How we took Andy from chronic pain to deadlifting again (without surgery)

Recently I’ve been working with my mate Andy who, for the last three years, had been stuck in chronic hip and low back pain. 

We’re not talking about the odd flare up — I mean the kind of pain where if he trained, he’d end up in bed for a week afterwards. He’d already been down the route of scans, appointments, and was due to have surgery.

Before going down that road, we decided to try resolve the issue through training first.

Not a magic exercise or a miracle stretch.

Just a simple, structured plan and patience.

The plan was simple (but not easy)

When people are in pain, they usually think the solution is complicated. In reality, most of the time it comes down to a few key things:

Restore movement where movement has been lost (in this case, the hips)

Strengthen the areas that are weak and not doing their job

Gradually load the injured area at a pace the tissue can actually tolerate

Work into ranges of motion that were previously painful or unavailable

Remove the fear associated with certain movements

Slowly build back towards normal training

That’s it. No secret formula. But the key word is gradually.

Most people get injured not because an exercise is bad, but because the body wasn’t prepared for the load or the range it was put into.

Where we started -

We didn’t start with deadlifts.

We didn’t start with heavy weights.

We started with things that looked almost too easy to matter.

At the beginning, even loading his back slightly would cause flare ups. So we started with isometric holds on a back extension, basic hip work, and controlled movements where we could build tolerance without aggravating symptoms.

The goal was to prove to his body that movement wasn’t dangerous.

Pain often creates fear, and fear creates tension and guarding. So the first job is to build confidence again.

Over time, we started adding:

More range of motion

More load

More challenging variations

More exposure to the movements he was scared of

Not all at once — piece by piece.

Think of rehab like a sunbed -

2 mins on the sunbed does fuck all, 20 minute burns you to a crisp. 8 minutes gives you a nice glow. We're always aiming for the nice glow. The nice glow is the body responding to the stimulus in the way we want it to

This is where most people go wrong — they feel good, so they jump 10 steps ahead, flare up, and end up back at square one.

Rehab isn’t about what you can do on your best day.

It’s about what you can recover from consistently.

9 months later -

Fast forward 9 months and we went from:

Isometric holds on a back extension

To controlled hip and trunk work

To light RDLs and split squats

To trap bar deadlifts

To now deadlifting 100kg+

But the biggest win isn’t the deadlift.

The biggest win is that he’s no longer scared of his back.

He can train.

He can move.

He isn’t living in fear of being stuck in bed for a week because he bent over the wrong way.

That’s life changing.

The big takeaway

People are often told:

“Your back is fragile”

“You’ll always have this”

“You shouldn’t lift weights”

“You need surgery”

Now sometimes surgery is necessary — I’m not anti-surgery.

But a lot of the time, what people actually need is:

Better movement

Stronger muscles

Gradual exposure to load

Patience

And a plan

The body is incredibly adaptable if you give it the right stimulus and enough time.

This process took 9 months.

Not 6 weeks.

Not a quick fix.

But we got there without surgery, and more importantly, we built a body that’s more resilient than it was before the injury.

The goal of rehab shouldn’t just be to get out of pain.

The goal should be to come back stronger, more capable, and more resilient so the injury doesn’t just come straight back again.

Rehab done properly is just training — you’re just starting from a different place.

And if you’re patient enough, you can get back to doing the things you thought you’d never be able to do again.