Back squat pain

Training Q&A [Moderated]
1

Hi doctors,

I’m a 27 year old male, fat(115 kg) and just started training again, my goal is to lose weight and I don’t have any plans for competing.

3 years ago I have started training with SS beginner program. After a 2 weeks or so, I have started feeling extremely sharp pain in my lower back during and after low bar back squats, the pain doesn’t hinder my performance in the lifts so I’m hesitant to call it an injury.
I asked about it and got an answer I probably don’t have good form and/or should just suck up and do it. At the time I was 85 kg so my weight was also too low. My gym doesn’t allow filming on the premises.

I was a very good responder and managed to progress my squat and deadlift to 140kg/170kg (press and bench stagnated) while ignoring pain for around 3 months.
By this time the pain has become unberable so I started squating heavy 2/wk and making 5 kg jumps, because I dreaded heavy squats. This worked for 3 heavy sessions, so 155 kg, before I stopped going to the gym because the pain I felt was constant in my daily life plus a lot of stress and personal problems threw me into a depression.

To describe the pain, it is constant throught the lift, from unracking to everything, and I feel it the most after the set, than I have to rest 3-5 minutes before I can continue. It is localized in the lower back (general area).

Now 3 years later I’ve just started running beginner template and for the first week I did low bar back squats. The pain started immediately after first session, but since the pain doesn’t hinder performance I just kept squating. That was until the third day in the first week, I got to second to last set (110x4@7), completed it, racked it and felt so much pain my back started cramping so I literally could not move. This is not an exaggeration, I literally laid on the floor next to the squat rack for 5 minutes. The.n because of my past mental issues and depression, I felt the need to not give up and fight it so I completed 115x4@8 last set and the same thing happen. Yes I’m a moron.

I was feeling pain during the 2 days rest, but I read and watched your resources on pain during the weekend, This week I decided to implement Austin’s suggestions. I tried lowering the weight, but the pain was constant, I tried high bar, the pain was still there, I tried front squatting, It worked, now my body feel amazing. I have no pain, I can walk normally during the day, I don’t have to lie on the floor after every set. I did 90x4x2@8.

I have 2 questions:

You recommend to slowly introduce the movement, but I don’t know if this is viable for me, because the pain is constant throught the movement and even at empty bar. Would you still recommend that for me?

.
By my self diagnosis this past week I have a pronounced pelvic tilt. It clued me to this, because when unracking and standing with the weight, if I push forward with my butt forward the pain decreases (it still exists, but that could be residue from last session). I sort of make my body to be closer and more in line with the imaginary line through the center of my body.
I don’t have any problem with that except when squating in the gym. Would you recommend I try to fix this, is it even necessary, and what would be your suggestions.

Thank you so much, and keep being awesome.

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  1. If you can front squat 90 kg with no symptoms, it is simply not plausible to me that an empty bar high bar squat would be completely intolerable. With that said, depending on your individual goals, you can live a full and complete life by training the front squat if that’s what you’d prefer.

  2. We do not view “pelvic tilt” as a problem, and I would not worry about it.

Regarding the symptoms, I would read (and re-read, carefully) this article: Pain in Training: What To Do?

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  1. Yeah, it was possibly “residual pain leftover”, because it takes time to go away. I also didn’t use empty bar with high bar, but 60 kg.

Yeah, this is specifically discussed in the pain article linked above:

The most common error in this situation is a reluctance to reduce external intensity enough to mitigate symptoms. An individual who has pain under 365 lbs might reduce the load to 315 lbs and express frustration or hopelessness because they still have symptoms, but remains reluctant to reduce the load to 225 lbs, 135 lbs, or even to the empty 45 lb barbell. We would generally prefer to “under-shoot” when seeking out the entry point rather than continually “over-shoot” as demonstrated in the example above.

  1. I got that impressions, but I just had to ask, because that “body realignment” under the bar helped me, but I suppose it is the same mechanism under which exchanging low bar for high bar would help.
    Would you agree or am I wrong?

I’m not sure what the question is. Sometimes just moving differently is enough to alter symptoms. It doesn’t necessarily imply anything good / bad about a particular body position or “alignment”.