GoWOD: Two Months In, Then My Back Voted No

For almost two months I went all-in on GoWOD.

At first it was 8 minutes a day, then I got hooked and it became closer to ~16 minutes daily.
My mobility score climbed (about +17%), the streak was strong, and for once this felt like a clean, sustainable system.

And then — instead of a reward — I got a penalty.

On 18 Dec 2025 during pancake and some hip “push-out” style drills I felt a warning in my lower back.
Later that same day I still went to the gym and trained lower body (Bulgarian split squats + Romanian deadlifts).
That’s when I got a sharp “my back just went out” moment on the right side of my lower back.

The next day was brutal.
Day two wasn’t better, so I took a tablet to help it release faster.
It improved, I could move and train again — but the area stayed sensitive.

On 26 Dec 2025 I tried to “help” with passive long-sit stretching (legs straight forward) plus hip rotations… and it flared again.

This is uncomfortably similar to what happened two years ago: big flexibility gains, then a twist, then the worst back episode of my life.

So I’m done outsourcing this to an app.

Plan

• quit GoWOD (the habit stays, the app doesn’t)
• build my own short mobility sessions as a Garmin workout list
• keep a strict “do-not-do” blacklist for movements that irritate my back
  (especially deep end-range flexion + rotation)
• bias toward active mobility and stability over passive end-range stretching

Two months of work did build one valuable thing: consistency.
Now I’ll keep the consistency — and remove the randomness.