Part of Lumbar disc herniation

Returning to the gym with a herniated disc: lifting, squats and the first weeks

Most people get back to the gym with a herniated disc, and the useful question is not whether you are allowed but in what order. Nothing on the gym floor is banned for everyone who has one. What changes is which lifts come back first, how much load they come back at, and what you watch to decide whether the last session was a good one. The published sources stop short of the barbell: the NHS names walking, swimming and yoga as the gentle exercise to start with, and we looked for a national guideline on returning to weight training after a lumbar disc herniation and did not find one, so anyone handing you a week number is giving you their own practice rather than a recommendation. What this page gives you instead is a method: load the pattern before you load the bar, change one thing at a time, and judge the session by your leg rather than by the ache in your back. If you have had an operation on your back, your surgeon's or surgical team's plan comes first and overrides everything here. Numbness around your genitals or bottom, new trouble with your bladder or bowels, pain, tingling, numbness or weakness in both legs, or loss of feeling in one leg means calling emergency services or going to an emergency department straight away, and not driving yourself there.

Warning signs, and when to get help

Can you go to the gym with a herniated disc?

For most people, yes, and the answer is an order of events, not a permission. Nothing on the gym floor is banned for everyone who has a disc herniation. What changes is which lifts come back first, how much load they come back at, and what you use to judge whether the last session was a good one. Get that order wrong and one afternoon can cost you a fortnight. Get it right and more of your program is available sooner than most people expect.

The published advice stops a long way short of where you are standing. The NHS slipped disc page points you toward movement and names walking, swimming and yoga. About a barbell it says nothing at all. We went looking for a national guideline on returning to weight training after a lumbar disc herniation and did not find one, so a page that hands you a week number is handing you its own practice or somebody else's story.

That gap is why this subject reads the way it does online. Search it and you get forums, coaches and clinics: one poster told never to squat again, the next one back under the bar inside a month, a third selling a program. All of those happened. None of them helps you decide about Tuesday.

So what follows is a method, not a list. Returning to the gym after injury carries the general version, including the readiness checks, the opening weight, the rule about rebuilding sets and reps before load, and the weekly review, and none of that is repeated here. This page is only what a disc with symptoms down the leg changes about it. If you have not yet got a staged plan underneath the gym work, the lumbar disc herniation program is the one the lifts below are being added on top of.

What has to be true before you load the bar

Two things decide this, and a date is not either of them. The first is whether somebody has put a restriction on you, which after an operation on your back they will have done, and that restriction outranks every sentence on this page. The second is what your leg has been doing for the past week or so.

For a disc herniation managed without surgery, and with none of the warning signs at the foot of this page, these are the things physios tend to look for before the loaded version of a lift goes back in:

  1. The leg symptoms have not reached further down your leg for several days running, checked first thing in the morning as well as in the evening.
  2. There is no new or increasing numbness or weakness in the leg. That is a different question from pain, and it is the one to answer first.
  3. The unloaded version of the lift, a bodyweight squat or a hip hinge with a stick, leaves the leg no worse that evening or the next morning.
  4. An ordinary day, including all the sitting in it, no longer has the leg dictating your afternoon.

Nobody has published a validated set of criteria for this and we found no guideline offering one, so read that as clinical practice rather than a test you have passed. Expect your physio to set it tighter for a leg that has been weak than for one that has only been sore, and to adjust the pace as you go. A rebuild is counted in weeks of small increases, not in a handful of keen sessions.

If the answer to any of the four is no, that is not a week off the gym. The loaded version of that one lift is what waits, while the unloaded version, the lifts that leave your leg alone and the lumbar disc herniation program all carry on. The four are a check you keep repeating, not a gate you pass once.

When the answer is yes, the numbers are not on this page, and they are not yours to guess either. The opening weight, the rule about building reps and sets back up before any weight goes on, the size of each step up and the weekly review are all on returning to the gym after injury, so open that page before your first loaded session rather than after it. Leave at least a day between loaded sessions of the same pattern, because the reading you are waiting for is the next morning's, and three keen days in a row give you nothing to read.

A few readers need a conversation before any of it. If you have had an operation on your back, including a discectomy, your surgeon's or surgical team's plan comes first, and the section further down on training after a discectomy is the one to read.

With low bone density (osteoporosis), or if you have had a broken bone in your spine, ask your physio before you go back to heavy pulls from the floor, good mornings or a loaded bar on your back, and keep the lower back from rounding under load. Ask before weighted twists, cable chops and side bends too, and before twisting the spine to the end of its range, because deep forward bending and end-range twisting are usually limited for you. If you have been told you have narrowing of the spinal canal (spinal stenosis) or a forward slip of one vertebra on another (spondylolisthesis), check with your physio before the back extension and the standing overhead press, because both of those arch the lower back and bending backward can make both conditions worse.

