Mark

This is what happens if all you do is "rehab" exercises. You get weaker and increase your risk of reinjury. I know because it happened to me. Rehab exercises are a starting point to help you train the injured area again. But they're not the end goal. You MUST rebuild.

I deal in standards-Not trends! Ankle compression for athletes is a forgotten golden rule. The compression forces out fluid in the joint. Then you can manipulate it by hand (if you are certified to) or have athlete do it themselves w/ a band. Dick Hartzell stuff. Prepare!

Non specific low back pain - Back from a 5 day vacation. 2 long drives. Slept in shitty AirBnB bed. Lots of time sitting in a lawn chair or floating in an inner tube. Probably dehydrated from combo of 100 degree Texas sun and unhealthy amount of alcohol consumption. Low back in enough pain last night to prevent me from sleeping most of the night. The fix? Deadlifts. Didn’t do anything stupid in terms of loaf or volume. 3x6 at probably 2-3 RIR from a 2” deficit. Followed by 45 degree back extensions for 3x15. Pain was more or less gone by 2nd or 3rd warm up set and 1 hour post work out and I’m 100% back to normal. This isn’t a “look how tough I am!” post. It wasn’t an act of toughness or recklessness. After 2 warm up sets at 135 I was already feeling 50-60% less pain and stiffness. I know a lot of my clients who get in similar situations will contact me and say “back is tight, let’s lay off squats and deadlifts this week.” But you should do the opposite provided 2 caveats: (1) don’t go crazy with load. Medium weight for medium reps. No max singles or 5RMs. (2) it isn’t an acute low back injury. I didn’t “strain” my back. I’d still train even if I did “tweak” my back but the protocol might be different. But non specific low back pain from the conditions similar to what I described above is common and is easily remedied via intelligent training.