04/12/2026
Case study time!! Acute lumbar sprain
This week has been a tough one - I had an injury at the gym that put me largely in bed for a few days. 1 week out, I’m now feeling 75% better and I credit that to some of the work I’ve done so far.
For the first few days I had a significant lateral shift - your bodies way of offloading sensitive tissues. I didn’t push too hard to try and reverse it, just let it do its thing.
Day 2 I got to physio as fast as possible to get some pain management and decrease some of the muscle guarding.
Once I decreased some of the guarding, days 2-5 were about trying to get moving within the limits of my pain. These exercises were certainly not pretty, but the reality of where I was at. In addition to this I was using lots of heat and TENS, and made sure not to sit or stand for more than 30mins.
Days 6 and 7 I’m now able to walk and do body weight exercises with minimal pain, and sleeping full nights. My journey is definitely not over, but I wanted to show an example of the importance of early movement after back injury!!
