Artificially Weak Deadlifts, Part 1: Perception vs Reality | Robert Santana

[Erich Weidner]

It looks like I'm in the weak deadlift boat.
I'm in week 6 of NLP and my deadlift is just now in a dead heat with my squat.

Not knowing any better, and due to concerns about low back pain, I started conservatively on DL. (Before being exposed to data in the books/website/forum that non specific lower back pain wasn't a reason to go light on the DL...) I wasn't concerned that the DL numbers were lower.

(FWIW, I got here following Pysical Therepy for said back pain, my PT then turned me on to Starting Strength and I went off on my own with the books and dove into the program).
My lower back still hurts sometimes, but not as much as before... and DLing causes me zero back pain, during or immediately after.)

Progression:
I started out doing a 10lb/session increase on DL, until my reading of the books and articles clued me in that I should be way ahead of my squat and that I should have taken bigger initial jumps.
So that next session, I just kept adding 10lbs to the bar after my scheduled workset weight, I added 40 lbs that day, then the next session added 20lbs, after that I went back to 10lb jumps. Meanwhile my squats kept going up by 10lbs for a few more sessions before they got grindy hard, and I dropped the increases to 5lbs.

As of today, my DL and Squats are tied at 275. DLs and squat worksets have gotten very hard by now. I have no idea if i can keep sustaining the 10lb jumps on DL. If so I should be able to climb ahead of the squats.

Anything I should change at this point, or stay the current course?
DL before squat?
Backoff on squat to create some separation between them?

It is possibly worth noting that I've been having a hell of a time getting step 1 and 2 of the deadlift right. I can't really get down low enough to get the bar gripped without a full exhale at the top. Then trying to get a breath while in position was not going great. Stretching between training days helped a little. Today I added some cut offs of rubber mat under the plates to raise the bar 3/4". Significantly better. (Still not easy).
I'm a fat guy. I suspect the gut is the reason for the position problems?
Age: 45
Height: 5'8"
Waist (at belly button): 53 1/2" (Down from 55" at program start)
Weight 276 lbs

Training history attached (zipped/.csv)EW-SS_log.zip