For the 2nd time in about 8 months I recently at the end of April messed my lower back up while squatting. The first time it took me about 2 weeks to get back to normal training , this last time it was almost a month. Monday I started finally being able to train normally, and now today I had another surge of pain. Not as bad as before, but instead of paused barbell squats I did paused Bulgarian split squats.
It’s become pretty clear to me that if I want to continue to string together training cycles, barbell squats for whatever reason aren’t the most appropriate way to go about it. My squat and deadlift days are done in my basement so I don’t have access to a leg press or leg extension machines , so my question is could I just replace Bulgarian split squats , keeping the same rep ranges and variations and expect similar hypertrophy outcomes ? If not what other things could I add? Another thing I may try is front squats.