Beth,
I am a 43-year-old male, who has been surfing for 15 years, the past seven years at OB. Last year I developed a protruding disc at L5 (lower back) pushing on the sciatic (s1). A couple of shots of cortisone took care of the sciatic nerve compression and physical therapy is taking care of the disc. Will surfing aggravate the condition (provided one is in good shape and conditioned)?John A.
ANSWER:Hey John,
I am glad you are feeling better. Back pain is a bitch! As for whether or not surfing will re-injure you, I don’t’ know. My hope is no, but it depends on how well it healed and whether or not you only “fixed” the injury itself and did not care of the reason as to WHY you got injured in the first place. Getting a cortisone shot will acutely help the problem but hopefully physical therapy strengthened, stretched, and got to the root of the injury! Did you end up figuring out why you initially got injured? Did you fix those weaknesses, so this injury doesn’t happen again?Hopefully, you have been strengthening your trunk area (abs, back, butt, etc.) and stretching a ton to avoid re-injury. If so, surfing may not injure you again. If PT was pretty passive and just focused on the acute injury, surfing may exacerbate the injury. So ask yourself these questions and then make an educated decision. As for surfing, start slow and make sure you continue your exercises afterwards (i.e., stretching, etc.)!Let me know what you think.Hasta,
Beth( Posted 6-22-03)
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