The Truth About Bulging/Herniated Discs And Exercise So I have some great news for you. Despite your bulging or herniated disc you are still strong, resilient and able to withstand a lot of what life will throw at you unexpectedly. In fact there are numerous studies out proving that you can line 15 of your friends up right now and do an MRI on their backs and you would see all levels of degeneration, bulges and herniations and each person would experience pain very differently. I know that may not be what you have been told by the person who convinced you that you should have surgery but his motives and mine are very different. Unfortunately doctors make money off of prescriptions pills and surgeries. Giving you a natural remedy to heal your herniated or bulging disc does nothing for the quota pressure he/she is under. So your first step in getting into a strength training program is to know that now is the best time to start. Not once your disc has healed or you’re 100% pain free. Now. Outside of not being cleared to exercise by your doctor (this is important and make sure he OKAY’S you to start exercising before you take off on your own). ***If you have NOT been cleared to exercise then It’s best you hang tight and follow your doctor's instructions. What I am going to show you here today is not meant to replace medical attention that your specific situation needs.*** In this guide I want to break down exactly how you should be using and approaching exercise with a disc bulge or herniation. The most important statement for exercising with a herniated or bulging disc. Before we do a deep dive into exactly the way you should be training with a herniated or bulging disc let's lay a few ground rules that will now become nonnegotiables in your current routine. I can’t stress to you enough the importance of exercise choice. Simply exercising more is not good enough and is a lazy way of approaching persistent low back sensitivity and will often lead to more pain and forced medical intervention down the road. Which means when picking exercises to add to your program (unless you’re following a program specifically designed for you) it's critical that you ask yourself what is this exercise doing for me and is the risk reward of that exercise worth it. This question usually hovers around exercises including the barbell squat and deadlift. If you don’t have a clue what I am talking about then you can skip this section altogether. If you do these exercises now and have a herniated or bulging disc these are the questions you need to ask yourself. Navigating a herniated or bulging disc is tricky and the best thing you can do is remove the exercises (for now) or modify them in a way that will still allow you to build strength but not at the cost of your back. If Anything, Remember This One Thing Everything I talk about below will live or die by what I call your personal pain threshold. This is the threshold of pain and symptoms that is unique to your body and situation that you MUST respect and understand on an intimate level if you ever want to gain control over your symptoms and work towards becoming chronic pain free. Your body/painful tissues have a threshold that once reached will start to respond to the stimulus (exercise) in a negative way. Again, this will look different for everyone. For example: I can do 2 sets of 10 goblet squats holding an 80lb dumbbell before my lower back starts talking to me in a negative way. This means 2 sets of 10 reps with 80lbs is my trainable threshold with my current level of pain. Your goal with exercise is to understand this threshold and train up to it but NEVER through it without understanding WHY you are pushing it and whether or not you are ready to push it or not. Got it? Now, let’s break down the 4 rules of exercising with a herniated or bulging disc and give you some practical steps to take! The 4 Rules You Must Follow When It Comes To Exercise With a Bulging or Herniated Disc We are going to be breaking these down even more with actionable steps for you to take after this brief overview but to paint the big picture for you these are the only areas I want you to be focusing on for this part of your exercise journey. Rule One: Smart Warm Up There are a lot of different practices and beliefs around the “warm up” and to be honest some of them are dated and not really for those with a low back sensitivity. We will cover this in more depth and give you the right steps to prep the body for the workout without wasting time doing mindless stuff. How Someone With A Disc Injury (Bulging Disc, Herniated Disc, Ruptured Disc) Should Look At Their Warm Up Hours before you step into the gym your brain is already prepping the body for what you are going to be doing in the gym. It knows you will be working out. It knows all about your herniated or bulging disc and all it wants to do is protect you from hurting yourself. So naturally what does your body do? Protect itself in the form of muscle tension, tightness and pain (in all kinds of ways). The goal of the warm up is to give your brain and body a chance to let go of the fear, anxiety and stress it has been collecting over your disc issues and allow it to just relax. This won't necessarily cure your pain but it will open the door to allowing the muscles and tissues around your sensitive area to let go and relax. So not only are you doing the most fundamental pre-workout activity (increasing your core