When I was 31-years-old I sustained a crippling back injury due to overwork. My therapist over the next ten years, as I had yet a dozen boxing matches and 600 plus stick fights ahead of me, kept trying to convince me that “I was holding tension” in my back. However, as I improved my flexibility and range of motion and slowly crawled back to the point where I freighted an entire tractor trailer of Thanksgiving goods by myself in 14 hours [which is what a good five man crew usually takes 40 hours to accomplish], I credited my successful rehab to the yoga exercises and massage she had given me. At age 43, I was folded in half over Aaron Seligson’s foot and launched from the middle of the ring into the second row, and was nailing a stick-fighting groupie later that night, no back pain at all…
However, at the peak stress of my management job around age 46 I began experiencing back problems even as I eased off the labor end.
Now, with an actual gut—my own damned beer keg—which should cause terrible complications with a lower back problem, I’m doing fine with minimal therapy.
What is up with this?
Ironically, my top three fighters, who are all exactly 30-years-old, who have different physiques, different combat specialties and different occupations, are all currently experiencing lower back pain, muscular spasms, where mine much degraded frame does not. I am currently lifting more than any of them, spending more time in cold work areas than any of them, more time on hard floors…
What I think it is that the weight of the world has fallen on their shoulders. They have each hit their athletic prime and are facing pressure from their own warrior drive to compete at the highest level they can manage before they are too old.
They are also in their mating prime, with maximum earning pressure being leveled by their women and children and by the expectations of society that a man’s earning begin a steep ascent at age 30 and don’t level off until he’s gray—or else he’s a screw-up.
One just started his own business.
One just started a new career.
The other one finds himself only halfway through the mortgage on a house in an imploding city and knows that bad economic times lie ahead for us all and is too smart to put his head in the sand.
They are all carrying weight of a sort that correlates with alcoholism among middle-aged men and pill addiction among middle aged women.
Me?
I don’t give a shit anymore. I’ve dropped out, clear only $140 a week, will never go into a hospital conscious and have written more books than I thought I could, let alone would.
I am content with being an unrepentant outcast, so no longer suffer the stress of fitting in or measuring up. Last week Oliver asked me how the book publishing went—having just put out three books in one week—books I felt good about producing, that had quality content, books I actually bothered proof reading. I said, with a light heart:
“He has generated some interest, people are clicking on it. I’ll eventually sell a few. Into Wicked Company is getting some clicks too. I’ll eventually sell some to pissed off Irishmen. Night City, which contains some of the most innovative speculative fiction every written, into which I sank my actual feelings, is sinking like a stone through the floor of my own catalogue. Dude, I clicked on it three times the first day it was on my Amazon listing, and it fell in the rankings by the hour! People aren’t even clicking on it. It’s actually in a flaming nose dive, as if I asked Jennifer Lopez out on a date to Taco Bell!’
Oliver said, “You seem delighted that you’re not going to sell any of what, a four-hundred-and-fifty page book? I’d be heartbroken!”
What I was enjoying was the thrill of rejection not hurting at all, which is a state I have often claimed to have occupied in younger days, but was honestly just hoping that if I said it enough it would come true. I have arrived at the bottom of my ambition and the landing did not hurt one bit, just like a drunk surviving his own car accident while the people in the other car that wanted to live and knew what was happening broke into pieces.
It is easier said than done, but if your back is troubling you and you’re in your prime, consider relaxation therapy of some kind. Look beyond the mechanics and within and laugh at your earthly concerns.
The Punishing Art
James, wished I had read this about 30 yrs, ago, shoveled a 10 ton load of corn, into a floor auger, took maybe 15 minutes, the truckdrivers paid extra if they didn't have to wait, they had a bet going on how fast I could do this, received part of the losers winnings, 50 bucks.
I can only speak from personal experience.
In 2008, about two weeks into my second deployment to Iraq, I hurt my back moving some heavy stuff. I was 26 at the time and until then had been more or less indestructible. As it later turned out, I had torn my arachnoid membrane.
I was running a small team, doing relatively important stuff, and did not want to get sent home, so did not go to the clinic. The next eight months were more or less one long back spasm. It got to the point where I would have to take a percocet before going out on a mission sometimes (the optempo was pretty high-I remember we did a raid about every second or third day.)
When I got home, I still did not want to go to the medical system-was afraid it would turn out to be something that would take me off deployable status. I tried chiropractors (a big crock of shit) and rest, stretching and Motrin (absolutely useless) before breaking down and having x-rays and and MRI done. They then sent me to a physical therapist, who got me working on various core stabilizer muscles. Within a day, the pain was down from a 5 to a 2, and within two months, I was more or less pain-free. That lasted through college (where I did judo and trained with the ski team,) and subsequent events (a cross-SE Europe solo bike trip, working in a winery in manual labor, etc.)
Even though I'm in my mid-30s and supporting a family now, and have the weight of the world on my shoulders, of all the things I have to worry about, back pain is not one.
What helped: stabilizing muscle exercises (planks, dynamic balancing exercises,) high weight low rep exercises (Olympic lifts were the best), back bridges from the standing position, handstands and handstand pushups.
The mind/emotion/body connection is still too little respected by the mainstream western medical establishment, but there are exceptions. My own personal experience with this was that within weeks after the judge ruled that it was time for me to be ejected from the family home I was still paying for, the years of sciatica that seemed to randomly manifest on the right leg, oh wait, today its the left - magically evaporated with the absence of my soon to be ex in my daily experience. Dr. John E. Sarno has the best discussion of this in his book "Healing Back Pain." He's actually an old school M.D., but was aparrently foolish enough to actually believe what he was taught about the scientific method and evidence and all that. For those with chronic physical pain of any type, the book does a great job walking gradually down the path of evidence to what is alleged to be a ~90% success rate.
Back pain is a mysterious thing. I think you are absolutely right about the psychological side of the issue, especially as it pertains to fit, healthy men who SHOULD be pain-free. I can go my merry way for months, working out, etc. but when something very stressful comes along, I know I'm going to get a hearty side order of back pain for no objective reason.
I think that in a negative psychological situation, the muscles tighten involuntarily, this pulls vertebrae out of alignment, and this pinches nerves. Chiropractors have always saved the day for me, and after a while, I got smart and asked them for exercises to supplement the adjustments. Now I can pop my back on my own time and my own dime. Happy to share, if anyone's interested.
Hope your young bucks heal up quickly. Back pain is very "un-manning". You feel like a pane of glass. Almost as bad as a kick in the jimmies for taking the manhood right out of you.
OK i just bought nightwatch on amazon-feeling guilty for enjoying you output via freeloading. You scare me with the most-innovative-ever talk. Hope it's not too weird. Promise I'll write a review. Good luck.
PS you are a bad influence. making me consider going rogue- but damn 140$ a week.
A good slathering of guilt gets the sale—now I appreciate the Leftist mind a bit more!
Thanks, Sid