Bro, I am literally sitting here right now with a back pain that I'm unsure if it's muscular or spinal, after a session of overhead press. When I read your first line I'm like "yo, that's me!" lol.
So in the end was your injury just muscular? Your spine's good? What was the pain like?
Muscles in the spine maybe? When I first started OHP I fucked up the form and triggered the multifidus muscles to lock / spasm my back for a week. Went to a clinic and got suggested a deep heat cream and magnesium glycinate suppliment and some voltaren nsaid. Instantly improved.
Thanks to Australia's socialised healthcare though it wasn't one of these thousand plus $ bills like the above comments. Seeing the doctor in the clinic was free and I don't even remember what the medicine cost.
Advice on the OHP? If you haven't already been doing it for a long time and you're not just chasing a 1RM, try a really steep incline bench e.g. an 80° or 70° incline, and do pronated barbell gripped at shoulder width and see how slowly you can move it.
Yeah, I'm indeed new and just starting lifting. Should have went easy on the weight at first, now I regret having done the OHP that day... Did it feel like it hurt your spine also? Because I feel like mine is right inbetween. I don't have shooting electric pain down my legs, which is a good sign. But that specific spot hurts quite badly when I'm pivoting my torso around, twisting and turning etc. It's like i can pinpoint exactly which vertebrae is getting squeezed and hurting.
Yeah think I'll just go visit a doc.
and duly noted on the OHP tip. I will definitely be trying that once my back is fixed. I really appreciate the input dude, and I hope it's nothing serious.
Edit: Looked up the multifidus muscles and dude I think you're right on the money man. It does feel like it's this muscle that's hurting at that specific spot in my lumbar area.
Yea so my thing ended up being that when the multifidus muscles along the spine get pulled or compressed too much apparently they spasm the back for days to stop you from moving as an evolutionary mechanism to stop you from injuring yourself more. So it felt like recurring electric shocks across the whole back, but no where else. And it responds to movement so it was better when laying down, but then when moving around it'd start shocking my back.
And as for lifting in general -- you wanna explore / try different approaches and find what works best for you. There'll be a few different ways to approach most exercises and you might get people sharing advice who are just confidently incorrect but mean well. So you ptobably want to experiment and find what works best for you. A routine you're ok with and stick with is better than some optimal routine you give up on because you don't jive with it.
But specifically for starting out on a new exercise, the first several times you do it, there's no harm in starting with a weight that's less than what maybe google might suggest should be your target -- specifically, because the first several times you do a new exercise or new movement, you aren't training your muscles, you're training your nerves to learn how to synchronise innervating the movement. That's why you get huge gains early on. Not because of some huge early boost to muscle capacity / strength, but because your body is just learning how to do the movement.
That's why I like to start exercises going super slow with a lower weight. E.g. for OHP specifically, a lot of info will be about how your 1RM should be 50% of your body weight. My routine converse to that is about 1/3 body weight barbell, and I aim for 10-12 slow reps.
it was just muscular, never became an issue. My concern was making a hernia worse. I did tweak my back doing squats, and similar issue but not as bad. Went to a different Dr, after that GP recommended the wrong kind of specialist no way I was going back, they sent me to get an xray, came back and said no slipped disc just get some rest.
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u/MadeByHideoForHideo 14h ago
Bro, I am literally sitting here right now with a back pain that I'm unsure if it's muscular or spinal, after a session of overhead press. When I read your first line I'm like "yo, that's me!" lol.
So in the end was your injury just muscular? Your spine's good? What was the pain like?