Back Pain and Back Strength (Audio Only) 

RIP is still the Gold Standard for me when it comes to talking about strength.

Six years ago, I had severe back pain. I couldn't sleep, couldn't stand for long periods of time, etc. etc. I went to a Chiropractor (who is also a powerlifter) and he told me to start deadlifting. I thought he was nuts, but I listened to what he had to say. A few weeks into a simple squat/bench/dead program, the back pain was completely gone, never to return. I started lifting regularly. I look and feel better now, at 36, than I did at 21.

When I was in high school I hurt my back squatting and used it as an excuse to be sedentary. When I started training I was surprised how quickly that pain disappeared. Now I'm deadlifting 440lbs and I realize you are absolutely right on about this.

This is not trendy or glamorous, this is great information

I was diagnosed with a degenerated L5/S1 at the age of 21 after a full year of back pain. Consistently continued to train and workout, once I got more and more into squatting and deadlifting (even though it wouldn't always feel right), it always reliefed some of the pain afterwards. I may not be 100% pain free yet, however, I am squatting and deadlifting in excess of 250 pounds and feel really good. Strength training is the only way out of pain.

I went to a chiropractor for treatment, he told me, I would need to see him for 16 visits ( which magically coincided with my insurance's coverage amount) and he also added, "you should lay off the deadlifts, they will damage your back." Needless to say, I ditched him that very second and went on to deadlift my way back to being pain free.

This corresponds 100% to my experience. I chose to be strong, refused an MRI and kept training. BTW my 'core' has never being so strong as since I have been training with barbells...

I enjoy these monologues from Rippetoe. Being over 40, SS really has changed my attitude toward exercise as a whole. It’s not a hobby but a necessity. I see myself doing squats/ DLs/ bench/ OHPs for the remaining part of my life.

These audio segments are pure gold: concise , eloquently articulated , and very interesting.

I am interpreting MRIs (many lumbar MRIs at that) as I am listening to this. Rip is 100% correct. Just because we see degenerative changes, there is no way to tell if this is the cause of the patients back pain. Asymptomatic patients may have a very abnormal MRI, and those with a normal MRI may have back pain.

I had lumbar herniated disc surgery at age 16, as the pain was such that I could not even stand up straight, and had very little success with both standing up from sitting and sitting from standing. The disc had pushed back so far into the nerve, that my surgeon had to file down the bone to allow extra room for inflammation. I suffered many years of moderate nerve pain post surgery, all of which has diminished since I started barbell training. I only wish I had found it before surgery. Now, if my back/sciatic nerve are giving me trouble, a short set of 5 heavy deadlifts seem to do the trick. Counterintuitive, yes, but effective.

00:11 Can confirm, Been running away from all responsibilities in life and still fat.

I discovered this truth independently after many chiropractor visits. Lifting heavy weight with good technique relieves my low back pain. But I do deadlifts and squats in 5 sets of 20 once a week. I also do lots of bodyweight squats throughout the week. I don't lift as heavy as Mark teaches, but it's heavy enough to fix my back.

@starting strength changed my life. I got to the point where j saw the rest of my life weak due to my back issue. When I found out about SS, gave it a try and I was amazed as the pain disappeared and the level of confidence increased.

I’m so fortunate to share time on earth with this man. He speaks I listen. 💪

i had an extruded lumbar disc. Started going to PT after a cortisone shot to stop the burning pain. PT had me do the typical "core" strengthening exercises. It just didn't strengthen my back enough. I came across a website where the writer talked about squats and deadlifts to strengthen the back to stop the pain of a herniated disc. I very cautiously proceeded to do shallow deadlifts w/ 50#'s and then progressed to 150#'s. BTW, I was 58, 6'-0" 200# avg active white guy office worker. Within 2 weeks of doing just 3 sets per week, I no longer had pain while sittin in a car or office chair, and I resumed playing old man pickup hockey without worrying about back spasms etc. When I told my PT I did this, outside of his window of care, he just nodded his head, said that's great and he was happy for me!

I have an ugly lumbar. Roto-scoliosis, compressed discs, 4mm bulge, 6mm bulge, narrow spinal chord channel. Flexion (sit-ups, leg lifts) aggravate condition. Extension (cobra, superman) improve condition. I’m 70 and have been dealing with lumbar issues since a motorcycle wreck at 24. High bar back or front squats beat me up. Lo bar back squats make me feel like a million bucks. My basic routine is Strong Lift 5x5. Love you, Rip!

Started doing rack pulls after my spinal fusion and my pain is gone and my core is better than ever!

