Periodic lower back issues?

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21 year old male here. So at the very beginning of July, I hurt my lower back doing deadlifts with improper form, only 135 pounds (I was way too far forward on my feet). I could still bend over most days, it didn’t hurt to stand or sit, just to bend over, and it was a little stiff and sore when I did so. I stopped deadlifting and kept squatting until that started twinging my lower back as well, around the 150 pound mark. This was all previous to beginning Starting Strength. I took a number of weeks off, saw a chiropractor a few times, things seemed to be a somewhat better.

Three weeks ago, I began my SS LP and my back started feeling WAY better after 1.5-2 weeks, I had almost no pain left. Until today. I started feeling something a little bit twingey during my warmup sets, but I pushed on through and squatted 165 pounds for 3 sets of 5 and deadlifted 190 for 1 set of 5, since the barbell work seemed to really help with the pain before. It was uncomfortable, but I made it through and I didn’t feel like I was about to break anything.

Now my lower back feels like it used to. It’s fine until I bend over or load weight on my back. If I bend over, I can touch the floor, but I feel pain mostly at the waist joint in the center and right side of my back. After a few seconds, it seems to fade as my back gets used to being in that position.

I think my squat form is at least okay so I’m not sure that’s the issue, I’ll post links to a couple videos.

Set 2: https://youtu.be/yFoKzgWGwj8

Set 3: https://youtu.be/OteWSsRrxAo

So, what should I do moving forward? Should I skip Wednesday and come back Friday or Saturday depending on how I feel? Or should I lift on Wednesday but deload my squat and deadlift to 135 pounds and 165 pounds or so? What other recovery methods can I/should I use? Should I bother going to the doctor given the symptoms I’ve described? Thanks in advance.

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What you describe doesn’t sound like anything abnormal to me. Personally, I would continue to train as is. If the pain actually gets bad, you can always work around it by squatting high bar and deadlifting sumo. But from the way you described it at least it just sounds like it’s likely nothing more than just a little fatigue. You could also post in the pain and rehab moderated forum up above and see what Michael has to say, he would definitely be more qualified than us down here in the unmoderated forums to speak on this. Posting a deadlift form check in the FB group might also be beneficial.

Your squat doesn’t look bad. You could probably go a hair lower, and the bar did seem to slide around on your back a little bit on set 2, I would try to get the bar in the right position early and get tighter so it doesn’t move around. Your last rep on set 3 you kind of shot your hips back out of the hole and you lost a lot of your momentum by doing so. But other than that they look pretty solid to me.