If you are pregnant or have given birth in the last few months, ask your physio, midwife or doctor before you go back to heavy lifting. If you are pregnant and past the first three months, check with your physio before exercising flat on your back, which takes in the bench press and the floor press. Heavy lifting loads the pelvic floor as well as the back, so if you leak urine, or feel heaviness, pressure or a bulge low in your tummy or vagina during or after a session, stop the heavy lifting and get pelvic floor advice from a physio or your doctor, which is what the NHS asks for when those symptoms appear. If you have already been told you have a prolapse, the NHS advice is to keep away from activities that strain the pelvic floor, heavy lifting among them, so that is a conversation to have before you load a bar at all.

Two more apply to anyone training heavy. With a heart condition or high blood pressure, check with your doctor before you start. If you have high blood pressure, breathe steadily through every repetition and never hold your breath, which on a barbell lift means choosing a weight you can move while breathing out through the hardest part rather than bracing against a held breath. The same breathing applies if you have glaucoma or another eye problem: holding your breath through a heavy squat raises the pressure inside the eye more than breathing through the lift does, which was measured in healthy lifters rather than in people with glaucoma (Vera and colleagues, 2020), so check with your eye doctor or optometrist before you train in a way that needs a held breath. This page is written for adults, so a teenager with back pain running down a leg needs seeing by a doctor or physio before they load anything.

Your leg is the signal, not your back

This is the one place where standard gym advice points the wrong way for you. Every return-to-training page judges a session by how the sore area feels the next morning, ours included, and for a disc with symptoms down the leg the back is the louder of the two signals and the less useful.

If pain, numbness or tingling spreads further down your leg during or after an exercise, stop that exercise and leave it out for now. If the leg symptoms ease or pull back toward your buttock, physios usually count that as a good response, even if your back aches a little more for a while. Symptoms travelling back up toward the buttock have a name in clinic, centralization, and it has been studied as a sign of how someone is likely to do (May and Aina, 2012).

Further down the leg only means something if you know where it reached before. Before your first set, find the furthest point your symptoms get to and put it in words you will remember: the back of the thigh, behind the knee, the outside of the calf, the top of the foot, the little toe. That is your mark. Compare against it while you lift, that evening, and first thing the next morning, which is when a disc usually answers. If you cannot tell whether it has moved, treat that as worse rather than as the same, and take the load off.

This next instruction sits here and not at the foot of the page, because by the time you need it you are already under the bar. Stop the set, and do not finish the session, if symptoms travel further down the leg while you are lifting, if numbness or weakness in the leg is new or getting worse, or if your foot starts to drag or slap as you walk out.

A back that aches after the first real session in three months is mostly telling you that you have not done one in three months. Ordinary soreness is what that covers, not pain that is severe, came on suddenly or is getting worse quickly, which has its own line in the warning list at the foot of this page. Follow it instead of the leg and you will drop lifts that were fine and keep lifts that were not.

There is one exception. If the leg pain eases but numbness or weakness in the leg gets worse, stop the exercises and get medical advice the same day. The same day applies to a foot that has started to drag, catch on the ground or slap down when you walk.

This way of reading your leg was written for a disc that has not been operated on. If you have had surgery on your back, read the section on training after a discectomy before you use it, because a nerve the surgeon has freed can go quiet while the disc wall it came through is still healing.

Reading the response takes two looks, not one, and herniated disc exercises to avoid sets out when to take them and how to bring a movement back once it has been out. The sciatica program explains how to read symptoms moving up and down the leg, and the pain monitoring model guide covers the scale physios use for the soreness itself and how thin the evidence is behind any exact number.

How do you squat with a herniated disc?

The barbell squat has four things you can change, and most lifters only ever change one of them. Depth, chair height and the bodyweight version are on herniated disc exercises to avoid, along with the test that decides whether any of it stays in. This section starts once a bar is involved.

Load comes down before anything else does, and how far down is the generic question answered on the gym page, because a disc does not change the arithmetic of a starting weight.

Most lifters never think of bar position as adjustable. A low bar squat is done with more forward lean than a high bar squat, and a front squat with less again, so if forward lean is what your leg objects to then you have something to turn there without giving up squatting. Nobody has measured that swap in people with a disc herniation, so take the swap itself as practice reasoning. The same goes for range: a squat stopped above the point where your pelvis tucks under is still a squat, and it is a long way from not squatting at all.

The fourth is where the squat sits in your session, and it matters more here than on any other gym page. Squat while you are fresh, which usually means first, and not after forty minutes on a seated machine and a bike. The section below on the sitting inside a session explains why.

