Nice! I was about to recommend Geoff Neupert as well. And Stuart McGill. Anything by those two is probably worth watching/reading in my book. Some of those movements have really helped me.
Deadbugs
Bridges
Bird dog
planks
side planks
etc.
Plus, just getting stronger overall with kettlebells, mainly following Neupert’s various programs. When not currently in pain, lifting kettlebells overhead, heavy carries, and Romanian deadlifts really help strengthen my core and lower back overall. Painful total lockups and tweaking incidents seem to be getting more and more infrequent the past few years. Knock on wood!
All of the above highly recommended from me, as a fellow longtime sufferer of excruciating back pain.
Edit: Will also add that I have always had really tight hips. Some experts say that having poor hip mobility and weakness in the hips can cause the lower back to over compensate in some movements. So, doing hip mobility, foam rolling, and strengthening has also helped me.
Nice to see a fellow student and appreciator of Geoff’ Neupert’s methods.
I found side lying to be the hardest out of the 3 positions in Sore Joint Solution Phase 1. I was stuck at side lying level 3 for months. Needed to be able to 30 breaths to advance to level 4 - side plank - but could only do 8. I then tried doing multiple sets of breaths per side - that helped me progress again.
Fortunately Sore Joint Solution allows us to begin Phase 2 training if we’ve cleared the checkpoints for the other 2 positions in Phase 1, on the condition that we must begin each session with side lying practice before moving on to Phase 2. Phase 2 positions are conducive to hip opening… if done with diaphragmatic breathing. Diaphragmatic breathing with Phase 2 positions was a challenge for me at first, and would have been impossible without the previous practice with Phase 1 positions.
Well, I’ve mostly followed his kettlebell advice. Just now getting into his more specific mobility and core strength advice. Sounds like you are much further down that road than me!
Also picked up the book Original Strength, a book Neupert seems to have coauthored, or at least consulted on. It delves into a system for mobility which sounds pretty interesting, going back to very basic human movement patterns we learned as kids.
I have done those Stuart McGill mobility exercises for a good while though, combined with Neupert’s kettlebell coaching. There seems to be a good amount of overlap between their mobility training advice.
A walk to the doctors office. Ask for a CT scan.
Don’t do any kind of exercise at all. Not until you know that the reason for your back locking up that often for that many years isn’t due to a degenerative condition that has a nasty outcome.
Exactly!
Before trying out random exercises from the internet make sure you get a scan and get diagnosed properly.
Low back pain can be a symptom of many different pathologies. What fixed someone else issue could easily aggravate your problem.
Also an observation about Neupert KB strength programs, heavily focused on the clean & press. A good training program is a balanced training program. Training programs with too much emphasis on a single exercise/movement can work for some people, up to a certain point, but usually tend to create problems in the long run.
Also keep in mind that in adult population the most common issues/injuries tend to appear in the hips, low back and shoulder complex (after many years of overuse, sedentarism, weakness, poor mobility or bad posture).
Most adult clients I’ve trained/treated during the past 20 years were not prepared for a clean and press (single or double). Tight hips, weak or injured low back, inadequate shoulder mobility, all turn a potentially good exercise into a compensation nightmare.
There’s no one size fits all. Just be careful on what you find online. Hire a good professional in your area, if possible.
