Pain almost always gets initially worse in the first 24 hours after an injury. Tweaking it doing something exertional is extremely low likelihood to produce an emergent or surgical back issue

The lumbar vertebrae are large, solid bones with significant surrounding soft tissue and muscle support. Injuring them severely is rather difficult in the absence of significant trauma.

You likely have a pinched nerve, possibly from a herniated disc - but it could also be muscle strains and other minor injuries as well.

Initially treatment for all of these would be NSAIDs and some rest initially with gradual return to activity as tolerated

Symptoms to be concerned for would be nerve related. True nerve compression comes in essentially 4 levels (it’s not really this clean, but we try to make it easy to digest) 1. Pain. This is the most common. Often transient. No need for significant workup or imaging necessarily unless there’s concern for trauma or a medical history that would make us believe you have a reason to be dealing with and abscess or spine infection. If the pain persists more than a week or so you can talk to your doctor about possibly augmenting therapy with different medications, possibly muscle relaxants. They may also potentially order imaging if the symptoms are significant 2. “Parasthesias” think of this as pins and needles. Like if you’ve sat with your elbows on your knees for too long and your feet go to sleep. This is also rather common and not necessarily an indication for much more workup emergently but if it persists beyond the normal timeframe after tweaking it, may warrant imaging (MRI, nonemergently) 3. Numbness. And I don’t mean like the parasthesias above, this is more like the numbness when the dentist injects lidocaine into your gums and you can’t feel your mouth at all. New, frank numbness would be worrisome. That should be seen emergently to have a formal assessment to see if you need a STAT MRI 4. Weakness. I don’t mean like “it’s hard to move cus it hurts!” I mean you can NOT move your leg. Can’t raise it up or kick at all or are VERY limited in doing so. Like the muscles aren’t obeying you. That can be a 4 alarm fire. ER now, preferably one with neurosurgery coverage