Hi everyone, I’ve been dealing with lower back pain for about a month now and wanted to see if anyone here has had a similar experience.
I’m 19 and I practice Olympic weightlifting. I’ve always been very active and consistently training this sport for 3 years. About 2 years ago I had an L5-S1 disc protrusion, but it recovered well and I’ve been training normally since then without any pain until now
This time, the pain kind of started out of nowhere. I had a competition in early March, and after that my training volume and intensity were reduced to focus more on technique, a month later I completely rested from weightlifting for a week (just did some cardio and light calisthenics). When I came back, I had some mild, tolerable discomfort during olympic lifts but it suddenly got much worse during a “light” front squat . Since then, it’s been like this.
I’ve already had imaging done and everything came back normal. I’m currently in physical therapy and was told it’s likely just irritation. The pain is localized in my lower back (slightly more on the left side), and it mainly shows up with certain movements or when I put load on it. Lifting from the floor, squats, or anything involving a hinge pattern tends to trigger it. What’s confusing is that some days I feel almost fine, and then out of nowhere the pain comes back again, sometimes pretty intense, even if I didn’t do anything particularly demanding. I don’t really have pain going down my leg it's mostly just in that specific area of my lower back. I’ve also noticed that raising my leg straight can make it more noticeable.
I can train upper body without any pain at all, and that’s basically what I’ve been doing this past month along with physical therapy. I’m taking it easy right now, sticking to rehab and modifying training, but I’m curious if anyone especially athletes or lifters has dealt with this kind of “better, then worse again” pattern.
Not looking for a diagnosis, just personal experiences what it felt like for you, what helped, and how long it took to improve.
Thanks in advance.