Change one of the four at a time. The feedback from a disc arrives a day late, so if you move the load and the depth in the same session, a sore leg on Wednesday tells you nothing you can use. Our squat page has the unloaded version to go back to on a week when the leg is unhappy.

Can you deadlift with a herniated disc?

Most people get back to pulling, and the deadlift is usually the last of the big lifts to arrive, not the one that never returns. That queue position is not a verdict on the movement. It is that the deadlift asks for the most weight at the moment your trunk is furthest from upright, and that combination is the one a freshly irritated nerve root tends to notice. Where it sits in the order is how this is staged in clinic rather than an order any trial has compared, so read the queue as practice and let your own physio set it. The queue is not an order for the session itself: it is measured in weeks, and when a pull does come back it belongs early in the session while you are fresh, for the same reason the squat does.

The step worth taking first is finding out which part of the lift your leg objects to, because the answer turns a banned exercise into a range you start above. For a lot of readers it is the set-up and the first few inches off the floor, where the hips are lowest and the back works hardest to hold its position. If that is you, the lift does not have to come back from the floor on the first day it comes back at all.

Lower back pain after deadlifts has the ladder of easier pulls and the version written for a back that has just been tweaked by one, and the order it gives is the order to use.

The bar is a weight in its own right, and that is easy to forget. In most gyms it is 20 kg (44 lb), and 45 lb (20.4 kg) where imperial plates are used, so an empty bar is not a zero, and plenty of readers start below one with something lighter held close to the body.

Whether a rounded back under load is what harms a disc in the first place is a separate argument with its own evidence and its own limits, and it is set out on herniated disc exercises to avoid. Nothing in it is a reason for a reader with pain running down the leg today to load into a rounded back, and nothing we can read supports a date for a first heavy pull.

Machines, overhead work and loaded twisting

These are the ones that come up at appointments, and almost none of them is a ban. Each is a setting.

The leg press is where most readers go wrong, and the problem is the bottom of the range, not the machine. Push the sled far enough back and the pelvis tucks under, the lower back rounds against the pad and the load stays on it. Shorten the range, stop before the tuck, and watch the lower back, not the knees. No study sets that stopping point, so it is practice reasoning rather than a measured limit: the useful version is to stop where your lower back stays still against the pad. Find that point with the sled light or empty, before there is any weight on it worth talking about, and then hold the same depth as the load goes up, because the tuck arrives earlier once the weight is heavy and you are tired.

Overhead pressing goes the same way in the other direction. If your shoulders cannot get the bar over your head without a lean, your lower back supplies the rest of the movement, and the load goes through it instead of through your shoulders. Press to the range your shoulders actually own, or press on an incline, and leave the strict standing press until the leg has been quiet for a while. A while is not a number anybody can give you, but it is at least as long as the four checks near the top of this page ask for, and the strict standing version is the one to come back to last.

Loaded rotation and loaded side bending are the group worth parking longest: weighted twists, cable chops and side bends with a dumbbell. There is no good evidence that rotation damages a disc, and there is no good evidence that it is fine either, which is exactly the situation where the cautious reading is the better one while a nerve root is still irritated. So this one is a restriction we have chosen with the evidence absent in both directions, and what is parked is the load rather than the movement. Turning your trunk through an ordinary day, and unloaded rotation your leg is happy with, are not what this is about. Good mornings sit in the same queue, because they put the load furthest from the hips with the trunk most inclined, and an unloaded hinge or a back extension at bodyweight will hold the pattern until they come back.

Two of the checks from the top of this page land in this section, so they are worth repeating where the movements are. With low bone density (osteoporosis), or a broken bone in your spine behind you, the weighted twists, the cable chops, the side bends and the good mornings are all on the ask-your-physio-first list. With narrowing of the spinal canal (spinal stenosis) or a forward slip of one vertebra on another (spondylolisthesis), the bodyweight back extension and the standing overhead press are the two to check before you do them, because both arch the lower back.

Seated rows and chest-supported machines are the other half of this, and they are usually the part of the session you can keep. Keeping the lifts that leave your leg alone matters more than people expect: it holds the training habit together while the loaded back work is on its stages, and it means the only variable you are changing is the one you meant to change. Our plank page covers the trunk hold the program builds to, which is a different job from a loaded twist and a better place to start.

Do belts, traction or inversion tables help a herniated disc?

Start with what the guideline says, because it covers two of the three. NICE's low back pain and sciatica guideline tells clinicians not to offer belts, corsets or traction for low back pain with or without sciatica (NICE NG59), so none of the three is something a service should be handing you as treatment.

