I’ve suffered the odd episode of back pain for some years, generally after a couple of hours or days the left sided lower back pain is gone. The most time taken to recover has been a few days with only needing to take ibuprofen etc.

Last Saturday i was out on a leisurely coastal ride with a mate, nothing to taxing and hardly broke a sweat. Picked the bike up to get it over a couple of fences and sneezed once. On the way home a began to get real shooting pains on the lower left…..nothing new. After i got home the pain was intense.

After a couple of days hardly moving due to pain, and much to the annoyance of the wife as it was the 1st week of our holidays where we had planned allot of day trips with the kids, that went up in smoke obviously.

Day 5 i was able to get up and move more freely but when i looked in the mirror i was slightly bent to the left from the waste up!. This continued all day. Day 6 i woke up and was slightly bent to the right!!!!. During the day it would swap and has been like that for the last few days. I can stand up but im bent either way, its doing my head in now. Still not fully pain free.

Whats going on here ? anybody else had this. if so how long did it take to go away or did you do anything to help mend it ?

I have gone through exactly what you describe. I got my wife to pick me up some crutches from Boots so that, when I was standing, I could straighten up and remain relatively comfortable for some time. I would only use them at home, but they helped me stay mobile.

Otherwise, I had to use a sports physio. His work on me – which hurt like crazy – had me walking straight again, and able to tie my own shoes, within two sessions.

Best of luck. There is little worse.

Potentially muscle spasms in your erector muscles.

Phew,someone else that’s experienced it, i couldn’t find anything relating to it on the net. Cheers Saxon.

Would you feel a muscle spasm? I mean ive had a spasm before and it reverberated, this isn’t like that.

Had a similar thing myself. The leaning to one side is caused by spasms and is your bodies way of protecting the injured back area. If you’re also walking funny, look up “Antalgic gait.” You really need to see an Osteopath for a course of treatment to relax the area that is spasming and then to realign your hips and/or spine which are misaligned and are causing you the ongoing pain.

Good luck with it, I know how much it can hurt.

sounds like a lateral shift. Think this can just come from back pain caused by the facet joints in the spine but more commonly it is an indicator of a disc problem. Your sneezing while loaded lifting the bike could be enough to enlarge a disc problem, if you were flexed at all at the same time it would definitely be.

Treatment can be done yourself. If for example your shoulders are to the right of your hip them place your right shoulder against the wall and try to gently glide your hips towards the wall. Same thing in reverse for the other side.

Otherwise treat it as a flare up of back pain, use painkillers, heat and keep yourself moving if possible. If problems persist then get your GP to refer you to local physio dept.

Once the muscle pain followed whatever I did to put my back out in the first place, I would describe it has having ‘danced’ across my back. I could actually feel it move.

The physio I went to was able to identify where it was emanating from, and target the area it was affecting. That’s ultimately how it went away. It took weeks.

The good thing is, I have had no major bouts since, and that was three Christmases ago.

It’s a bit like truing a wheel. The muscles on each side of your back have to be pulling equally or your spine goes all taco like.

After some issues with a wonky disc and stuff, and wonky back like you describe shifting from side to side, or front to back, I stopped treating my back with back exercises as such, and started stretching out my hamstrings and stuff, and it all went away.

Well, until I wrecked my hamstrings in one leg a month ago, but anyhow…

This is all amazing information and much more than i expected, very much appreciated.

Brant, weirdly today i noticed i could barely bend to touch my knees never mind my toes. I’ve started stretching my hamstrings etc. I will continue with added vigour.

go careful on stretching your hamstrings. Depending on your technique you could also be stretching your sciatic nerve which is not going to help. If your doing hamstring stretches and you feel it in your calf then your not doing it right.

Safest way is to make sure you still keep a small bend in your knee.

Bare in mind this may not be why you cannot flex, loss of flexion, above the knee is also a bit of a disc indicator.

I’ve started stretching my hamstrings etc. I will continue with added vigour.

I’m sure you didn’t mean that like it sounds, but yeah. Take care though.

Let’s just link this thread to this one – http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/an-article-on-back-pain-well-worth-a-read

Cheers Brant.

Been a couple oh weeks since my original back injury and feeling much better for it. All the information above was very helpful when i visited a physio on Thursday. Received some manipulation and some advice after an initial assessment. Don’t need to go back which is good for the wallet but was given allot of different stretching exercises to do from now on. I still feel a little discomfort from that area but I’m sure it’ll get better.

Good to hear that you’re on the mend! As above I’d say it’s far more likely to be muscular rather than anything to do with the discs, so keep on with those stretches 🙂