My Lumbar Surgery Rehab Program

On Sept 3, 2010, I had pretty extensive laser surgery performed on my lumbar spine. Even though the damage was pretty serious, I am almost back to all of my everyday athletic activities, only seven weeks later. In this clip, I describe what I did over the course of the six week recovery, and demonstrate the progression of exercises I did from Week 3 on. Thanks so much to the staff and surgeons at Laser Spine Institute in Scottsdale, AZ, and to my physical therapist, Becky Jo Bohlin, at Outpatient Physical Therapy here in Covington, WA.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Linda
• Ross
• exercise
• spine
• surgery
• rehabilitation
• core
• stabilization
• mobility
• recovery

[lindafmb]

@konjialprof after my surgery, my pain was pretty much gone, but there was stiffness, weakness, and limited range of motion in the surgical area. Now that it's been almost a year since I had surgery, I'm able to do things I haven't been able to do for six or seven years, since around the time my back started to bother me. And I can now do things I WASN'T ever able to do, such as many of my figure skating jumps and other elements, simply because I already had the injury when I started skating.

[konjialprof]

nice video. idid surgery 9 months ago and still i have pain. my question is did you had the same thing before doing these excercises or it just disappeared after the surgery directly?

[lindafmb]

@TheHb1970 Thank you, that was what I was hoping for when posting this particular video. I don't run much anymore, due to the amount of impact my body takes from landing figure skating jumps. But if you were a regular runner like I'm a regular skater, I started to get back on the ice within two weeks of surgery. I took it slow, and walked a lot, like they told me (only probably more aggressively and definitely longer distances). I'd say try the "walk-run-walk" approach, see how your body adapts

[TheHb1970]

Great video! Very inspiring.  I just had lower back surgery three weeks ago and really needed to see this. Thanks for posting. (Also did you run before and if so, how quickly did you start running again?).