Short version: Way back in September, my husband and I were moving a couch up our winding staircase. It slipped, I caught it, and I hurt my back in the process. My doc told me not to play volleyball; I ignorantly ignored him against both of our better judgement. Thusly, I injured my back very badly during a game – enough to drop me to the ground and leave me taking a 3 month break from volleyball. You can read the long story here.

I’d never hurt my back before this, so it was a whole new thing for me, and I now have an entirely new empathy for anyone who’s ever had a serious back injury. The morning after my game, I screamed so badly that my husband nearly called an ambulance.

It left me bed-ridden for three days, with the most amount of movement being my (painful and painfulLY slow) trips downstairs to get food. (Naturally, Shane had to leave on a business trip the day after my injury, which lead to me not wearing pants for those three days as well, since I needed his help to put them on.)

[Tweet “What I Did to Heal My Back Injury – via @TrainerPaige”]

After the first three days, I made a little progress. At this point, I was able to (very carefully and slowly) put on pants, and drive, though I really probably shouldn’t have. Since I couldn’t rotate my back to look in my blind spots, I drove only to my doctor’s office, and to the pool for therapy.

(I also wore this beautiful KT tape for nearly 4 weeks)

This leads me to the subject of today’s post – what I did to heal said back injury! This has been a requested blog post, and I’ve finally gotten around to collect my thoughts on it and write up a post. If you’ve ever had a back injury, you know that the pain is unreal. Back spasms are no joke. Also, this is only my personal story (my technical injury was a strained facet and now a slightly bulging disc) so it should go without saying to do what your doctor says for any type of injury.

What I did to Heal My Back Injury

1. Pool therapy.

You guys. The first week of my back injury, I effing LOVED the pool. Four days after my injury, it still hurt to walk – I literally had to think carefully about how I put one foot in front of the other without sending a searing pain down my spine. But in the pool? I could move SO much more freely. I would go and walk for 15 minutes – 5 forward, 5 backward, and 5 laterally. That was all I got, but I loved every second of it. Apparently, the pressure from the water helps to flush inflamed tissue, but it also feels so good. So every day for nearly 3 weeks, I’d join the 65+ crew at the Y for my pool walking. They’d always ask how I was doing, and we’d chat it up about our ailments.

2. Rest.

You all know how much I love to move. I love to lift heavy things, run fast, jump high, play with abandon, and more. I also do many of these things for my job. I ended up taking about 2 weeks off from any sort of exercise, and then only did very light running, walking, and bodyweight exercises. I also took 1.5 weeks off from training clients in the gym because, you know, that requires walking and lifting things. I was SO thankful for my online clients/fitness and nutrition business at this time. They literally saved my sanity those two weeks.

I took things very slowly, and built my weight back up on squats and deadlifts at a snail’s pace. BUT – I’m so glad I did, because I’m playing volleyball, sprinting, and squatting, deadlifting, and pulling my little heart out right now – pain free.

3. Eat.

Since I wasn’t hardly moving at all my appetite plummeted. But I knew that when one has an injury, it’s very important to eat at least at maintenance in order to give the body the energy it needs to heal. Healing an injury is no easy feat and it’s astounding to me how our bodies so intuitively self-heal. Thusly, I fed it appropriately, and while I decreased my carbohydrate intake slightly, my overall intake remained the same as it did when my activity level was 50% higher.

4. Mobility work.

This is HUGE. If you’re a client reading this right now, you know how obsessed I am with mobility for both prehab and rehab purposes. It’s enormously important that we keep what’s meant to have stability stable and what’s meant to have mobility mobile. I built up my range of motion on what was comfortable for me, but I focused on hip mobility and core/lumbar stability, which are both important to keep up regardless of whether you’re feeling any pain or not. I also prioritize scapular stability for shoulder health, but that’s another routine for another post.

Aside from spending 10 minutes before every workout focusing on stability, mobility, and activation (as do my clients,) I take 5-10 minutes every single night to do a quick mobility routine before I settle in to watch some netflix. Here are a couple of my mobility routines, and some warm ups that include mobility/stability/activation techniques.

While I still don’t feel absolutely 100% (aka it’s not exactly how it was before) I would say I feel 95% better, and I’m happy with that right now.