body temp) by warming up before you jump into your workout but you're working on desensitizing the central nervous system at the same time. What Does The Ideal Warm-Up Look Like? Well this depends on what your specific needs and goals are. More muscle bound individuals may need more time under a constant stressor to get the blood flowing so this may be a fast paced walk on a treadmill or spin bike. Here is a great video I did on Back Pain Friendly warm-ups you can do. Others might do better with joint specific movements that will mimic what they are doing that day. Example warm-up for pressing or pulling days: Banded Face Pulls Band Pull A-parts. Scapular Push-ups Bodyweight push ups Example warm-up for lower body days it may be: Hip CARS Bodyweight side lunges Bodyweight front squats Bodyweight squat holds These movements are preparing both the neuromuscular and muscular system for the exercises. When you’re in pain or struggle with low back sensitivity, without this your body will default to protecting the area and triggering that tension and pain response. So spend more time prepping the body with gentle non threatening movements to get the body relaxed and aware of what's going on. Rule TWO: Smart Core Training To build stability, strength and endurance in the core we need to train it. The problem is we tend to do this all wrong. From the timing to the exercise choice, your core training needs to be reconsidered and not just a second thought in your weekly training. When it comes to training the core with a herniated or bulging disc remove all flexion and twisting based core exercises and replace them with neutral spine core work. Remove these exercises: - Crunches - Sit-Ups - Russion Twists - Hanging leg raises Add More Like This: - Stir The Pot - Dead bug variation - Pallof/Warrior Press When you’re trying to reverse a disc herniation or bulge you have to be mindful of any unnecessary stress you're putting on it that may be causing the symptoms to flair. This could be (1) excessive reps or sets of the core exercises you shouldn’t be doing. (2) Excessive amounts of deadlifting and squatting without first addressing the issues that are causing the disc to bulge/herniate in the first place. Once you have the correct exercises that fit your current situation and pain threshold you have to now do these core exercises first before anything else in your workout (after your warm up though). For some reason people have the habit of training core last. They use it as their cool down or way of finishing up their training day. Stop doing this. Instead, train the core FIRST before you move into your program. By doing this you’re creating the same effect the warm-up does on the body except now your hyper focusing on building that stability around the spine through stiffness and increase in blood flow around the injured disc. Rule THREE: Smart Exercise Organization When it comes to low back sensitivity it's better to build your program around where your body is now (when it comes to pain and symptoms) and work up and out from there. This is also what I call your “trainable threshold”. I mentioned this at the beginning of this blueprint. There are a lot of individualized approaches to this but we will cover some universal strategies you can use here. When it comes to working with herniated or bulging discs everyone's body will react to a stimulus (exercise) differently. One person will have no issues with walking lunges where another person causes flare ups. One person may do better with reverse lunges and someone else will do better with more of a static lunge. These are all great exercises but your goal is to stick with the ones you can do successfully without going over that trainable threshold (when your symptoms kick in). The best resource for this would be my Smart Strength Membership. I take the guesswork out of back friendly workouts and give you everything you need from the exact exercise demo, to the rep and set count. Check it out if you don’t feel confident about doing it on your own. Once you have your ideal exercises picked out your next goal is to save your “big lifts” for last. This means stop doing your heaviest exercises first. Traditionally you will see guys/gals do their heavy squats, deadlifts or bench pressing first before hitting the accessory work like arm work, shoulder presses or push-ups. If you do the accessory work first, yes you will be a little gassed and won’t be able to lift as heavy with your bigger lifts but you won't have to lift as much weight to get a good lift in which is better for your body and joints overall and safer for your sensitive lower back. For the average person in the gym they are not looking to compete in any lifting competitions and if you're smart you're training today to preserve the body and build pain-free strength for the long run. In summary: Save the exercises that typically require more weight to get an effective stimulus for the body till the end of the workout. So bench pressing, squatting and/or deadlift is done at the end. Note on those who take a more competitive approach to their training: If you prefer to focus more on those bigger lifts you can reserve certain days during the month to start with those big lifts first to get a measure on where your strength is at but cycle back into the smaller lifts first for the remaining training sessions. Rule FOUR: Smart Recovery Recovery is massive and no I’m not talking