I don’t think I can relate to this thread… I’ll be 45 soon and I could care less… I have a six year old daughter and well… I don’t even want to say certain things out loud… voodoo might get me but I just don’t worry about any of this stuff… I’m doing ok… I’m not the richest, or poorest, healthiest, or not fit… however I’m hard asf… I’ve been through it back and forth… I might have things wrong with me internally but I will never know… I just live and get mad I have grey in my beard now but I would never have fake color in it so whatever…
It seems like this thread is equal parts legitimately trying to give advice and help, equal parts humble bragging… I just don’t think anything much can really help other then just try to be healthy but have fun too… I came from a time and place where working out was a pretty corny thing to do if it wasn’t some form of fighting… I grew up looking up to drug addicted artist… so for me the world seems to have left me behind decades ago… I just don’t belong here anymore but won’t be a fake person not true to who I am. That is me, it should not be about me though… you can’t really help people with things like this I don’t think… we each just do what we can…
All I can say is it is incredibly easy to die… for anyone… I have felt and seen death around me my entire life and people die all the time of anything… I saw a lady get cut in half by a semi jogging in her fancy lelumon outfit and her legs still looked amazing with nothing but ground meat and scrapes waist up, pale die of all kinds of stupid things, so don’t take life too serious… we are here for a bit to share our energy and love and we are out!! So have fun, who cares how old you are?!? If you feel old and tired then you need to go live… that is the universe telling you to change… you should all ways feel young, don’t let pain get in the way of that.
Indeed - the one thing I’ve learnt since hitting my 40’s is that one day you can be invincible, feel young, strong and fit as a fiddle and the next day out of nowhere totally useless!
True for The Giant, yes. Love that program but no denying it’s C+P only
Not really true for Easy Muscle schedule B. C+P is only for 15 min a day., 1-2 days a week. The other 15 min. of the kettlebell day is a squat variation of your choice. No C+P on the calisthenics days.
Also not true for Maximorum in which you get work on snatch 2 days a week and C+P/squat on the other 2 days.
He has other programs that are not C+P focused like King Size Killer (snatch only), Swing Hard! (swing only), Kettlebell Hard, Kettlebell GHFL, Maximorum, etc.
Neupert himself has repeatedly advised people with mobility restrictions preventing safe KB training to fix those mobility restrictions first. None of the other KB coaches I respect would advise clean+press training for people with mobility restrictions on the hips, shoulders, etc. I don’t think anyone suggested c+p for people who are currently experiencing low back pain.
That’s a tangent from the low back pain discussion But this thread is kind of open ended, so…
The first StrongFirst program I tried was Simple and Sinister. That one I didn’t like. Progression was not well explained. The 2.0 version of the book came out which was supposed to improve the progression but I didn’t feel there was enough improvement to give it another go after spending more than a year on S&S.
Oddly enough my 2 favorite coaches associated with so-called hard style - Geoff Neupert and Brett Jones - both officially left the Strongfirst organization in recent years. I don’t know why either coach left, but it shows that the hard-style camp, if there is one, is hardly monolithic. Individual coaches have their own opinions on how thing should be done.
I admit I don’t know much about soft-style KB training. Mark Wildman says choice of hard vs. soft style depends on your objectives at the time. I think that sounds reasonable but not everyone agrees - who does anyway…
I like the results I’ve gotten so far from doing The Giant and Easy Muscle. I did try one Neupert program that I ended up dropping - that was Kettlebell Burn. Too much Turkish getups in that one for my taste.
I’m inclined to stick to what works but I may look into some of Joe Daniels’ work to get another perspective. He’s reportedly a soft style coach, but unlike other so called soft style coaches, he doesn’t seem focused on girevoy sport to the exclusion of non-GS-oriented goals. I like how he teaches the drop out of the snatch better than any SF stuff I’ve seen. Seems like a nice friendly guy who doesn’t trash coaches, hard style or not.
If you’ve never worked with a good kettlebell coach, treat yourself to a one-on-one session in person. You’ll be surprised by how much you can learn in just a single session.
“Style” doesn’t really matter. It’s mostly something people argue about online. At the end of the day, it’s the same steel ball with a handle, lifted by the same human body, under the same laws of physics.
A good kettlebell coach should be open-minded and familiar with different lifting methods. They should be able to assess your movement and technique, suggest appropriate corrections, and explain why —from an anatomical, biomechanical, and physiological perspective.
As much as I’d like to back up my point by sharing my credentials, I don’t feel comfortable revealing more personal or professional information on a music-related forum.
But this thread is kind of open ended, so…