My doctors and PT all disagree with each other. Feel like I've backed into a corner and don't know where to go.

More than happy to share.

Step 1 for me was dealing with inflammation. Helpful things here were ice, aleve and a diet changes (cutting out processed foods, sweets, etc.).

Step 2 was finding movements that I could do without hurting. At the beginning, this meant short walks and simple movements with low range of motion. Think standing core activation, easy dead bugs, etc. The key part here is never to push into or through pain. As soon as something hurt, I backed off by 10%. I basically did some variation of this twice per day, seven days per week.

Step 3 was progressing into harder and harder exercises. Slowly, I was able to reintroduce flexion into my workouts. I'm time strapped as a general matter, so wound up using a commercial exercise program for this phase, but this is absolutely something that can be done on your own.

It's been almost a year since the afternoon I realized I couldn't stand up without assistance, and there's almost nothing from my life before that I can't do. I still baby my back and am hyper-focused on how it's feeling, but that's more out of caution than any physiological need at this point.

/r/backpain Thread Parent