about just walking from your garage to the living room and turning on the TV or walking from your local gym to your car. Your body and pain system need more than that while you recover and build smarter strength despite your herniated or bulging disc. How you respond post workout is really important. There are 3 major elements to your post workout recovery I want you to focus on. ⇒ Decompression Creating space between the lumbar discs isn’t a bad thing it just comes down to how aggressive you are. What we don’t want to do is chase the pain relief that decompression can give. There are feel good sensations that are released when stretching in painful areas that will give you the illusion of pain relief. This may feel good for the short term but it’s not a long term strategy. What I want you to focus on is doing some gentle post-workout decompression. If you have been carrying around weights for the last hour in the gym odds are your body is experiencing some levels of compression. For someone with a disc bulge this is where the decompression can really help. A few of my top decompression strategies are: 1) 2) 3) 4) Barbell or Park Bench (popularized by Stuart McGill) Method. On your back pressing the lower body away with your hands. 90 Degree Hanging On your stomach with a pillow under your pelvis/stomach I break down ALL of these strategies in the first video of my Disc Bulge Series OR You can check out this video where I give 3 alternatives to using the Inversion Table. ⇒ Active Movement Not Just Stretching I am not a fan of using stretching for pain relief when it comes to low back pain from a disc injury. I think it’s over prescribed and doesn’t give the user the results they both want and deserve. One of the best ways to keep your soreness and tension at bay is to move. This means if you spend your working hours at a desk you HAVE to break it up with movement. I know you are strong willed and work oriented and you want to beat your deadline blah blah blah but when the work day or project is over you will be left with the aftermath of neglecting your own personal health and well being. Moving more can look like a lot of different things. Walking, Jogging or exploring different movements at each limb. An example of this specifically would be doing a set or two of side lunges, diagonal lunges, deep bodyweight squats, full arm circles or any other CARS exercise. These movements force you to use the muscles and joints with different ranges of motion that are different then what you would normally do during a regular workout. Which helps with NOT getting overly stiff and creating more of a habit using each joint's FULL range of motion instead of just limiting yourself to your daily movement requirements (sitting, walking, standing, showering, driving etc.). The difference with active stretching/moving is your goal is not to just lengthen tissues but to maintain a healthy range of motion at the joint you use the most that tends to get achy and stiff due to a stagnant, less active lifestyle. ⇒ Deep Breathing This is something I want you to do both during your workout and after. Deep breathing or controlled breathing is a great way to lower the central nervous systems response to the current stressor. In this case we are talking about exercise. Exercise is a GOOD stress but also can be perceived as a BAD stress depending on your belief system around your pain and ability to overcome it When we are talking about deep breathing during your workout I want you to take time after each set to sit/stand and really focus on expanding your ribs and breathing into these tight/tense areas while you wait for your next set. This will help calm the area down and allow your brain/body to maximize the rest time. This will take practice and something you will get used to the more you do it but as your sitting there waiting, focus in on the breathing. The other time I want you to use this is right after your workout during what we would call your “cool down”. For me and my clients I would have them prop their legs up on a bench or ball while on their back. Placing their hands on their stomach I would have them focus their inhales towards expanding their ribs and filling their stomach and lower back with air. There are a lot different breathing strategies that you can use and experiment with one being the “Box Breathing Technique”. You can see how you do that in this video here. Essentially you will want to: Inhale for 4 seconds Hold for 6-8 seconds Exhale for 4 seconds. Repeat this for 8-12 minutes after your workout. The key is to keep it simple and work towards using these tools consistently. Doing them once or twice every now and then will just feel like an added stressor that you're not seeing any results with. Bake it into your routine and you will start to see change! Where to go from here This document contains everything you need to successfully and confidently approach exercise as a tool to not only build strength and confidence but overcome years of aches and pains due to a bulging or herniated disc. One of the things I promised you is a FREE 7 day Band and Bodyweight workout sample. You can pick that up right here! For some of you this may not be enough. Feel free to check out my bulging or herniated disc friendly strength training program here: Smart Strength Membership Be sure to check your email for my weekly content posts and coaching opportunities that are exclusive to you!
