Back Tweak

Hey guys, big fan of your content on pain and rehab. I’m familiar with the basics and I just wanted to run my plan by you to make sure it sounds like it’ll work.

I’m a 22M, E1rms (beltless): S:125kg, B: ~85kg, D: ~150kg @ ~78kg 5’8”, on a weight loss phase

Over the last couple of weeks on phase 2 of the beginner template, starting with a set of squats at RPE 8 or so, I’ve developed nonspecific LBP. I recognised the symptoms as being identical to a back tweak I had earlier this year and switched squats for paused squats at a lower weight and deadlifts for paused deads at a lower weight, however this still aggravated the pain significantly. Pain is specifically worst at the bottom of the squat and deadlift.

So, I was planning to:

Swap squats for hack squats (which I can tolerate decently) as my primary squat movement to gain a training effect, and start doing tempo squats with very light weight on one of the workouts, then slowly build up to squatting normally.

I would do a similar thing with deadlifts, which would be swapped for RDLs (also tolerable) and block pulls added into the program, to be slowly lowered closer to the ground as tolerable.

Does this sound okay?

As a further question: should I invest in a belt? This is my second tweak this year and it is not only disheartening but also causes stagnation in my lifts. Even if it’s psychological, if a belt will help, I’ll buy one.

This sounds reasonable.

We don’t have evidence to suggest that wearing a belt would decrease the risk of such things from occurring, but of course there can be psychological effects.

Great, I’ll get on with it.

Yeah, I seem to remember you guys saying that belts don’t actually provide injury benefit. I’ll hold off on getting one until my waist size has largely stabilised.