How I Overcame a 10 mm Disc Herniation without Surgery
Are you struggling with pain right now? Have you ever struggled with persistent injuries that just don't seem to go away? I understand what you are going through to a great extent. In this 2 part write-up, I am sharing my authentic experience with back pain and sciatica that resulted from a 10mm disc herniation at L4/L5. I will also talk about how I overcame it without surgery - and how you can overcome current or future pains and injuries with long-term success.
Due to Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, I have experienced chronic pains in nearly every joint in my body at some point in my life. The worst pain I have had thus far was due to my disc injury at the end of 2013.
Before my injury.
I used to train like a psycho. For those of you that have seen my Instagram account, you probably know that I train in weird ways and may consider that "psycho." Still, back in 2011-2013, I did all kinds of ridiculous stuff with HEAVY weights. In hindsight, there was a way to do those movements more efficiently that I was unaware of at the time. In early 2013 before actually "injuring" my back, I would have occasional discomfort in the center of my lower back (spine) when hanging, picking things up, doing overhead presses, coughing, sneezing, etc.. It felt like a pulling/yanking sensation deep in my back, but I didn't pay any attention to it. I kept doing my crazy movements without diving into the technique behind them.
One day, in May of 2013, I was lying in bed propped up against the wall, studying for my finals, and very sick. I was coughing a lot. I coughed so hard that I felt and heard a pop in my lower back at one point. It wasn't a painful pop, but right when I stood up, I experienced severe pain in the center of my back and some nerve symptoms in my glutes. This was the first "straw that broke the camel's back." This scared me, but not enough to actually make a change.
I struggled to get in and out of my car, go from sitting to standing, run, or pick up weights. But… I was more afraid of losing my gains. I was 225 lbs and the most muscular I had ever been, so I continued to train the same way with a little less weight. This went on for several months.
During this time, I graduated and worked in a clinic and interned in 3 other clinics. I was interested in going to Physical Therapy school, but I wanted to make sure that I tested out the waters before dropping $210k on a degree.
When the shit hit the fan.
In September of 2013, I helped move my mom into her new apartment. This was several months after the initial "pop" I experienced back in May. My pain was relatively unchanged during that time. My mom had hired movers to move the heavy stuff while I helped move boxes. My back felt no different after finishing the move. I went to sleep that night, not knowing that it would be my last day without sciatica for 2 years.
I woke up the following day, and my back was in the same amount of pain, but I found that I was suffering from true sciatica down both of my legs to my toes - even just laying there. For those of you that don't know, sciatica feels like a combination of electricity and fire ripping down your legs to your feet (in my case, the back of my legs).
I got out of bed and was unable to stand up straight. The more I straightened my legs and tried to extend my hips, the more tension it put on the nerves, intensifying the electric-fire-rippage down my legs. I kept myself in a bent posture. I started to get fearful of what this meant as I had worked with many patients who experienced sciatica or had surgery due to a herniated disc.
I drove a few hours back home and was in excruciating pain the entire time. I couldn't find a comfortable position and nearly lost focus on the road or the cars around me. I started to have dark thoughts… if I cannot even stand or sit, how the hell am I going to work out? How will I go to clubs? How will I go to dinner with friends? How will this affect my relationship? I became obsessed with what my back and legs were experiencing.
The next day I hobbled into work at the clinic. There, the chiropractor assessed me and said that my pain may result from piriformis syndrome. He massaged the Piriformis with ridiculous intensity using a massage gun. After 10 minutes of this brutal massage, I stood up and found the sciatica was twice as bad on my left side. The massage had injured me more, and my sciatica remained "worsened" for a year.
I consulted the physical therapists that I interned with at other clinics. They all assessed me and believed it was a disc injury.
I looked for an appointment with my primary care physician. They scheduled an MRI and referred me to a Physical therapist. The MRI came back with a confirmed 10mm disc herniation at L4/L5 with congenital narrowing of the spinal canal.
"You will never squat again. You will have to wear a brace every time you travel. You will never be able to sit without lumbar support."
Those are the statements that my encouraging physical therapist shared with me after reading the MRI results. I remember looking at the images of my disc and laughing. To this day I am not sure why I laughed - I think the normal response is to be angry or cry? I was told to consult with a spine surgeon - who recommended surgery - as did ALL of the physical therapists I interned with.
I was given 1 sheet of paper with 5 exercises: a press up, standing back extension, plank, bridge, and a side-lying stretch. I was told to do these every day, multiple times a day. Because Kaiser Permanente is so impacted, I would be able to see my physical therapist once a month for 15 minutes. So clearly, he wasn't going to be of much help.
I was given a compression back brace (I wore this daily for months - it did help to reduce pain while it was on) and a lumbar support (half foam roller helped in the car and sitting long periods). I was also prescribed multiple "non-narcotic" medications, which I took all of. I went through 1000 pills of ibuprofen in 3 months (not the best thing for your organs) on top of the pain meds. The pain meds were not supposed to be like Vicodin, but they pretty much were - the 3 months that I took this stuff was a complete blur.
