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Kettlebell Hurt my back S&S 40kg

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mhljvc

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hello guys,

33 years old male, 189cm 87 kg. Generally active since childhood, martial arts when I was younger, playing futsal for years, but did have an regretting period of athletic laziness from around 27-31.

First lifting experience was with kettlebell S&S 16kg about 6 months ago. Strictly following the progression described in the book, with heart rate monitor instead of talk test, I achieved simple standard after 5 months. Usually I did the s&s 6 days a week. Went down 10kg in bodyweight during that period.

Then I started introducing the 40kg as described in the book until this week after a month adding additional series with 40, I sucessfully carried out the whole training with the 40, both swings and TGU.

Perhaps I was not ready for it yet, as on the second successive day of full training with 40, I hurt my lower back. There wasn't any snap or specific movement that did it, just after I was finished and cooled down, that was it, I am now in bed, struggling to get up and even walking hurts. Prior to the start of the training my upper trap was a bit stiff so maybe that compromised my technique and there was lower back during swing. Some mistakes you just have to pay for.

This will pass in a few days, I'm sure some of you have had a similar injury, but I'd like to hear what would be the safest way to get back to training once the pain is gone, as the fear factor will be present as well.
 
Have you read the second edition? As per S&S 2.0 it would take you at least 13 months to get to full 40 kg sessions.

Deep breathing and OS resets work great for me with back pain. Especially rolling.

Good luck!
 
Haven't read the 2.0 edition, but I started introducing a heavier bell only after I could do the current bell within set time any day, 4-5 days in a row. I think heart rate monitor helped a lot in progression.
 
Check your back with medical professional. No one knows what's in there - stretch, tear, pinched nerve or tendon, sciatica, sacroiliac or else. Just know that you are taking a chance by just letting it heal and continue. Most importantly for your question, knowing for sure what was the problem allows you to be confident about how getting back to training.
 
mhljvc said:
what would be the safest way to get back to training once the pain is gone, as the fear factor will be present as well.
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When you're ready, start back with deadlifts instead of swings for a few days, and go down to a very light bell, working up as you are able (won't take long).

Keep moving, in the meantime... that always helps.

I don't know if you need medical attention or not. Of course that's always the safest answer, but who wants to go to the doctor these days if they don't have to, right? I'm of the layman's opinion that low back pain usually resolves itself within a couple of weeks. Here is one of my favorite sources with more along those lines, and guidance on when you might need medical attention. But in any case, I'll say that one of the great things I found about S&S is that any back tweak I ever got seemed to heal MUCH faster than it did before I started kettlebell training.

Good luck and keep us posted!
 
mhljvc said:
I achieved simple standard after 5 months. Usually I did the s&s 6 days a week. Went down 10kg in bodyweight during that period.
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You clearly have the mental discipline and work ethic to train hard. Although, this stood out to me in your story, training 6 days per week and dropping 10kg in bodyweight over 5 months is a big time stress on your overall physiology IMO.

The nervous system needs periods of de-loading to prevent crashing into burn out, which sounds like what eventually happened resulting in tweaking your back. Pavel offers a good template for this de-loading process (Cycling) in "Power to the People" and then dives much deeper into the science behind recovery in "The Quick & The Dead."

All the best.
 
Whenever Ive tweaked my lumbar (sore/stiff, not speaking for a herniation etc) reverse hyper hanging then reverse hypers have been wonderful opening it back up. And graston scraping has been a miracle worker. But if youre injured dont treat via internet.....
 
Back way off, lower the weights, and expect it will take much longer than you think to get back to full sessions with the 40. The absolute worse thing to do is try to force yourself to recover.

Go slow, do not push. The back goes on it's own schedule, not yours.

That's been my experience.
 
Pavel Macek's World's Greatest Stretch Variation: "Leopard" complex combined with decompression hangs is instrumental in keeping about 15 years of serious back issues at bay for me. I find if I do it once in the morning and once before bed I never have any problems.

Of particular value is the prying cobra stretch. Perhaps not accidentally, a very similar stretch is an integral part of the "McKenzie Method" to treat back pain...
 
I’m currently adding in the 40 and bought s&s2 for more up to date guidance. It says to stay at each step for a month before introducing the new weight on the next rep. I can’t say I’m totally doing that and have only taken 2 weeks from step 1 to 2 but everyone’s mileage may vary. You’re obviously strong enough and I would say (however don’t take my uneducated word for it) it’s just muscular from pushing yourself.

