"As my career has moved along, I've had some minor injuries. Nothing that requires any sort of surgery, but I’ve had some things that just hurt. Usually, this ends up happening to my lower back. This is an article that I wrote a while ago, and I finally got around to posting it up." - Pegg
I’ve had so much pain in my lower back that it's hard to get up or sit down in a chair, let alone try to squat or deadlift a couple hundred pounds. Accessory work? GTFO. No way that's happening. I can honestly say that I haven't felt pain like this in a very, very long time. It's constant too. My only saving grace was that it was bilateral pain, and not in my spine. Fortunately, now though, it's starting to recede much like my hair. As much as it might pain me to say this, I have my massage therapist to thank.
I brainstormed a shit load on what could be wrong. I'm going to say I literally spent four to five hours a day searching. I also researched information from all corners of the internet. WebMD told me I have cancer....or PTSD....or paralyzed. Not quite that extreme, but now I know who to thank for a generation of hypochondriacs. Some places said muscle tears, spinal injury, etc, etc, etc. The real problem I had, was that I had absolutely NO IDEA how I injured it. Usually, and I'm going to say that this is true over 90 percent of the time, if you hurt yourself to cause enough pain that it actually bothers you, you remember it. I couldn't remember anything specific. NOTHING. My massage therapist found out in about 15 minutes, and she didn't even really try.
One day, as my ex wife was getting ready to go to work, I goaded her into doing some work to try to loosen up my lower back. She relented, but then started going to town on my back. She did all sorts of massage therapist stuff that I'm not sure I know the name of, but I can give a brief description of them. They could all be called "hurts like hell." She had me flopping around on the floor like a fish out of water. Kind of pathetic to admit, but it hurt. I was not a happy camper. She told me that my erectors were all knotted up, which I knew. Then she started doing some work on my upper glutes, right next to the erectors. This in turn amped the pain to 11. She then worked down some into my gluteus medius, gluteus minus, and also dropped her elbow into my piriformis. She said that she has never felt mine so knotted up and tense. Here's the awesome part: as she was doing this, the pain in my back disappeared, almost immediately. It was awesome. Literally almost indescribable. Right now, it's sore from all of her body weight transferred to the muscles via her elbow, but the pain aspect is gone. I am indescribably happy, soreness or not. I may actually be able to get after it sometime soon, regardless of the soreness. With a meet coming up, and my training cycle being in full swing now, that's a big deal. Now I realize what my buddy, Jo Jordan, has been dealing with. The difference between he and I is that he has been squatting, pulling and basically training like a maniac the whole time he has been dealing with his issue. And he has had it for months. You're more of a man than me Jo. Or an idiot. I think I'll let the people decide.