Quote Originally Posted by TrailRunAZ View Post
Huge fan of PT for low back pain, IF you have a good therapist and he/she works directly with you. Therapy for acute flare should be limited with a lot of instruction on home exercises/stretches after they use some modalities to calm it down. If the therapists in your area can do dry needling I highly recommend it. It is nothing short of miraculous in some cases, and couple with some IFC (like a TENS only deeper) you can be rehabbed in no time.
Core work will be paramount to keep low back/posterior chain balanced.

My low back looks like a train wreck on xray and worse than a lot of people on chronic pain meds, but I am pain free most of the time for the above reasons (well, hedge on core to be honest, but only because I hate it and my flares are rare now).

Don’t do any lifts that are compressive (squats, some shoulder press machines, etc.) until you are 100% pain free.
Same here, Ill also ad that I have had good outcomes with both spinal manipulation (DC or DO) and PT. Granted this is typically in acute patients, whom are not weight trained but not always.

One reason is that the multifidus muscle starts to lose conditioning almost immediately and will lose 40% of its mass within two weeks of a low back injury from deconditioning. Getting combined spinal manipulation and neuromuscular re-education/stimulation is the best way to bounce back and keep reinjury from occurring in my opinion.