I think I just herniated a disc in my back doing leg presses..

Alright so in the past, I've my lower back has gotten a little sore from working out legs and what not. Exercises that I do for legs that I think could harm my back are squats, leg presses, and lunges.

The slight soreness I've always been able to deal with and I always fully recovered by my next back and leg workout.

But today, I tried to change my form up a little bit to see if I could take away that lower back pain from leg workouts.

On squats I lightened the weight and focused on keeping my shoulders back and my back as straight as possible. It felt pretty good.

But on leg press is where it got nasty. When I usually leg press, my back is usually arched and my back usually forms a triangle with the seat and the thing you lay back on and I usually put my feet up pretty high on the platform. Today I lowered my legs a little and tried to keep my back to the seat with minimal arch. Everything felt fine except that my quads were squeezing my stomach a lot more when lowering the weight. On my last set, I felt a very slight pain during the set, but thought it was just cause it was heavy weight. But after my last rep when I pushed the weight up to rack it, I felt an excruciating pain in my lower back. It hurt to get up. I decided to stop there and go home. I don't think my back has ever hurt so bad. It hurt when I tried to put the weights back, it hurt when I tried to open my car door anything that involved me to bend slightly forward.

Any ideas on what I should do for now until I can get my back checked out? I have no health insurance but I pay for medical stuff in my tuition so I can go to the Health Service Center on campus. I'm icing my lower back right now and have been doing some stretches.

[QUOTE=tnecniv;398439251]Alright so in the past, I've my lower back has gotten a little sore from working out legs and what not. Exercises that I do for legs that I think could harm my back are squats, leg presses, and lunges.

The slight soreness I've always been able to deal with and I always fully recovered by my next back and leg workout.

But today, I tried to change my form up a little bit to see if I could take away that lower back pain from leg workouts.

On squats I lightened the weight and focused on keeping my shoulders back and my back as straight as possible. It felt pretty good.

But on leg press is where it got nasty. When I usually leg press, my back is usually arched and my back usually forms a triangle with the seat and the thing you lay back on and I usually put my feet up pretty high on the platform. Today I lowered my legs a little and tried to keep my back to the seat with minimal arch. Everything felt fine except that my quads were squeezing my stomach a lot more when lowering the weight. On my last set, I felt a very slight pain during the set, but thought it was just cause it was heavy weight. But after my last rep when I pushed the weight up to rack it, I felt an excruciating pain in my lower back. It hurt to get up. I decided to stop there and go home. I don't think my back has ever hurt so bad. It hurt when I tried to put the weights back, it hurt when I tried to open my car door anything that involved me to bend slightly forward.

Any ideas on what I should do for now until I can get my back checked out? I have no health insurance but I pay for medical stuff in my tuition so I can go to the Health Service Center on campus. I'm icing my lower back right now and have been doing some stretches.[/QUOTE]

Its likely that you just pulled some muscles in your lower back. As someone pointed out to me hernias are really rare. Get some rest(I took two weeks completely off and i was ok), and ease back in slowly.

[url]http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=115016091[/url]

the leg press is a really nasty machine in disguise. we're not really optimally designed to push stuff away from us with our legs. The main issue is that the pelvis's position gets compromised in a leg press.

Also arching your back in order to press isn't optimal. if you've been doing this for awhile, you've potentially built up some patterns that when you tried to change them, didn't feel great either.

i wouldn't advise icing or stretching. Icing is just an anesthetic - it makes the area numb but does nothing (good) for any swelling. and if there is inflammation, stretching the area isn't going to be great either.

Without watching your form, general suggestion is to find a qualified trainer to look at your lifting form.

until then, back off. stay OFF the leg press machine and when you start to come back in do lighter weights so you maintain proper form in your leg work.

i'd also encourage you to learn joint mobility drills and practice those at least before you lift. [url=http://begin2dig.blogspot.com/2008/09/z-health-r-phase-not-your-daddys-joint.html]Here's a link to at least one joint work approach. [/url]

keep walking/moving

best
mc

does the pain affect your hips area too?

[QUOTE=tnecniv;398439251]Alright so in the past, I've my lower back has gotten a little sore from working out legs and what not. Exercises that I do for legs that I think could harm my back are squats, leg presses, and lunges.

The slight soreness I've always been able to deal with and I always fully recovered by my next back and leg workout.

But today, I tried to change my form up a little bit to see if I could take away that lower back pain from leg workouts.

On squats I lightened the weight and focused on keeping my shoulders back and my back as straight as possible. It felt pretty good.

But on leg press is where it got nasty. When I usually leg press, my back is usually arched and my back usually forms a triangle with the seat and the thing you lay back on and I usually put my feet up pretty high on the platform. Today I lowered my legs a little and tried to keep my back to the seat with minimal arch. Everything felt fine except that my quads were squeezing my stomach a lot more when lowering the weight. On my last set, I felt a very slight pain during the set, but thought it was just cause it was heavy weight. But after my last rep when I pushed the weight up to rack it, I felt an excruciating pain in my lower back. It hurt to get up. I decided to stop there and go home. I don't think my back has ever hurt so bad. It hurt when I tried to put the weights back, it hurt when I tried to open my car door anything that involved me to bend slightly forward.

Any ideas on what I should do for now until I can get my back checked out? I have no health insurance but I pay for medical stuff in my tuition so I can go to the Health Service Center on campus. I'm icing my lower back right now and have been doing some stretches.[/QUOTE]
Be careful with legpress - you can push a lot fo weight. Sounds like problems with your SI joint ( spine and hip). Work on your core after you are better.