100% true! In my twenties, when I had an office job. My back would go out few times a year. I'd bent down to pick up a pen and voila. I couldn't walk straight for a week. I'm in my 40s now, I started barbell training about 5 years ago. I squat, deadlift, etc. And ever since then I've never experienced lower back problems.

I was traveling for work, and had the flu. Was sick and missed a week in the gym, felt better, got in a flying metal coffin with lots of sick people, anyway my back was hurting worst than it has in a year or more after going to the gym zero times in 3 weeks...... Currently I am 4 days and 3 training sessions in and my back is 80%+++ better. Much better than when I was popping Aleve a week earlier. And yeah I'm a 400+ pound squatter, and my heaviest was a paused 275 x 5. Hard enough to do something, but more practice than anything. This stuff just works. Period.

First 20 seconds is everything Rip’s been grumbling about for the past 2 weeks. Lol. Gold.

My useless $.02. About 2 years ago I started doing yoga as it seemed that it was the only exercise I could do that wouldn't hurt. I did 8 different kinds of yoga, sometimes 5 hours a day of yoga. Power yoga, gentle yoga, yin yoga, swing yoga, ashtanga yoga, vinyasa yoga, broga, and hatha yoga. All were basically the same but all made my back even sorer because my male back couldn't bend the way a female back can. Their tiny waists have so little tissue that it is easy to stretch it. I went to the back cracker three times and it still never ceased the back pain. Now I no longer do yoga. I do dead lifts.; 200 a day, 205 pounds and guess what? I have no more back pain and also no more knee pain and also no more hip joint pain. I had been thinking of getting stem cell injections but not any more.

I have a light scoliosis that's kept my back hurting for the last 17 years, after I started lifting for strength, deadlifts/squats and rows my back pain is mostly gone. I think a strong core removes a lot of unnecessary pain.

My great grandma died 98yo. She walked upright with NO walking aids. Today, my grandpa is 92yo. He is also walking upright with NO walking aids. Both grew up in a farm. And they planted rice manually, with no machinery, all their life. Never had any back issues; no slipped disc, no broken backs, no back bone fusings. I still remember a conversation that derailed me into saying "Occupational health and safety (OH&S) workplace about looking after your back, lifting correctly and twisting etc..." They both laughed at me hysterically... They replied, "Send them to the rice fields and that should fix the back problems." That is when it occurred to me that its due to: 1) undeveloped muscles 2) excessive-ness and insufficient rest

Getting stronger helped stop my nagging back pain after 12 hr shifts

This particular video has the most comments which corroborates my experience as well. If I don’t do at least a squat session per week, I will really start to feel discomfort that feels like ligament/tendon pain behind my left knee and on the right of my right knee. Yet I go back to the squat rack and around the second session onwards I always feel stronger and almost painless and I’m ready to sprint any time. It is so counterintuitive people and it’s the greatest thing I’ve gotten from SS.

As a freemason with back issues, I appreciate this information.

I could (and would) listen to Rip read anything. #UncleRip

Tweaked my back again deadlifting. have stenosis and pinched nerves in my back. Every time i try to do DL and make it stronger, I snap my shit up and am out for a week. I try to keep good form, and I get some good lifts out, but eventually SNAP

Congratz on 100k subscribers Rip!

Once in a while you get it spot on🏋️‍♀️

have scoliosis, but deadlifts and squats help if i warm up properly. i can do now 130kg for reps on the DL and i am painfree most of the time.

1 minute into this video about back pain and how strengthening your back with squat and deadlift helps with the pain is 100% true in my case. I injured my back when I was 28 ended up having surgery. Still had pain for years after. Started strength training again at 34 pain is almost completely gone.

This is pretty much 100% accurate.

Based Rippetoe.

I developed bad back pain doing some work redoing my shed floor. Bad pain. But the shed was half done had to push through. So I worked all day. By the end of the day. Back pain gone.

I've found this to be correct. You have to be smart about it though. If your back looks like a train wreck as mine does, should you be trying to lift weights that someone with a structurally sound back can lift. Lift correctly and lift smart.

Rip, Thanks for the information. It's appreciated.

Mark you should check out ido portal and his movement philosophy

I hurt my back right out of college. The pain and advice I received made me think being sedentary was needed. Now I have mostly fixed my back but have lingering Chronic ischial bursitis from sitting. Any advice on finally getting rid of this bursitis? Rest is not enough and I seem to platue using the typical PT exercises given, bridges - lateral raises etc.

