I was convinced that I had injured my back and had a muscle pull/strain of either my external oblique and/or my quadratus lumborum. The pain sucked and manifested in a bad muscle spasm under my left lat closer to my spine, but the pain extended down from that point to the back of my left hip/pelvis. It was a pain where I couldn't really pinpoint the origin as it felt like it covered this entire area.
It felt like a golf ball under my lat and the only time it really hurt was when I would go to stand up (about 1/3 of the way up) and it would spasm or when I would sit down (in the same place on my back). What threw me was if I stretched it, it actually felt good and that is not common with a muscle strain because stretching normally would hurt. Plus, it would be a weird muscle(s) to pull or strain because of the strength of those muscles and, more importantly, I did not have an incident that caused it where I went, "oh shit, I just messed something up." It just kind of came on (the pain) when my back started to get sore from training it the day after back day.
So, I called my trusty client Dr. Petros Fragiskakis (very Greek if you were wondering) and explained, in depth, what was going on and my frustration that it was not responding to NSAIDS and had been bothering me for over 5 days without it really getting any better. Obviously, I was concerned because I had gone 18 weeks without an injury of any kind and then a week before starting a cutting phase, I am dealing with this back pain that was keeping me out of the gym.
He explained what was going on and advised me what to do. He said that when he goes Graston on me, he has to work out trigger points and we haven't been doing it since I have gotten back from Michigan over the holidays due to not having the time to drive 3 hours round trip to see him. He advised me to use a lacrosse ball to release the trigger points and if the pain would start to dissipate with pressure, it was a trigger point. If not, I had fucked myself up and was legitimately injured.
I just want to be clear that a bad trigger point is pretty fucking uncomfortable... until it releases about 10 or so seconds after applying pressure. I'm talking I wanted to scream but then all of the sudden the same amount of pressure caused zero pain only 15 second later.
As if magically healed by the hand of God himself (or herself so that I don't piss anyone off), I was able to get up and my pain had gone from a 10 to a 1 and maintained for a handful of hours. When it returned or would start to return, I would do the same procedure.
Right now, I have had 2 days of no pain and have been waiting patiently to get back in the gym, figuring that another couple of days of rest is better than pushing it and going back too early. The last thing I want to do is start this next phase and get sidetracked out of the gates.
I am slated to start my next phase tomorrow and I will take the first "cycle" of training a little lighter and see how it goes. If all goes well, I'm stepping on the gas for the next 24 weeks of this phase.
It's a trip to take on a client several years ago when that client was a young kid and train him through college only to have to call him for answers in situations like this. One of those "full-circle" things, I suppose where the teacher teaches, only to one day be the student. If you are in South Florida and need work done, Dr. Petros Fragiskakis is who you want working on you. If you have questions about a situation you are having and you want advice, I recommend you hitting him up on social media. Tell hi Skip from EliteFTS sent you.