Hi Godefroy,
I don’t usually chime in on moderated posts, so apologies if I’m “out of pocket” here, but I wanted to clarify - am I misreading, or did you have another injury that took you “multiple years” to get over prior to and separate from this back sprain you experienced a year ago? If so, what was that other injury? Was it also related to your back?
Regardless, a muscle sprain - in your back or elsewhere - should take a few weeks at most to heal up. Whatever pain you may be experiencing in your low back while back squatting at this point (a full year later) is very likely a result of your admitted fear of the movement and not related to any tissue damage whatsoever. I’m even more confident in this assertion since you’re able to front squat, clean, snatch, etc. without any issue. So basically, I’m saying that I’m 99.9% sure that your low back is just fine and your issue with back squatting boils down to kinesiophobia, or fear of the movement itself. It sounds like you may be aware of this since you keeping talking about regaining confidence, but I just wanted to make sure.
my back injury seem to go in the same direction (taking a couple of year before reagining my confidence to back squat heavy).
Please do not resign yourself to taking a couple of years to get over your fear of back squatting. You’ve already been at this for a year, and I’m sure that’s discouraging, but there is no reason for this process to take any longer than it already has. I’m almost certain that you’re capable of back squatting normally today, but you have to convince yourself of that, too. If you’re front squatting 275 with no issues, a 225 back squat should be cake. Just keep working your way up to that point with the rehab modifications outlined in the article Dr. Baraki linked and keep building confidence in your back squatting ability. Once you smash that mental plateau, you’ll be golden.
All this being said, I understand if you are not able to do this on your own. As Dr. Baraki suggested, some external help from the BBM pain & rehab team would probably be very beneficial to you. I personally had a consult with Dr. Ray, one of the pain and rehab coaches, about a year ago and would strongly recommend it.
Because I don’t want to sidelining my progress in weightlifting during this process (knowing I can front squat, clean, snatch, etc. withtout difficulties), what can I do? Keeping what I’m doing even if it slows me down? Using more front squat as my primary squat (even on sets of 8-10 reps, tempo or not)?
I’m not entirely certain what you’re asking here, but unless you have rigid time constraints and are sacrificing one for the other, but you should still be able to improve your C&J and snatch while rehabbing your back squat. I wouldn’t be worried about it “slowing you down.”
Nate