The belt evidence is set out in full on do back braces work, including the workplace studies and what has been measured about trunk muscles, and there is no point repeating it here. The disc-specific point is narrower: none of that research was done in people with a herniated disc and current leg symptoms, and on this page a belt matters for one reason only. It can let you keep a weight your leg was asking you to put down, which changes the load decision, not the back. While you are still working out what your leg accepts, that is a reason to train without one, not to add one. A belt also goes with a braced, held breath, which is the pattern to leave alone if your blood pressure is high.

An inversion table is traction that lives in your hallway. NG59 does not name the device, so that is our reading of a recommendation about traction rather than a line in the guideline, but the reading goes the same way: we found no guideline recommending one and no reason to spend money on one before the load and the order of your session have been sorted out. Hanging head down raises your blood pressure and the pressure inside your eyes, so if you have high blood pressure, a heart condition, glaucoma or another eye problem, you have had surgery on your spine, or you are pregnant, ask your doctor before you hang upside down on anything.

The sitting hidden inside a gym session

No gym page covers this part, and most readers only notice it afterwards. Count what is actually seated in a typical session: the bench, two or three seated machines, the stationary bike, the rest periods spent sitting on a bench with a phone, and the drive there and back. Put it together and the sitting can easily outlast the lifting.

Why that matters for you and not for the lifter next to you is covered on sciatica pain when sitting, which has the evidence on what sitting does to a disc and how long to sit before changing position. The point here is only what to do with a session.

Three changes do most of the work here. Spread the seated work through the session so the bench and the machines are not back to back. Stand up between sets instead of sitting down, which costs nothing and is the single easiest change on this page. And put the bike at the end, or swap it for walking outside, because thirty minutes seated with the leg already loaded is a strange way to finish.

Long spells of sitting are also one of the things the NHS lists among how a slipped disc happens in the first place, alongside lifting heavy objects the wrong way, so it is not a small part of the picture. If your working day already holds several hours of it, the gym session is where you have the most control, not the least.

Training after a discectomy

Your surgeon's or surgical team's plan comes first in this section, and nothing in it replaces a restriction you have been given. If your instructions are tighter than anything below, yours are the ones that apply, and the question to take back to the team is when a restriction lifts rather than whether it can be stretched.

The operation leaves something behind, and it is the reason the leg rule earlier on this page does not transfer to you unchanged. Taking the pressure off the nerve is what the surgery was for, so leg pain often settles quickly, while the opening in the back of the disc wall that the fragment came out through is still healing, and it heals by scar rather than by new disc. A quiet leg in those early weeks does not mean what it means for someone who has not had surgery, and it cannot clear a load your team has restricted. That opening is where a reherniation comes from, which is a fragment coming back out of the same disc, and it is what the early weeks of any restriction you have been given are there to cover.

The readable national sources are thinner on this than you would hope, and saying so is better than filling the gap. The NHS describes recovery from lumbar decompression surgery, the family of operations that includes removing the part of a disc pressing on a nerve, as a return to work at around 4 to 6 weeks depending on the kind of work, and as taking up to 12 weeks before all your usual activities are back. Both figures belong to that whole family, which runs from a laminectomy for a narrowed canal to the removal of part of one disc, and the NHS does not publish them for a microdiscectomy on its own, so they are not a timetable for your operation. It also says the hospital will tell you what to avoid while you recover, and gives driving and contact sports as its examples. There is no weight anywhere in it and no mention of training.

Australia's healthdirect, on lumbar microdiscectomy, is just as short: do not lift anything heavy or twist your body, your physiotherapist will tell you when to increase what you are doing, and you should ask the healthcare team or your GP for advice before you start exercising. It does not define heavy and it gives no date. Those are the two national sources on the operation, and neither answers the question this page is named for.

The figures you will find instead come from clinic pages selling an appointment, and they are usually a restriction with nothing behind it: nothing heavier than a light bag of shopping, often put as 2 to 4.5 kg (5 to 10 lb), for somewhere between two and six weeks. That may well be right for you. What matters is that it is not sourced, it was not written about your repair, and the person who can tell you which version applies is the surgeon who did it. One thing holds whichever version you are given: the day a weight restriction ends is not the day a heavy lift starts. What it releases you to is the staged rebuild earlier on this page.

There is a counterweight in the literature that almost nobody quotes, and it points the other way, though it is about going back to work, not back to weight training. A prospective study at one centre followed 152 consecutive working patients after limited open discectomy who were given no activity restrictions at all. 149 of them (98%) returned to work, with an average of 1.2 weeks of work lost and 32% back within a week, and 148 of those 149 were on full duties by 8 weeks. Going back very early was not associated with recurrent sciatica, with reoperation for a reherniation or with the final outcome, and the authors concluded that restrictions after the operation may not be necessary for most patients (Carragee and colleagues, 1999).

