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It should help the recovery tremendously. It kinda sounds like you have a slight strain. You may want to give it complete rest for a day or two before you start stretching. Maybe some ice wouldn't hurt for right now. In about 3 days you can also use heat. In fact a good idea would be to heat the area and then stretch. A good hot soak before stretching would be good. That way you warm the muscle without exerting yourself too much so that the area gets more rest.

You should be fine. If you were to count up all the things that are impacting your back you'd find, "gulp", that it's pretty much everything.

BTW, I'm not seeing any ab work. Are you just not listing it? You need it and a strength imbalance could lead to these kinds of troubles. Also watch out for the military presses. Sometimes we have a tendency to "favor" one side or the other and since it puts your center of gravity so high the impact on the core musculature is pretty significant.

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If you act sanctimonious I will just list out your logical fallacies until you get pissed off and spew blasphemous remarks.

Tuesday 3/20/07

Squat -------------------- 3x5 185 lbs
Military Press ------------- 3x5 120 lbs
Rows --------------------- 3x5 115 lbs

Chin-ups ------------------ 1x8 1x7

Notes:
I took 10 days completely off because of a pain in my lower back. So I backed off the weights pretty severely (about 20% for Squat and Rows) for this first session back. I just wanted to feel the weight, and I'm glad I did it this way. I can tell I lost strength in those 10 days. I did all reps easily, but I thought the weights would feel lighter than they did. I also lost a few pounds, so I probably lost some muscle too.

I thought my back was ready to go, but it started hurting again during my Squat warm-ups. It's not real bad, but not perfect either. It didn't hurt at all during the Rows. I made an appointment to see my doctor. I want to know what's going on because I'm very motivated to keep going. Sentinel's got me thinking about the Texas Method workout which I think will be perfect for me after Rippetoe's Starting Strength.

I'm also starting to think it may not be my back but maybe an "upper hip" thing. It's just about belt level on the right side and seems to be deep in. Like Eric said, everthing is connected back there so who knows.

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What don't kill you make you more strong -- Metallica - Death Magnetic

When you come back from a layoff the weights tend to feel heavier than they should even when you lighten up. That is if you are lifting heavy. Those doing high volume light weight splits may not notice this! In a few days that heavy feeling should go away.

Good luck with your back.

Eric, I forgot to reply about Abs. I haven't been doing any Ab work because I was under the impression the lifts I'm doing are also my Ab workout. Being careful not to over train, I am not doing Abs.

But I would love to incorporate Ab specific exercises. Obviously I'll wait until I have a better understanding about what's going on with my back pain. That will give me time to look at some sticky's and figure out what I'll do. (suggestions are always welcome)

Yeah I've heard that before about abs. Some ab work is going to be necessary. You don't want to develop strength imbalances. Just once a week really should be fine. Look around and decide what you like. I usually recommend something weighted mixed with something like hanging knee (or leg) raises. Certain ab things could definitely be irritating to your back so you're right to want to get to the bottom of it first.

Great news, my chiropractor said my pain is being caused by my two lower vertebrae being kind of locked (not his exact words, but that’s the jist of it). It's great news because it's easily fixed. He said two more appointments for him to loosen it up more and stretching to keep it loose. He also said I can continue to lift, but keep it light until my last appointment with him next week.

I was worried he was going to suggest I do not workout anymore doing Squats and Deadlifts or anything affecting the lower back, but he said those are great exercises, and I should be good to go soon.

That's great. It's good that he said he'll just loosen it up some but that you need to stretch. A lot of chiropractors, you may be surprised to hear, never mention stretching. Instead they hook people in to never-ending appointments. But stretching is the number one thing whereas the effects of manipulation tend to be short-lived. In effect people end up paying someone to "keep them loose" when they could do the same thing stretching.

Good luck.

Thanks Eric. I didn't realize that about some chiropractors, but it makes sense...there's lots of shady people out there.

My chiropractor's good. I saw him about 10 years ago for a reoccurring neck problem I was having. Once he straightened me out, and I continued to do the little neck stretches he gave me, the problem never happened again.

Today he gave me a sheet with some daily stretches and another sheet with a quick 30 second routine to do through out the day where I just stand up and do some bending, twisting, and turning.

Awesome. I'd be interested in hearing about the stretches he gave you if you'd be willing to PM me.

I remember just last year I had mentioned to a friend that my lower back was acting up (I hadn't been doing my stretches and stuff) and she starts telling me about her problem and gives me a card from her chiropractor. She goes "he's great, I've been seeing him every week for about 3 years"....for the SAME problem. I almost laughed out loud but I just took the card and said thanks instead. I did suggest she should do some stretching and resistance exercise though.

I left the sheets in my car, but I'll PM you later about what's on them. I could have PMed this but I want to get my post count up to the magic 50 posts.