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Stupid thing I did this week: injured my lower back after following a driving range session with a kettlebell workout. I'm ashamed both of the fact that activity level was enough to cause an injury, and that I was stupid enough not to realize that level of activity would cause an injury. It is improving over a few days, no big deal, and I'm hopeful it's nothing, but I need to reassess my plans for the rest of the summer and that pisses me off.
On the contrary to the comments below, you should consider your activity overall. Hurting your back rolling over in bed is a sad fact of adulthood for many people, but if it happens after a week of intense back or leg workouts...
No sense in being ashamed. I also don't think you have to totally reassess your summer. However, you need to consider easing into extra training volume or new training loads. That means not going all out, or even moderately hard at first. Your body is going to stop moving optimally before you can't move a weight. Usually that means compensating somewhere else when a weaker muscle gets tired, and something gets tweaked.
The first thing that popped into my head when I read what happened to you is that you were doing a one-sided twisting motion followed by kettlebell exercises. It's easy to overwork specific parts of the body that way. Training volume plays a role in injury, but training while subtly twisting your core or favouring one side is what is likely the direct cause. Taking time to recalibrate your balance and symmetry between those things can help, if you plan on golfing more often. Stretching and mobility is often left by the wayside, but it will help you recover (and prevent those freak accidents while shaving). Warm up to your working sets with mobility, balance, lighter weights, and concern for how your body feels. Numbers are a measure of performance, but performance is what you actully want to improve.
So at this point, I'm pretty confident that it was nothing, in that I'm feeling fine now. Nevertheless, I'm going to be extremely careful for a few weeks yet, so I'm altering my fitness plans somewhat. I'm going to drop the planned Kettlebell block, and move to focusing on Yoga and Climbing for the next month.
The foolishness started with going to the driving range and getting the bucket of 105, because the pricing was such that the first 35 went for $8, the next 35 were $4, and the last 35 were only $2. It seemed foolish not to buy the large bucket, even though I knew I hadn't golfed in months and should go smaller to get back into the groove. Then I compounded it by having lazed around having coffee and making love in the morning, and as a result trying to cram the other things I had planned that day into too little time, so while on my to-do list the driving range and the pentathlon were morning and evening, and in practice they were less than an hour apart. It was pure stupidity on my part.
Glad you're feeling better. As someone who's gone through the misery of back pain, I know the dread and pessimism of a twinge. As long as you don't charge through it with youthful stupidity, they usually bounce back just fine.
Have fun with the climbing and yoga. Both are great options for limbering up (and providing a good dose of mobility humility - easy to forget with strength training).
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Any level of activity is enough activity to cause an injury if you try hard and believe in yourself!
After casting my eyes down a bit, I see @Rov_Scam already said the same thing, but seriously, it's true. Similarly to Rov, I have the experience of being perfectly fine for 65 miles/week of running for an extended stretch, then tweaking my back getting out of bed in the morning. I ran a marathon on Sunday and the thing that hurts the most today is the shin that I slammed into the corner of the bed at the hotel last night. I will never cease being amazed at the capacity of the human body to simultaneously be durable to incredible insult while being frail to the slightest twist or bonk.
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Any activity level can cause unexpected injury; all it takes is to move something the wrong way. There was a period of time when I was riding my bike about 25 miles a day after work, and 50 to 80 miles on the weekends, and I ended up throwing my neck out while reaching for a drink on the top shelf of a convenience store cooler. If you're repeatedly injuring yourself in the same way after doing the same thing, then I'd stop to reassess my plans or seek professional instruction, but one-off injuries are par for the course for reasonably active people. It's probably more of an "I moved something the wrong way" injury than an overuse injury.
Yeah. A few years ago when I was very fit i threw out my lower back not doing dead-lifts but turning over in bed...
Worst back pain I ever got was from shaving wrong. Somehow.
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