Read its limits before you take it anywhere near your own program. It was one surgical team, in 1999, using limited open discectomy, which is not the microdiscectomy or the tubular discectomy most units do now, although what all three leave behind in the disc wall is similar. It was a working population, with no randomization and no comparison group kept on restrictions.

It also reported 17 possible reherniations (11.2%) and 8 reoperations (5.3%) in that group, which is not the same as nothing happening. And it followed people back to their jobs, not back to a barbell, so it says nothing about a loaded pull from the floor. Treat it as a reason to ask your surgeon what your restriction is for and when it lifts, never as a reason to ignore one you have already been given.

The same surgical team later answered part of what that paper left open, and this is the piece that decides how much of "most patients" is about you. They followed 187 consecutive patients through a first single-level discectomy, with an independent examiner seeing 180 of them at a median of six years, and sorted them by what the back of the disc wall looked like at the end of the operation. Where a fragment had come out through a small fissure, 1% had a reherniation and 1% needed a second operation. Where fragments had extruded and a large area of the back of the disc wall was gone, 27% had a reherniation and 21% needed a second operation (Carragee and colleagues, 2003).

What was found during the operation predicted how people did more clearly than their age, their job or anything that could be measured beforehand. It was one surgeon at the same single centre, and it gives no date and no weight either. What it does give you is the reason a general answer cannot exist: you cannot tell from how your leg feels which of those groups you were in, and neither can a web page. The surgeon who operated can, which is why it heads the list below.

So take five questions to the appointment, which is more useful than any figure on the internet. What did you find at the operation, and does it change how likely this disc is to come out again. What is the restriction protecting, and for how long. When may I load a bar from the floor, and does the answer change if I pull from blocks instead. What would you want me to stop for. Who signs off the step after this one.

One warning belongs with this section, and it matters more than anything above it. A spinal infection does not always cause a fever, and a normal temperature is not a reason to be reassured. It is more likely if you have recently had spine surgery or an injection into your spine, inject drugs, or take medicine that weakens your immune system (Finucane and colleagues, 2020). If you have had spine surgery or a spinal injection in the last three months, contact your surgical team the same day about a fever, a wound that is red, hot, swollen or leaking, or back or leg pain that is new or much worse, even without a fever. Redness can be harder to see on brown or black skin.

There is a second warning, and a barbell is the reason it belongs here. The NHS lists a leak of spinal fluid among the uncommon but serious complications of this family of operations, and bracing against a held breath under a heavy weight raises the pressure in the space that fluid sits in. If you get a headache that comes on when you sit or stand up and eases again when you lie flat, or clear fluid leaking from your wound, stop lifting and contact your surgical team the same day.

What the elite athlete numbers do and do not tell you

These figures get quoted at readers as a timeline, which they are not, so here they are with the label attached. A systematic review and meta-analysis in Sports Health (2021) pooled studies of elite athletes with a symptomatic lumbar disc herniation. 663 of 799 (83.0%) returned to play after a discectomy and 251 of 308 (81.5%) returned without surgery, with no significant difference between the two (odds ratio 1.39, 95% confidence interval 0.58 to 3.34, P equals 0.46). Mean time to return was 5.19 months after a discectomy and 4.11 months without one, and the studies behind those means ranged from 1.00 to 8.70 months for the surgical group and from 3.60 to 5.70 months for the group treated without surgery.

These were elite athletes, with team medical staff, daily supervised rehabilitation and a job that depends on getting back, and the review was graded level 4 evidence with high statistical heterogeneity between its studies (I2 71%), which means the figures sit on a wide and uneven base. The confidence interval around that comparison runs from well under 1 to well over 3, so the fair reading is that this body of evidence cannot separate the two routes rather than that it has shown them equal.

It is useful for one thing, and that is worth having. The assumption that an operation is the quick way back to sport is not supported here, and nothing in these numbers should be read as the month your own gym program is due to finish.

When to stop, and when it is an emergency

A page about getting back under a bar is exactly where a reader can push through the thing that should have ended the session.

Stop the set, and do not finish the session, if symptoms travel further down the leg while you are lifting, if numbness or weakness in the leg is new or getting worse, or if your foot starts to drag or slap as you walk out.

Stop the exercises and get medical advice the same day if the leg pain eases but numbness or weakness in the leg gets worse. The same day applies to a foot that has begun to drag, catch on the ground or slap down when you walk, and to back or leg pain with a fever, or feeling hot, cold, shivery or generally unwell.

If you have had spine surgery or a spinal injection in the last three months, the infection warning in the discectomy section above belongs in this list too, and it applies even without a fever. So does the line next to it about a headache that comes on when you sit or stand up.