My advice would be to take a week off as you won’t lose any gains and your whole body probably will thank you for it. Then drop back to a couple of bells down and work your way up to timeless 40 but over a longer period of time so you don’t push yourself. This will allow time for your body to adapt as by others above.

Good luck and get it checked out if doesn’t heal by itself.
 
Go see a chiropractor. Rest a week and back off the 40. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you're ready.

I have found heavy 1 hand swings bother my lower back. Drop back to a 24 for a month, and add reps. See if you can do it. for 10 minutes instead of 5. Practice the 40 with 2 hand swings. Do a few sets of 10.

I found once you've. dinged your back once, it's easy to continue to do.
 
When you have healed, one thing to consider is that you may not be pressurizing the abdomen enough in your swings. This can cause problems. With lower weights, if you are very athletic, you can get away with using only the back muscles to stabilize your trunk. With bigger weights, this is not enough. You need to pressurize with the appropriate breathing. Don't ask me how I know...

At 40 kg, you may have gotten away with insufficient intra-abdominal pressure while training with your muscles, but stresses on your soft tissues may have been too large. Also, soft tissues adapt much slower than muscles. This may be another cause of your problems. Your muscles and lungs may be ready for 40kg, but your soft tissues may not.

Finally, I found that the jump from 32 to 40 kg for ballistics is one to take seriously. The larger weight often wants to destroy your technique as it really pulls hard on your arm. All the technical checkpoints of the swing or snatch have to be worked on very actively before your form gets back to normal. This usually means introducing the larger weight slowly. I have not read S&S 2.0, but my favorite technique when going up in weight for the snatch is to do less sets of less reps, and slowly increase from there. This means my heart rate doesn't go up as much for the first few weeks or months I work on the new weight. To compensate, I introduce the new weight once a week and use the previous weight on the other days.

In any case, as others have said, once you get back to training, the solution is to introduce the 40kg slowly and to pay attention to technique and to what your body is telling you. There are many articles and forum post on this site regarding proper breathing techniques and cues to use to ensure proper pressurization and other technical checkpoints of the swing. One thing that helped me in improving pressurization was to do heavy (32 or 40kg) goblet squats, and think about stretching the spine with pressurization of the abdomen. Being able to do it slowly does not mean you can do it quickly, but it gives a good feeling of what good intra-abdominal pressure feels like.
 
Anna C said:
When you're ready, start back with deadlifts instead of swings for a few days, and go down to a very light bell, working up as you are able (won't take long).

Keep moving, in the meantime... that always helps.
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Lucky me, I guess I was internalizing all the great advice Anna has for us.

I recently took a couple tumbles on a mountain bike trail. Wasn't the end of the world a couple weeks ago, but my back did feel strange and unstable.

In the mean time I did sets of 5 dead lifts with my heavy bell and started practicing one or two reps of snatches from some of the strong first and other tutorials. And started back with swings after a week or so with sets of five. Still limiting to two handed swings a week back in to it.

But what I was doing most of the time most days was hanging. Trying to extend the time. I think that helped a great deal.
 
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A lot of great advice, thank you all. It's getting better but I'm still not near any kind of training. I just took a short walk outside today, which was impossible when I was writing the initial post :)

I will implement all these when I'm back to training. Hanging, starting light, deadlifts. Abdominal pressurization - I understand its importance, I think I couldn't do a goblet squat with 40kg without the use of proper breathing, and even though my breathing during swings is following the proper pattern and "tsss" at the point when my body forms a straight line, after reading this, in retrospective, I might have not clenched my butt and abs as tight as I should have when I started increasing number of series with the 40. Worked fine until it didn't.

Thanks all for the advice.
 
I'm going to say this at the risk of committing sacrilege:

40 kg kettlebells benefit from supplemental core work if you really want to smartly reduce the risk of injury.

Palloff presses, standing, kneeling, and overhead variants, using progressively stronger resistance bands, will pay big dividends in injury prevention, and make all your lifts more solid.
 
I hope you heal up soon! I would get an assessment from a medical professional. I think Pavel's friend Stuart McGill has some great material for bridging back into training with heavy weights once you have done that and taken care whatever recovery measures have been prescribed. I developed some back issues as a teen and like Stu's material the most when I get dinged up (pretty rare now). The Gift of Injury by Stuart McGill and Brian Carroll is a less dry, fun read that can help you decide if you want to buy more of his books and videos. I also second the advice to buy the 2nd edition of S&S and follow the progressions listed.
 
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