Even though we are subjected to compressive forces, wouldn’t it logically make sense to go through decompression anyway to negate some of it (inversion therapy , hanging on a pull up bar etc)

I agree with all but the evolutionary issue. Good stuff

100% true

Fixed my mother's sciatica. She dedlofts now.

So what does rip think of deadhangs after a heavy deadlift/squat day for decompression/ also for training grip

Even the HIT faction, (Jones, Darden, Mentzer, Hutchins, et al...), believe that the barbell squat is, by far, the best single exercise there is. The only difference is that, instead of properly coaching the squat to make it safe, they eliminated it... to make it safe:^).

I'm 18, I injured my back a month ago, every little move I made for about a week hurt then it got better, I haven't been able to get back in the gym since due to multiple things in my life, work, school, moving and other things in my personal life that take up all my free time, my work is construction, I've been carrying lumber, moving ladders, etc for the last couple of weeks and my back has given me no problems, if I had any serious damage to my back such as a herniated disk would my back hurt while doing manual labor such as that?. I've been really stressed out lately because I'm afraid I damaged a disk in my back and I'm going to paramedic school, after that I'm gonna be a firefighter, and if did any permanent damage to my back then that would be the end of my career choice.

That some people have an MRI showing degenerative disk but no pain... I'm sure there are cases where that's true true, maybe even many, but how do we know? If these people have no pain what caused them to get the back MRI in the first place? Is this info from a randomized study? Did they collect MRI's / CT scans that include the back but were for something other than back pain? Is there is a questionnaire everyone fills out asking if they have back pain and "oh, this person got an MRI of their back for some other reason but it turns out they have degenerative disk yet report no pain on the generic MRI questionnaire everyone fills out". I would also like to know, how often is the occurrence of significant degeneration and no pain vs degeneration with pain? Is it somewhat rare? Very care, Common? From what I understand, degenerative disk can be caused by aging and regular wear and tear but also may be initiated by acute injury and re-injury. So say that you have degenerative disk and there is no pain because you are lucky because there is no nerve impingement, but if its not fully healed and you keep applying pressure can you cause further injury until it does eventually cause pain. I guess you dont know because there is no pain to alert you. So if you have an acute event where there is pain for a few days and then it subsides and is 'gone', should you be concerned that its not fully healed or is lack of pain an indication of healing?

Do you want a Strong old human back... or a weak old human back. 💪🏾

Surely the position of the bar compresses disc and spinal sections? Yes you strengthen muscles but that won't remove the force. I can't see how adding more weight to discs unless you are already very strong could benefit someone with degenerate discs

Could it be that Mr.Rippetoe is missing the importance of "mobility"? I did squats and deadlifts in 2016 hoping my back would get better, but instead my ISG locked up and I started to get schiatica phenomena down my leg on top of it all. I have since taken to inline skating and strangely enough that really helped my back pain. Not sure whether I'll ever go back to the barbell after that experience - it just never seems to have helped my stiffness/pain. Of course strength is a good thing, but it's not the single cure for everything.

I must be doing something wrong. Deadlifts make my lower back worse. I watched the videos over and over on how to do them correctly and it looks like the L2 -3 herniated discs are no enjoying the experience 😟

fucking gold standard .... everytime someone tells me you will hurt your back with deadlift ... i cry inside cauz how people got brainwashed into this non sense ... mark is no 1

Strong back feels no pain

Talk shit all you want, RIP. My cat weighs 11lbs and has a 30lb bench press.

Hex Bar Deadlift is far superior to the straight bar.

The #1 cause of back pain is making excuses.

Freemason means human?

Your body hurts because you are weak.

On passing another law so you wont do something. When was the last time a mass shooting was perpetrated in the United States with a machine gun? I dont recall. It seems that the law restricting the sale of machine guns (fully automatic rifles) keeps people from getting them. If you want to obtian a machine gun illegally you can certainly try, but the average person has to now start looking around for how and where to get one illegally, once you do that you put yourself in immediate jeopardy of getting caught and going to prison for 10 years (although not sure a suicidal maniac ares much about prison). In any case, that's why, even though machine guns would be more effective at murdering lots of people, thankfully, we have laws in place that actually work at preventing this. Of course some laws are ridiculous and dont work, but some do. Libertarianism is mostly utopian nonsense not unlike Communism but from a different ideological and more childlike perspective IMO. If you dont believe me, just look at Rand Paul, the most immature member of the senate who also happens to have the softest ribs of any man in KY.

this is not true. exercise is healthy to a point but nothing is perfect.