How to Prevent Back Pain Flare Ups

Reading Time: 2mins

Last Updated: December 18th, 2024 at 11:53 pm

A few months ago I started working with a lady who was having recurring back pain

A couple times a year, she would do something that would aggravate her back and then be out of commission for days

Often times taking time off work because of the pain

Once we started working together, I knew she needed to build spinal resilience

Which means we gotta start doing 1 major thing: heavy deadlifts 

But at the beginning, she was in too much pain to deadlift

Therefore, I started working on various areas of her body which support a pain free deadlift

Hip mobility

Spinal mobility

Proper technique

The works

Getting her to the point where she could perform a deadlift without any pain

Checkpoint reached

But deadlifting without pain isn’t enough

We need to go heavy

Really heavy

We worked on getting her deadlift as heavy as possible

Challenging her spinal musculature to adapt to a very large load and stimulus

This builds spinal resilience

Fast forward a few weeks and she had been deadlifting heavy at least 1x/wk

The last session she came to me and told me that since the last time she saw me, she went on a long road trip and slept on unfamiliar mattresses

And towards the end of her travels, she was having some back pain

She worried it was going to blow up into a full blown flare up like it would’ve in the past

Only this time, she had been deadlifting…

She woke up the next morning and felt fine

Able to get back in the gym, do some more heavy deadlifts, and importantly, not take any time off work

Heavy deadlifts protected this patient from having another flare up and kept her life moving along

On to more heavy deadlifts and setting new personal bests in the deadlift during our session

All pain free

Thank you deadlifts

We love you If you’ve been dealing with recurrent back pain and want some professional help, let’s chat

Schedule a free 15 minute phone call with me and we can see if we’re a good fit to work together

It could be the difference between a full blown flare up or simply sleeping it off

Your best is yet to come!

-Dr. Michael

Related Articles

How to Deadlift Safely

In last week’s newsletter, I laid out some basic concepts for my 12-week Own the Off Season 2025 program. Heavy Hex Bar Deadlifting is the centerpiece of the program and…
Read more

My #1 Health Tip for 2025

You know what my least favorite fitness goals are? Weight loss goals. Goals to lose X pounds by Y date. So boring and uninspiring.  I’ve got a better idea: choose…
Read more
We strive to help runners feel their best and run pain free