Went in Tuesday intending to just do a few working sets of squats and leave, but I got bored and decided to superset pause squats and leg press. Started with 315X8 pause squats and 10 of whatever 12 plates works out to be on the leg press. It seemed like a good idea at the time, even though my low back was still super tight. I could barely get my butt below my knees, and holding it there for two seconds was agony. I meant to do 5 sets, but missed the last rep on the leg press on set 4, so I ended it there.
My back felt sort of stressed out when I left but not really injured, but this morning I’m in a lot of pain. My lower back is trashed, and I get nerve pain when I press on my spine in one spot. It will probably be next week before I try squats or deads again. I thought I was being conservative staying with pause squats and light weight. Oh well, live and learn.
At PT this morning (I disguised my back pain) they added a couple of new exercises, including some wide grip cable pulls with something approaching real weight. Still so far besides front and lateral raises, there are only pulling exercises. I asked about this and was told at PT they only do “functional” exercises which don’t include any pressing movements. That makes absolutely no sense to me, especially considering the reason I first went to the doc was because I couldn’t bench without a lot of pain. Instead of explaining she said I was welcome to do them on my own... So I took that as permission to bench press. I have enough weight at home to hurt myself, so I will try tonight, starting with a 12lb bar, and see what happens.