutrients into your spinal discs.
[QUOTE=kwaichang;1202244]It sounds as if you have a structural problem around L4, L5 sacrum and SI joints . They are in the Low back Pelvic area , and it is common in those that do construction landscaping etc, which makes it difficult to perform good mechanics when lifting or moving things. So see some one who can correct the lumbar and SI joints most likely a Posterior Innominate Rotation and L5 Sacral torsion and counter rotation at L5 and opposite Counter rotation at L4. After the structure is Corrected stabilize the core , do not do sit ups. Slowly progress to High Level Core Stabilization exercises, Ice the LB after all w/o and be careful for a while it comes back real easy. KC[/QUOTE]
first off, you have no way of knowing this is the case without having examined him; even though you are describing Mitchell’s Common Compensatory Pattern, which some sources cite as being the case ~85% of the time (although this is anecdotal, not statistical), you don’t know if this is the case with him; to suggest that this is his profile without having examined him is not only irresponsible, it’s unethical; and as a PT, you should know better than this;
second of all, if you want to talk treatment on someone who does present with manipulable dysfunction, in the case of a PRI, honestly, who gives a crap: it’s an exaggeration of a normal movement along its physiological axis; most of the time it’s not primary, or even contributory; and when you correct the underlying issue(s) it usually corrects on its own; and guess what - most asymptomatic people are walking around with a u/l PRI (usually Lt.) anyway; unfortunately, it’s a lesion that gets corrected frequently because it’s relatively easy to diagnose and “correct”; btut it’s a red herring, and most of the time should be ignored; as far as the sacral torsion, if it’s a LOL / ROR, same thing - who cares - it’s typical, it occurs in gait, and most people are asymmetrical when asymptomatic;
what you really care about in the pelvis are unilateral sacral extensions (rare), iliac upslips (rare), backwards sacral torsions (fairly common) and pubic shears (epidemic); the last two should be corrected by any means available, but you also have to balance pelvic floor, abdominal visceral mass, respiratory diaphragm and probably have a good look at someone’s feet, crural interosseous membranes and hip joints as well, instead of stomping on PRIs, FST’s and L5/S1(unless you have a true compression of L5 on S1, then you need to decompress that - but correction FRS/ERS’s at that level isn’t usually a priority)
as far as sit-ups, again, if your goal is to engage transversus, obliques and multifidi, sit-ups in a controlled manner can be useful, it just depends; to say one should / should not do sit-ups without looking at each person individually makes no sense;
[QUOTE=bawang;1202289]if it is spinal injury the cheapest rehab method is lots and lots of pull ups. it brings nutrients into your spinal discs.[/QUOTE]
no it doesn’t - at least no more than any other activity that decreases vertebral loading; and again, when you say “spinal injury”, that can mean anything from bone, to ligament, to disc, to nerve, to muscle, each of which require seperate treatment approaches depending on the nature of the pathology;
as far as pull-ups, many people do them wrong, by engaging hip flexors to help get themselves over the top of the bar; in a lot of cases, chroniclly facilitated hip flexors can create significant low back and discal dysfunction; so it’s possible that someone could do pull-ups and create more problems than they solve
again, and I say this all the time, IT DEPENDS on the individual, their clinical presentation, etc., and to make either general statements or comment on someone who you haven’t examined is irresponsible and unethical;
why is this so hard for people to understand?