injury to SI joint ligaments - any experience?

walt0r

Since last thursday my lower back was niggling me slightly, I hurt it when I swung a 35kg dumbbell up to my shoulder to do seated shoulder presses. (Had no spotter at home, I know - silly!). Anyhow, I felt something go a little in my lower back but I had no pain so continued exercises and finished off with some DB snatches.
For the whole of last week I had slight niggling pain in my lower right side (buttocks/SI joint area). Last night I stupidly decided I was feeling okay after a warmup and decided to do deadlifts. I decided to go light enough, as I hadn't been doing much deads anyways lately, mostly squats. So, I warmup with the bar, 60kg, then 80kg, then a set of 100kg. Then I do a set of 130kg, still keeping it light, and on the 3rd rep I felt it. Dropped the bar and knew I was in trouble.
I stopped training and made an appointment with a chiropractor who my mother knew who obligingly took me at short notice about 9.30pm. I'd never been to a chiro before and her call on it was that it was ligaments around my lower butt area. Upon further research online I can seem to pinpoint it being my SI joint ligaments. The pain only hurts when I bent over. I've been doing some yoga exercises since last night and it's really helping. Also been applying Voltoral gel, taking Floridix magnesium oil and udo's oil to help me and icing it loads.
One other thing. This same thing happened to me about a year ago to the month. I was doing deads with a much heavier weight because I'd been doing them as my core exercise at the time. Never had any pain in my back then one day didn't warm up properly and I was in agony. 2 weeks later I was fine and went for it again and it hurt again so I laid off the deads for a few months. Now I'm not at all as sore this time, not even close, and I think the last injury was on my LEFT side, in the same area though. I never bothered going to a chiro or a physio at the time because it just "went away" if you know what I mean.
Has anybody got any experience with this type of injury? I'm probably worrying too much, but I am hoping it's something that people can recover from completely?
I never had this problem doing squats, only deads. I use a conventional deadlift but I'm pretty tall (6'5"), so considering switching to sumo style when I get better and gradually building the weight up again.

Any input appreciated, cheers.

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

walt0r

ok I will, sound.

tribulus

Well I'm no physio but I've been to one several times about this!
It sounds very like your SI alright (though please have it confirmed by a health professional!).

The pain should die down soon enough, I was back training 2 weeks after I injured it so it's not a biggie.

//Paraphrasing my physio here....

My injury was caused by lumbar flexion and hyper extension, it was taking too much of the load that my hips/glutes should have been.

Chances are you round over when you pull - I know I did even though it felt like I wasn't and you probably hyperextend at the top. Like wise with the squats I rounded when I hit depth.

You have to teach your hips to take the load and get your glutes firing - you, like most people have no ass

Get working on various planks and bridges. Keep your ass out and everything tight - quads, glutes, abs, everything. Hold for a few seconds and do a few reps and sets. Like wise with side planks, get your hips up as high as you can and again keep tight, do reps and sets etc.

You can progress the planks to elevated feet if they get easy. With the bridges - start off with your basic bridge, feet on floor, hands by your sides an thrust up and hold, concentrate on feeling your glutes tighten.

A progression of this is putting your feet on a medball and doing the same thing.

Another good one I did was med ball tucks - I really sucked at these at first.
Start off with your shins on the ball and hands supporting you off the ground. Ass out, everything tight, roll the ball in towards you and back out. Keep as tight as possible, you should finish back where you started in the same position, keep the hips tight. You can progress this by putting your toes on the ball instead of your shins, trust me it's harder.

After a while you should be able to do some one legged squats (semi-squats really) Keep your free leg behind you if needs be and arms out if you want too, and squat, push back with your hips and break at the knees. Don't let your knees come too far forward though - you'll know if your calves are burning. Don't worry about the depth really, just make sure you keep an arched or neutral spine and your chest up, this should help you feel the load on your hips. You'll probably fall on your ass a few times but you get used to it pretty quick.

If the one legged squats are too hard at first, just try the same set-up but instead of squatting, reach your arms up over head and hold. Again as before keep tight, tense everything.

A progression of the squat is as you squat with your free leg, extend it outwards to the side.

You should roll on foam or a tennis ball too and make sure to regularly stretch your hips and glutes - just be creative or research them, they're hard to describe without pictures!

I don't know how your hamstring flexibility is but mine is terrible and probably contributed to the problem. If you're the same get stretching them now.

That's about it really, just get your glutes firing and do pull throughs for a while. Maybe go to a physio to make sure and get the proper strecthes and stuff.

edit: forward lunge with overhead reach. Side lunges are also good, you could easily build up to using 20kg+ DB's.

You can also add weight to the one leg squats.



Good luck.

Hanley

Good advice there from Trib.

I did the same thing about 18 months ago. My advise would be that unless the chiro's actually giving you preventative things to do in the future then walk straight out the door and go see a compotent physio.

Basically as Trib said it's caused by lumbar flexion which is usually in turn caused by weak or mis firing glutes/hips. You can be sure if that's the case there's far more underlying problems and the injury will just keep re-occuring unless you get the problems sorted. Treat the cause, not the symptoms.

I injured mine 10 weeks out from last years national PL champs and still managed to get in 6 hard weeks of training before it. So it's by no means the end of your training carrer. Hell it's the sorta of injury that if it's the worse one you ever get then you'er lucky!

tribulus

Hanley wrote:

I injured mine 10 weeks out from last years national PL champs and still managed to get in 6 hard weeks of training before it. So it's by no means the end of your training carrer. Hell it's the sorta of injury that if it's the worse one you ever get then you'er lucky!

I would also add if you're worried about getting back training that similiar to the above I injured my SI and a few weeks later started my peaking routine for a meet too. You'll be back too normal in no time but the important thing is to prevent it happening in the future as Hanley said.

walt0r

Thanks for the input guys. Good thing is it's only the second day after I pulled it and I'm in absolutely no pain. Little twinge if I bend over but nothing at all really. I'm gonna lay off the deads for a few weeks and only do light squats in a week or so. I can see where you're coming from about the glutes having to be tight. I reckon I'm trying too much to lift with my back when I should be pushing up through my ass more, which can be hard to do when you're tall. I might switch to sumo style for a bit and see how I get on with it.

Thanks for the ideas

Hanley

Switching to sumo is probably a bad idea to be honest. Youre not really doing anything to resolve the problem and you can be sure if that's the case then you'll re-injure it at some stafe in the future.