Even on pain medication and doing my exercises religiously for weeks on end, the burning pain down my legs prevented me from sleeping, standing up straight, sitting, walking to the mailbox, going up or downstairs, doing ANY activities of daily living, or even going #2 comfortably (constipation from medication resulted in having to "push," thus putting pressure on the disc and sending lightning down my legs).
I stopped working out, could not be intimate (any pelvic tilting or weight sent severe pain down my legs), and denied all invitations to go places. I began to resent all of my patients. While I struggled to stand upright, sleep, or exercise, my patients would come into the clinic complaining about their tennis elbow. I started to compare my pain to theirs, "at least you aren't dealing with this," is what I would say. As an aside, I have experienced Tennis and Golfer's elbow in both of my elbows. It is painful and restricting and prevents you from doing many activities of daily living. It was not as limiting as my disc injury, in my opinion.
About 3 months into my injury (November 2013), I received an transforaminal cortisone injection at my L4/L5 herniation. This injection immediately took away ALL of my pain. It was too good to be true. I was told NOT to let my spine move for as long as possible. The more I move, the more the injection gets pushed out of the injection area. I moved around like a damn robot. I had no pain and slept amazingly.
1 week later, I woke up, and all the pain was back.
I realized that taking all of these medications and doing these 5 exercises wasn't the answer. Getting surgery was also out of the question for me. My uncle had 7 back surgeries, which had not solved his problems. I knew many patients that had surgery and were worse afterward. The surgery felt like a gamble that wasn't worth it. No matter how long it would take to avoid surgery, I WOULD NOT go that route. There had to be another way.
It was time to experiment and make a change.
In 2013, I suffered a massive herniation in my lower back that prevented me from doing what I loved for 2 years. I avoided the surgery that several doctors recommended to me, PT’s, and surgeons, and today, I am back to doing everything I love to do. I have also taught thousands of others to do the same through my online programs.
Below I will tell the rest of my journey from month 4 of my injury to today.
Time for a change
My transforaminal cortisone injection at my L4/L5 had completely worn off after a week of being 100% pain-free. I was back at square one - unable to sleep, use the restroom without being in agony, walk more than 100 feet, unable to exercise, etc.
I knew that I needed to stop looking for an instant fix (drugs, shots, exercises) and pay attention to tiny improvements on a week-by-week basis. The truth is, I was about 5% better already from the initial injury: I could walk a tiny bit farther, I could bend over a little bit easier, and I could sit longer. The improvements were negligible, but they were improvements nonetheless.
While focusing on this “tiny improvement mindset,” I spent the next 8 months doing the same 5 exercises that my PT gave me and explored many of my own unweighted exercises (planks, bridges, side planks, pushups, and slooooow squats). Every exercise hurt, every time, but I looked for movements that didn’t hurt too much. I played with varying reps and time (usually low reps and short times) and never pushed myself too hard. I made sure to walk every day and made a point to walk a tiny bit farther each time. I knew that doing a little bit of work each day, and usually several times a day, would yield slow but consistent results.
During these 10-12 months, I was still wearing a compression brace around my lower back and used lumbar supports in any chair that I sat in. I used standing, seated, and lying extensions (arching my lower back) numerous times each day to help keep my sciatica at bay.
At first, all of that extension (arching the back) was unbearable. Extension intensified sciatica down both of my legs due to spinal stenosis. After a few months of extending, it became more manageable, and I could extend farther without pain. The extension had been an excellent gauge for me to determine how I was doing. I eventually was able to extend my back so far without pain that my spinal vertebrae started to hit each other - this created a new kind of pain, and I eventually stopped doing so much extension.
By the end of the 10-12 months since my initial injury, I had improved my back pain by about 50%. I attribute much of this improvement to my ability to be patient with myself and explore my movements, but I was also able to explore improvements with the patients we had in our office. I started to see patterns with people and found that many of the movements I focused on with my own body were helping others.
That’s when I met someone very influential in my life.
A Patient Coach
About 1-year post-injury, we had a client come into our office who owned a Crossfit gym. He was a beast. He was there for a mild neck issue.
This man, Mike Coopman, took note of my issues and requested that I come to his gym to assess my movement. I told him, “dude, why would I go to a Crossfit gym? Crossfit hurts people!” He told me that he does things differently at his gym, so I agreed. (For context, most of our patients were Crossfit athletes)
When I showed up at his gym, he had me do a squat, deadlift, pushup, and pull-up assessment. I remember him laughing hysterically at my squat and hinge because there was so much movement in my pelvis. He proclaimed that this was likely a contributor to why my back hurt with everything I did. He taught me how to stabilize my pelvis in a hip hinge with various exercises. My back felt much better doing things the way he had me doing them, and I was even holding a 20lb dumbbell! He told me to do this one hinge for the next month, and I obliged.
