Last IsoMax session for a while? Back setback

I finished Week 8 of my Bruce Lee routine with good progress in the majority of drills. On the Friday session, I hit a new PR of 111.4 lbs. in the overhead press. I do not agree with all the error listed in Thomas Kurz's Errors in Training for Strength in Sports and Martial Arts, but "Error: Changing your exercises or adding new ones when the old exercises still cause considerable improvements in your strength" makes sense to me. So I figured I'd do another week of the Bruce Lee.

Today's session went fine, until I got to the last exercise of the routine, which was the Seated Row. I was sure that I braced my abs and pulled my chest up to prevent any backwards curve of the lower spine. However, that was not enough. It might not have been a good idea to lock my knees out either. As I started pulling harder, I felt something pop in my spine, followed by acute low back pain, just like the very last time I did a bent-over row on the Isochain. I had no choice but to stop training immediately, and try walking around a little to try to walk off some of the pain.

I bought some ibuprofen (previously tried Advil and Motrin - both seem to work the same for me), and started taking it. It seems to relieve the pain a little bit. NSAIDs like this are not a great long term solution for pain relief, but they're suitable for short term relief. I spent most of my work day standing up. In the past when I've had back pain, my back would hurt when I stood up after sitting in a chair too long.

So where to go from here? At present, all I can do is keep taking the ibuprofen, and try doing a Sore Joint Solution routine tomorrow morning. Barring further setback, I'll work towards doing SJS 5 days a week, working towards being able to do 4 sets of 25 Original Strength-style Dead Bugs to improve my reflexive core stability and thus reduce the odds of repeat injury to the low back.

After I've achieved the 4 sets of 25 dead bugs, I'll do the Bruce Lee routine on the IsoMax again, with some changes:

• Reduced target loads for the exercises, since I'll be coming off of injury and thus want to take my time to get my strength back to where it was before the injury.
• No more Seated Row. Just don't want to risk re-injury so soon. I put up greater force numbers in the low position curl, so I'm fine with the curl being my only upper body pulling exercise in my Bruce Lee routine.
• No more Overhead Tricep Extension as there does not seem to be any reason to have 2 upper body push exercises to 1 pull exercise.

I think the hand-and-thigh lift might help restore stability to my spine, because after I hurt my back in the bent-over row, I immediately did a hand-and-thigh and it reduced so much of the pain I didn't need to take ibuprofen. I just didn't attempt the hand-and-thigh this time because I would have had to squat down to pick up the IsoMax bar and platform, and my low back pain just would not allow that.

Anyway, I'll do the Bruce Lee again until my overhead press is back in the high 100s, then I'll switch to a hypertrophy block with Easy Muscle, Schedule B as the program of choice. Schedule B alternates between a kettlebell day and a calisthenics day, which features chinups and dips. I ordered a dip belt to use with a kettlebell, in the event I find I can easily do over 10 reps of each calisthenic exercise. I'm guessing my rep max will be 10 or less for both exercises, for this hypertrophy block. However I don't think it will be long before I progress to about a 10-rep max with a 16kg kettlebell on the dip belt, for both exercises.

I've never had low back problems caused by bodyweight-only chinups, unlike with row variations on Isochain/IsoMax. I think weighted chinups will be also be fine for me, because I only plan to do them in the context of Easy Muscle. As long as I stick to the 10-rep max guideline (eg. if I can do 10 weighted chinups with a 16kg KB, and 3 weighted chinups with a 24kg KB, I should train with the 16kg) in Easy Muscle, the load should never be heavy enough to pose a threat.