I hurt my back in 2023 and it had a major impact on my life for the next few years, so here's a full page dedicated to it since people ask me about it with some regularity. Maybe my journey will help someone else.
The injury started (probably with years of poor movement patterns, then overuse, then) with ultimate frisbee one night and disc golf the next morning where it seized up toward the end of the round and I went down in pain. After a day or two of barely being able to walk, then a few weeks of lessening pain, I just had mild-moderate pain with/after exercise for a little over a year until one day it just got worse and turned into significant daily pain.
My doctor and PT gave me some exercises and stretches to do, but nothing really helped. After the pain got worse, my PT's recommendations didn't change, so I went searching for help elsewhere and took a break from most athletic activities Nov '24 through all of 2025 to focus on rehab. I read Dr. Stuart McGill's Back Mechanic (and Ultimate Back Fitness) and followed his recommended daily regimen of walking and core exercise and more walking for about six months. I had some slow improvement, but had an upcoming trip I wanted to make sure I could enjoy, so I went looking for an expert I could see in person.
I found Dr. Clayton Skaggs and Dr. Jim George at CIHP (Central Institute for Human Performance) in St. Louis. I went to see them in May 2025 and spent seven hours at the clinic over two days while they evaluated and educated me. They gave me a number of simple exercises to follow ("do these and nothing else") to help strengthen and gain awareness and control of my lower abs and a couple other areas. (My spinal structure is all good; their diagnosis is that I was under-using some muscles, which causes over-using other muscles, which results in pain.)
I've been very consistent with my exercises for the past year and my pain is significantly reducing. My team at CIHP gave me the green light to go out on my own in May, so I'm no longer meeting with them but am keeping up with my exercises. The daily ones are reducing to ~2x/week, and I'm doing my own programming for three gym days/week. Things are looking up... just need to not injure myself doing yard work now.
Notably, they never once prescribed a single stretch. Only strengthening and relaxing. Not to say that all stretching is always bad, but it makes me question many people's default recommendation to stretch.
After three months of working with Tim, he thinks I've made enough progress to move to a strength & conditioning coach to push me more in the gym.
Started working with Tim Sirmon (PT) at CIHP virtually every other week. He has me doing a lot of easy, remedial exercises at home. We've been making small modifications each time, but in general the daily work looks something like this (2x, morning and evening):
It's all easy stuff, but the focus is perfect form and it should relieve, not cause, pain. Overall, it takes 2-2.5 hours a day. Glad I don't have kids while dealing with this.