Health history

But all that had to stop when I was seriously injured at work. I herniated my disk (L4,L5) bad enough that it was pushing on three sets of nerves, which led to chronic sciatic pain running down my right leg, loss of feeling in parts of my thigh, a constant sensation of pins and needles in my foot and the inability to sit, stand or walk for more then ten minutes at a time. After the first couple of weeks following the accident, the doctor told me that without surgery, during which they wanted to remove the disk and fuse the two vertebrae together, I would not be able to walk again without the use of a cane. 

Being driven and ambitious, I refused to go through surgery, mainly because I did not like the odds of all the things that could go permanently wrong. It had taken a year of physiotherapy and a lot of other treatments to 'pop' my disk back into place. During this time all of the symptoms had continued to plague me; this led to some very dark times. Towards the end of physiotherapy, they had me deadlift an empty bar (only 45lbs!!) for a simple 5x5, to help me get stronger; this was pretty close to my max physical capacity at the time.