A dropped bar, a plate landing on your back or a fall off a bench or a box is an injury rather than a flare, so get it checked the same day even if you got up and finished the set. If the pain started straight after it, or you have new numbness, tingling or weakness in a leg, keep still and call emergency services, as the warning list below says for any accident.

The emergency signs below, including numbness around your genitals or bottom and new bladder or bowel trouble, need help straight away.

The full list at the foot of this page gives every warning sign with how fast to act on it, and when sciatica needs urgent care sorts the same signs by speed if you are not sure whether yours is one of them. Nothing in either means you will never train again. What changes is the order: the emergency signs need emergency help now, with somebody else driving, and the training waits; the same-day signs mean being seen today; and the slower ones mean being seen before the next session.

Related exercise programs

Warning signs

Get emergency help now

  • Emergency: numbness, tingling or altered feeling around or under your genitals, between your inner thighs, or around your bottom (anus), for example it feels different when you wipe after using the toilet. Call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself. This can be a sign of pressure on the bundle of nerves at the base of the spine (cauda equina syndrome), which needs emergency treatment.
  • Emergency: you find it hard to start peeing, cannot pee, cannot feel yourself peeing or cannot control when you pee, or you do not notice when you need to poo or cannot control when you poo, and this is not normal for you. The same applies to a new change in how your genitals feel during sex, new trouble getting or keeping an erection, new trouble ejaculating, or new trouble reaching orgasm. Call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself. These can also be signs of cauda equina syndrome.
  • Emergency: sciatica in both legs, or pain, tingling, numbness or weakness in both legs. The same applies if you lose feeling in one leg. Call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself.
  • Emergency: back or leg pain that started after a serious accident, such as a car crash or a fall from a height, or back pain with chest pain. Call emergency services. If the pain started straight after the accident, keep still while you wait.
  • Emergency: sudden, severe pain in your lower back or tummy that is not like your usual back pain, if you have been told you have a swelling of the main blood vessel in your tummy (abdominal aortic aneurysm), you are over 60, you smoke or used to smoke, or you have high blood pressure. The same applies if sudden, severe back or tummy pain comes with feeling faint or passing out, pale, sweaty or clammy skin, a racing heartbeat or being short of breath. Call emergency services straight away. This can be a sign of an aneurysm bursting, which needs treatment in hospital at once.
  • Emergency: back pain with a fever, or you feel hot, shivery or very unwell, and you also have new weakness, numbness or tingling in one or both legs, or new trouble with your bladder or bowels. Call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself. This can be an infection pressing on the nerves in the spine (spinal epidural abscess), which needs emergency treatment.
  • Emergency: you have had cancer, now or in the past, and your back or neck pain feels like a tight band around your body, or you have new or worsening pain spreading down an arm or leg, weakness, numbness, pins and needles or a loss of feeling in your arms or legs, trouble walking, or trouble controlling your bladder or bowels. Those symptoms count on their own, with or without back or neck pain. Call your cancer team's emergency number straight away, or go to an emergency department if you do not have one or cannot get through, and do not drive yourself. This can be cancer pressing on the spinal cord (metastatic spinal cord compression), which needs treatment straight away.
  • Emergency: new neck or back pain after a fall, a knock or a jolt, even a minor one such as a trip or a sudden stop in a car, if you have a condition that stiffens the spine, such as ankylosing spondylitis. Call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away, do not drive yourself, and tell the staff about your spine condition, so they keep your neck and back in their usual position. A stiff spine can break after a small injury, and the break is easy to miss at first. If the pain started straight after the injury, or you also have numbness, tingling or weakness in your arms or legs, keep still and call emergency services.

