For Anyone Who Has A Herniated Disk
Context: In 2018 - i was 18 years old, I became obsessed with exercise and long story short, ended up absolutely obliterating my spine as a result. I would exercise with a lumbar herniated disk, while the pain shot down my leg I would continue to lift 300+ pounds on deadlifts and rack pulls. I was struggling with my mental health issue at the time and it became a way of sabotaging myself. I'm alright now. I went to physio, doctors and they all told me i had pseudo sciatica. I was 18 and told them it was in fact not the case. My rehab at home started. I began with doing as much snakepose holds as possible (within pain limits) at one point i was barely able to leave the ground without absolute agony. I started hydrating, using supplements that help with repair, protein, fish oils - anything to fix me.
Time Went By:
Decompressing - laying down for extended periods of time during the day to ensure it wasn't aggravated at all. The pain started to subside when i incorporated core exercises and strengthening of the hip flexor muscles. It went away. 2022 I herniated it again, this time it was worse for three days, with the knowledge I had I applied myself hard and recovered again in a week. 2023 came around and I was back to deadlifting again - did 535 pound deadlift, 405lb for 15 reps in a set. I literally transformed and my old self was gone, if you're reading this you will recover, the body is immensely strong.
Since Then:
Core exercising, hydrating, decompression before sleeping, extension (snake pose), do weighted pull ups - it strengthens core and decompresses spine, dead hangs from a pull up bar and most importantly back extensions. I'm aware there are varying factors such as age, severity etc that impact recovery. This won't apply to all!
All Injuries are Different but this helped me alot:
Cobra for lumbar disk pain (2 steps)
1. Get into position
Lie on your stomach. Hands under shoulders. Relax your legs. Slowly push up into a gentle cobra, hips stay down.
2. Check your symptoms
Notice what happens:
- Pain moves out of your leg or eases = keep going
- Pain travels further down your leg or gets sharper = stop
Stick with whatever makes symptoms move out of the leg, not into it.
For me the pain was on my left side, when i did regular cobras it helped out for the first little while. then once i implemented what the McKenzie Method referenced as the "banana" it really helped. Essentially we will do cobra and progressively get taller and taller until the pain is minimal. Once we get there, the next step is to start adding lateral force, so instead of up and down we do up and toward the pain side.
My protocol for decompression was:
10 second hanging with feet on the ground (you will not get any decompression if you are tense which is why feet need to be slightly resting on the ground - to allow the quadratus lumborum to relax) . This was followed by cobra poses in between --- the reason why it is after is because it gives the spine a chance to open up and allow for the nucleus to retreat back into its original spot - leaving the nerve untouched OR partially untouched. I repeated this hundreds of times and progressed to weighted hanging as well. By the way this was done supplementary to regular exercise, I worked in a factory at the time and i would stand for 8-10 hours per day and go to the gym afterwards (in the later stages when i could walk). My progress accelerated immensely once i could walk, stand and kind of bend.
As mentioned, i was able to make a full recovery. But it isn't as glorious as it sounds, sometimes i will notice that the are feels a bit strange, that i need to get back to my rehab routine and strengthen further. Its an ongoing thing but once you are back to a healthy level you will most certainly need to keep up with the maintenance work to ensure you dont get injured again. With sports injuries like these, they are very susceptible to reinjury, im not sure what the science says but the stat is high, and u will likely suffer from it again if not properly managed.