I could not believe how much better my back was feeling in just one month. In hindsight, it could have been that the change in my mechanics helped my injury, or it could have been that I had someone confident that was instilling confidence in me. Maybe it was both. Either way, a month later, I signed up for his Crossfit gym. He didn’t have me doing Crossfit - he had me doing fundamental movements for the next 6 months while I built up my strength.
When I started working with him, I was about 185 lbs, down from 225 lbs. I had lost 40lbs of muscle over the last 12 months since my injury.
Working with this man was the real beginning of my movement journey and self-exploration that has gotten me to where I am today.
Self Exploration and helping others
After 6 months of working with Mike Coopman at this gym (18 months after my injury), my daily symptoms had improved about 80% since my initial injury. There were occasional movements that would cause sciatica down both legs. At this point, I had a lot of fear about my symptoms coming back - I had made a lot of progress and was both thankful for the lifting movements that had helped me and terrified of those same movements. Fear of movement stayed with me for another year after this and prevented me from lifting heavy.
I had learned a lot about my pelvis and lower back, but had also learned a significant amount about my core and shoulders. At this point, I took what I had learned from Coach Coop, and I significantly improved the movements of my body. This exploration helped me clean up the last 20% of pain that I was experiencing. For those of you familiar with how good I am at moving various parts of my body, this point in time is when I learned how to do many of the movements that I show today.
During this exploration, I took much of what I learned and applied it to patients in our office.
At this point, I realized that no matter what injury came into our office(neck, shoulder, elbow, back, knee, hip, foot, etc.), by having them focus on making improvements to every joint in their body, they reduced pain in their problem area. Everyone was healing much faster in the clinic and having lasting results.
I had reduced my lower back pain to nothing and was helping others do the same.
“You know you are Gumby, right?”
I have experienced many other injuries throughout my life, not just my back. In some instances, my shoulders, middle back, elbows, knees, wrists, hips, and feet all suffered some chronic injuries, but nothing compared to my lower back. Each of these injuries forced me to explore the movements of my body and find positions that helped heal the area. I then shared these methods with my patients and saw improvements with them. I experienced far more injuries than anyone else that I knew and didn’t understand why - I moved well and had gotten very fit and strong. My back stopped hurting after 2016.
It was 2018 when Katie (the now love of my life), asked me to get assessed by a geneticist for Marfan’s syndrome, a genetic disorder that affects the connective tissue of the body and blood vessels. This disorder is responsible for spontaneous ruptures of the aorta, killing people instantly, but can be prevented with modern medicine. I was interested in making sure I didn’t experience this.
The geneticist said I didn’t have Marfan’s syndrome but that I 100% qualified for Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome - another connective tissue disorder that creates a laxity in connective tissue in every system of the body. At this movement, I realized why I had experienced so many chronic injuries since I was a very young boy. The geneticist again told me that I should never lift weights or put extreme stress on my body - I again used this as fuel to prove the naysayers wrong - I left that appointment, and PR’d my deadlift to 455lbs an hour later.
Today
I am now 235 lbs and do everything that I was told I wouldn’t be able to do again, and I am not limited by pain. I have trained over 17,000 people online via my programs - teaching others how to prove their naysayers wrong.
What is the most important lesson I have learned since 2013? Patience, consistency, and a little movement. The body takes time to heal. I would not have made it to where I am today if I didn’t exercise extreme patience - I would have likely agreed to the surgery. You must put in a little bit of effort each day - many people have an “all or nothing” mindset, but it is best to do some rather than none. Move each day - short walks and some basic movements go a long way in healing the body.
In hindsight, if I had the knowledge that I have now regarding the movement of the body, I would have improved my pain much faster. I have seen dozens of people with the same injury as mine go through my programs and make considerable strides in as little as one month. Some people take 6-8 months, but it is still so much faster than the 2 years that I was in pain.
My most significant transformation over the last 9 years is that I am not fearful of pain. Pain is a teacher and guide that is to be used as a tool. Pain isn’t meant to be treated like an enemy.
“If you could go back in time and prevent your injury from occurring in the first place, would you?” No. I am grateful for all of the injuries that I have endured. They have taught me to move the way I do now and have allowed me to help hundreds of thousands of people either in my programs or through social media. I can connect with people on a deeper level because of my experiences with pain. I would never take that experience away.
If you are fearful of pain, limited by it, and unfulfilled in your life, please consider embarking on the journey through our Limitless program. I won’t lie to you, the program and journey is a lot of work, but it is ultimately less work than struggling with your current situation. Eliminating your pain is hard, but so is living with pain each day. Choose your hard.
-Andrew, the Shirtless Dude