Get help today

  • Same day: a leg or foot that is getting weaker, for example your foot drags, catches on the ground or slaps down when you walk (foot drop). Get medical advice the same day. If the weakness is getting worse by the hour, go to an emergency department.
  • Same day: back or leg pain with a fever, or you feel hot, cold, shivery or generally unwell. Get medical advice the same day, and go to an emergency department if you feel very unwell. If you have a very high or very low temperature, shivering you cannot control, you are breathing very fast or finding it hard to breathe, you are confused or your speech is slurred, your skin, lips or tongue look blue, gray, pale or blotchy (on brown or black skin this can be easier to see on the palms of the hands or soles of the feet), or you have a rash that does not fade when you press it, call emergency services, as this can be sepsis.
  • Same day: new back or leg pain and you have had cancer, now or in the past, or you have lost weight without trying. Get medical advice the same day and mention it. If you are being treated for cancer now, contact your cancer team the same day.
  • Same day: back pain after a minor fall or strain if you are older, have low bone density (osteoporosis) or have taken steroid tablets for a long time. Get medical advice the same day. Until it has been checked, stop the exercises and keep away from lifting, bending forward and twisting, because those load a bone in the spine that may be broken.
  • Same day: severe pain that comes on suddenly or is getting worse quickly. Get medical advice the same day.
  • Same day: a calf or thigh that is newly swollen or getting more swollen, warm, tender, red or darker than usual, has swollen veins that are sore to touch, or has a throbbing or cramping pain that does not fit your injury or condition, or that feels different from normal muscle soreness after exercise. This can be a sign of a blood clot (deep vein thrombosis), especially after surgery, an injury, time in a cast or boot, a long trip or a spell of being much less mobile than usual. Get medical advice the same day. If you are also short of breath or have chest pain, call emergency services.
  • Same day: pain that does not ease at all with rest or changing position, or is worse at night. Get medical advice the same day if you also feel unwell, have lost weight without trying, or have had cancer, now or in the past.
  • Same day: if you have had spine surgery or a spinal injection in the last three months, contact your surgical team the same day about a fever, a wound that is red, hot, swollen or leaking, or back or leg pain that is new or much worse, even without a fever. Redness can be harder to see on brown or black skin.

Book an appointment

  • Within a few days: pain that does not ease at all with rest or changing position, or is worse at night. See your doctor within a few days.
  • Within a week or two: back or buttock pain that started before the age of 45, has lasted more than three months, is worse after rest and in the morning, and eases when you move. This is not an emergency, but see your doctor in the next week or two and ask whether it could be inflammatory back pain (axial spondyloarthritis).
  • Routine: back pain that comes from the top of your back, between your shoulders, rather than your lower back, and has not been checked, or back pain that is worse when you sneeze, cough or poo, or comes with a lump or swelling, or a back that has changed shape. Book an appointment with your doctor, as the NHS advises, and have it checked. Do not start or change your exercises until it has been checked. If the pain came on suddenly, get medical advice the same day.

Common questions

Should I lift weights with a herniated disc?

For most people the answer is yes, eventually, and the better question is which lift and at what load. If you have had an operation on your back, your surgeon's or surgical team's plan comes first and overrides everything here. Keeping the lifts that leave your leg alone is usually the easy part, and the ones loading the lower back come back by stages: the pattern without weight, then the pattern with a little weight through a range your leg accepts, then the full lift. What decides each step is not how brave you feel but what your leg does that evening and the next morning. If pain, numbness or tingling spreads further down your leg during or after an exercise, stop that exercise and leave it out for now. There is one exception that outranks everything else on this page. If the leg pain eases but numbness or weakness in the leg gets worse, stop the exercises and get medical advice the same day.

Are deadlifts bad for a herniated disc?

The deadlift is not a bad movement, and it is usually the last of the big lifts to come back rather than the one you give up. If you have had an operation on your back, your surgeon's or surgical team's plan comes first and overrides everything here. It asks for the most weight at the point where your trunk is furthest from upright, which is the combination an irritated nerve root tends to notice first, so it sits at the end of the queue rather than the start. In practice the useful step is working out which part of the lift your leg objects to, because if it is the set-up and the first few inches off the floor, the lift can come back from a higher starting position instead of coming off the list. The ladder of easier pulls is on our lower back pain after deadlifts page, and the detail for a disc is in the deadlift section above. No source we can read gives a week number for a first heavy pull, and this page will not invent one. That absence is not a permission: what takes the place of a date is the order of the lifts and what your leg does. If pain, numbness or tingling spreads further down your leg during or after an exercise, stop that exercise and leave it out for now.

Can squats or deadlifts cause a herniated disc?

A single lift is rarely the whole story, and the honest version is less satisfying than either of the usual answers. The NHS lists lifting heavy objects the wrong way among the things that can lead to a slipped disc, and in the same breath it lists sitting or driving for long periods, which tells you something about how much weight any one cause carries. Disc findings also turn up on the scans of plenty of people who have never had back pain at all (Brinjikji and colleagues, 2015), so a bulge on a report is not proof that the bar put it there. Whether a rounded back under load is the villain it is usually painted as is a separate argument, with its own evidence and its own limits, and it is set out on our herniated disc exercises to avoid page. None of that is a reason to load into a rounded back while pain is running down your leg today. If pain, numbness or tingling spreads further down your leg during or after an exercise, stop that exercise and leave it out for now.

How long before I can lift after a discectomy?

