One year ago, I had my first powerlifting meet on July 31, and everything went according to plan. Following this, since I was feeling especially good, I spent a month working up to a new PR on the squat before I hopped on to hypertrophy 2. Once I was about 4 weeks into the program, I started to notice some back pain in my middle to upper back. I had low bar, high bar, sumo, and deficit conventional for my lower body 1* exercises, if that helps. This feeling would alternate between what felt like small, sharp pains in my right lat and an electrical spasm between my shoulder blades, albeit very low in intensity and I thought nothing of it as all RPE and volume guidelines were followed to a t.
One day, on my low bar set #4 of 5, I felt that pain, but it was terrible. I debated between stopping or just dropping from 365 to 315 for the last set of 8. Spoiler: I chose a load drop and it didn’t help at all. To this day, I still feel sharp pain in my right lat when I squat upwards of 335 for 5’s Doing core work in the spring helped me get back into squatting for 7’s, but I had to stop once it became noticeable enough to get scared away.
Two weeks ago, I picked up squats once more since I gave conventional deadlifts a trial run for a couple of months before stopping for a few weeks due to my wedding and MCAT from mid-August to early this month, so I thought I had clear skies. Wrong. Since adding them and deadlifts back, it continues to affect me in the lockouts of deadlifts (sometimes) and when I put the bar down as well as the lockout on squats and when I put the bar back in the rack and come out from under it. Sometimes I feel it when picking up DBs, as low as 20 lbs or 100+ with no difference in intensity between them. Somehow, this didn’t bother me past a 2/10 with high bar. At this point, I’m stumped as to what is causing this. Nothing else I do in the gym is hindered by this because of the lower intensity of discomfort if at all.
I really don’t want to go into a hole without barbell squats and deadlifts again, especially if I want to make use of your templates and have fun with lifting (plus I don’t want to live off belt/hack squats forever). However, two contradicting thoughts exist in my head; one that says this will be a permanent issue that will take my favorite lifts away because of its persistence despite breaks from them and another that believes it can be solved with desensitization or other methods.
I’d love to know what your thoughts are and what I can do to get myself in the right direction.
I’m glad to hear your first meet went well! After reading through your history, it sounds like you might have ramped up your training volume/intensity more quickly than you could tolerate post-meet, which led to the mid/upper back symptoms you’re describing. I do think it is absolutely possible for you to return to squatting and deadlifting again without this issue being the limiting factor, but it will likely take some dedicated time to working much lighter and gradually building back up.
Generally speaking, I would recommend starting much more conservatively with squats/deadlifts (or any other symptomatic movements) to find an entry point you can tolerate, which it sounds like you did this past spring. The key is maintaining that consistency and adjusting course if/when a flare-up occurs. On the backend, you can use movements like the belt squat/hack squat/leg curls to satiate your desire for a good workout after performing the lighter squat/deadlift work. The goal is to be able to complete an entire session while keeping symptoms low during and 24-48 hours afterward, which is a win. As you begin to stack those small wins in training, your confidence will begin to climb, you’ll start to feel better, and eventually this will be a thing of the past.
As far as specifics go, perhaps you could start by re-introducing squats using high bar since it seems to be more tolerable for you. We often prescribe higher rep tempo work (sets of 6-10 at a 3s descent, 1s pause in the hole tempo for example) in beginning stages mainly because it forces you to work with lighter loads (relative to normal tempo, lower rep work) and can be useful for building momentum. For the deadlift, a 2s pause just off of the floor, a 2-0-2 tempo (2s on the way up, 2s on the way down), or a 0-0-3 (3s on the way down) can all be useful for achieving the same purpose. After your main work, you can then move into your accessories which seem to be tolerated much better.
Again, the key here is building a long string of consistent wins in your training without breaks despite any setbacks that occur along the way. If a setback does occur, it likely just means some parameters (likely intensity/load on the bar) need to be adjusted for next time. Our pain in training article does a great job of outlining a lot of the concepts discussed here.
If you would like more specific guidance, we do offer remote consultations and rehab focused programming tailored to you and your goals here if you think that would be helpful.
Congrats on your wedding and wishing you all the best,
Charlie
First, thank you for your well-wishes and thoughtful reply. I will implement this ASAP as tomorrow has deadlifts and I have noted that a slow eccentric last weekend helped a good bit, though I was not ready for how tough they were haha. As for the slower tempo on squats, I will give those a run as well. Just to clarify, I only began with low bar because I wanted to see if I could push the boundaries a little bit with my main stance and get the pain to subside via increased exposure. So if I go to high bar, what would be the plan for reintroducing low bar?
Also, I never got a chance to say thank you for catching Derek for me back at American Barbell Club in 2021, it was great to see him again and to finally meet you and the gang. I’ll make sure to get in touch if things worsen and need more guidance than what the forum allows for.
Of course! I’m glad to hear the slower eccentrics on deadlift were helpful and it was great meeting you as well. For reintroducing low bar, I would recommend a similar approach using higher rep tempo work as a means to keep loading on the lighter side in the beginning stages. After you’ve built some momentum using high bar for 3-4 weeks, you could have one day high bar and one day low bar (if squatting 2x/week) with low bar starting off much lighter to get reacquainted with the movement and to assess tolerance.
Sounds like a good plan, I will see how those go on Wednesday then. Yesterday’s deadlifts (3x7 with 0-0-3) went very well, felt only a tiny amount of discomfort upon letting go of the barbell at the end of sets, but we are off to a great start!
Thank you for your time and insight, take care my man!