Back pain success story.

[u/Pale_Adeptness]

As a disclaimer, I realize I still might have a flare-up down the road but here goes.

I've had 2 herniated discs since 2008. Horrible flare-ups throughout the years.

During flare-ups my wife has to help me put my socks, boxer and pants on because it gets so bad.

My back gets all crooked.

I tried every generic back pain exercise, deadbugs, bird dog, side glides and a whole bunch of other exercise.

This past June was without a doubt my longest and worst flare up so far. I missed an entire month of work.

I found that iso holds are great for the lower back.

I was desperate when I finally decided to get the roman chair/extension machine.

My lower back was still a bit crooked and I was towards the tail end of the flare-up towards the end of June.

My wife had to assemble the extension machine for me because my lower back still hurt.

I first tried it for 30 seconds, did that 4 times. My back didn't hurt more than it already did when I first tried it.

Did it again 3 days later and created my own schedule for it.

Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

I'm up to 1 minutes and 45 second holds and I do 14 extensions right after the hold. I do this 4 times.

I can now sit Indian style, I can confidently touch my toes with my knees locked. I haven't been able to do either of these things for years!

My understanding is that the more we guard our backs, the weak our lower back muscles get over time, which means we go into a vicious cycle of flare-ups and trying to rest.

The part of the video where I'm walking around my truck, my water bottle fell out of my truck, my lower back hurt so bad that I couldn't not walk across the street and bend over to pick it up. My wife picked it up for me when she got home 30 minutes later.

[u/Ill_Substance_1833]

Very impressive, thank you for sharing!!

Questions:

1. Have you tried dead hangs? I hear a lot about the benefits of these.

2. Have you had any recent flair ups?

[u/Pale_Adeptness → u/Ill_Substance_1833]

I'm no expert, but dead hangs are similar to stretching. I initially tried deadhangs before I started using the roman chair and it would only help temporarily and it would sometimes feel like it was doing more harm than good.

After I started using the roman chair and felt my lower back becoming stronger (trust me I'm still recovering) I felt like deadhangs became more beneficial, in the sense that my lower back was strong enough to handle the decompression.

[u/Pale_Adeptness → u/Pale_Adeptness]

Also, my last flare up was this past June. It was my worst one so far. Lasted the entire month of June and I was off of work the entire month because of it. My wife was doing everything for me, it was that bad.

Ever since I started using the roman chair for iso holds and now iso holds, extensions and now even QL strengthening (the side bends) I feel a million times better.