Your surgeon's or surgical team's instructions settle this, and they differ between units, so there is no general answer we can give you that would be safe to follow. The readable national sources do not fill the gap either: the NHS gives timings for returning to work and to usual activities after lumbar decompression surgery and names no weight at all, and Australia's healthdirect tells you after a microdiscectomy not to lift anything heavy or twist your body, and leaves both the definition of heavy and the timing to your physiotherapist. The figures you find online, typically a few kilograms for a few weeks, come from pages that cite nothing. Ask your own team five things: what they found at the operation and whether it changes how likely this disc is to come out again, what the restriction is protecting and for how long, when you may load a bar from the floor and whether pulling from blocks changes the answer, what they would want you to stop for, and who signs off the step after this one. Whichever version of a restriction you are given, the day it ends is not the day a heavy lift starts, and what it releases you to is a staged rebuild rather than your old working weight. One thing does not wait for any of those answers. If you have had spine surgery or a spinal injection in the last three months, contact your surgical team the same day about a fever, a wound that is red, hot, swollen or leaking, or back or leg pain that is new or much worse, even without a fever. Redness can be harder to see on brown or black skin.

References

  1. NHS. Slipped disc. Last reviewed 24 April 2024. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/slipped-disc/
  2. NHS. Lumbar decompression surgery. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/lumbar-decompression-surgery/
  3. NHS. Back pain. Page last reviewed 5 March 2026. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/back-pain/
  4. healthdirect. Spinal disc problems. Last reviewed November 2024. https://www.healthdirect.gov.au/conditions/back-and-spinal-disorders/spinal-disc-problems
  5. healthdirect. Lumbar microdiscectomy. Last reviewed January 2026. https://www.healthdirect.gov.au/surgery/lumbar-microdiscectomy
  6. National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. Low back pain and sciatica in over 16s: assessment and management (NG59). Published 2016, last updated July 2026. https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng59
  7. Carragee EJ, Han MY, Yang B, Kim DH, Kraemer H, Billys J. Activity restrictions after posterior lumbar discectomy. A prospective study of outcomes in 152 cases with no postoperative restrictions. Spine. 1999;24(22):2346-2351. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10586459/
  8. Carragee EJ, Han MY, Suen PW, Kim D. Clinical outcomes after lumbar discectomy for sciatica: the effects of fragment type and anular competence. Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (American). 2003;85(1):102-108. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12533579/
  9. Sedrak P, Shahbaz M, Gohal C, Madden K, Aleem I, Khan M. Return to play after symptomatic lumbar disc herniation in elite athletes: a systematic review and meta-analysis of operative versus nonoperative treatment. Sports Health. 2021;13(5):446-453. doi:10.1177/1941738121991782. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33563131/
  10. Brinjikji W, Luetmer PH, Comstock B, et al. Systematic literature review of imaging features of spinal degeneration in asymptomatic populations. American Journal of Neuroradiology. 2015;36(4):811-816. https://doi.org/10.3174/ajnr.A4173
  11. May S, Aina A. Centralization and directional preference: a systematic review. Manual Therapy. 2012;17(6):497-506. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.math.2012.05.003
  12. Vera J, Perez-Castilla A, Redondo B, De La Cruz JC, Jimenez R, Garcia-Ramos A. Influence of the breathing pattern during resistance training on intraocular pressure. European Journal of Sport Science. 2020;20(2):157-165. doi:10.1080/17461391.2019.1617354. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31068117/
  13. NHS. Pelvic organ prolapse. Page last reviewed 3 July 2025. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/pelvic-organ-prolapse/
  14. Finucane LM, Downie A, Mercer C, et al. International framework for red flags for potential serious spinal pathologies. Journal of Orthopaedic and Sports Physical Therapy. 2020;50(7):350-372. https://doi.org/10.2519/jospt.2020.9971
  15. Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT), NHS England. National suspected cauda equina syndrome (CES) pathway. February 2023, updated March 2026. https://gettingitrightfirsttime.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/National-Suspected-Cauda-Equina-Pathway-March-2026.pdf
  16. National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. Spondyloarthritis in over 16s: diagnosis and management (NG65). Published February 2017. https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng65
  17. NHS. Abdominal aortic aneurysm. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/abdominal-aortic-aneurysm/
  18. National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. Abdominal aortic aneurysm: diagnosis and management (NG156). 2020. https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng156
  19. Darouiche RO. Spinal epidural abscess. New England Journal of Medicine. 2006;355(19):2012-2020. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMra055111
  20. NHS. Sepsis. Page last reviewed 14 May 2026. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/sepsis/
  21. NHS. Deep vein thrombosis (DVT). Page last reviewed 30 April 2026. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/deep-vein-thrombosis-dvt/

Written and checked by the PocketPhysio editorial team. Last updated 2026-11-02.

This page is general education, not a diagnosis or a personal treatment plan. See a physiotherapist or doctor for advice about your own situation.