What do you do when your low back finally done with Traditional Deadlifts and Squats?

[Satch12879]

Jesus, 40 is not old.

[jonfla]

I'm deadset on dropping traditional style deadlifts from my routine. I still squat quite a bit. I keep trying to work deadlifts back in, hire trainers, work on form, start off light with 65lbs, build up, and every which way I've attacked it for the last 5 years same result, hurt my back, hobbling around for days, can't even reach down to tie my shoes, just a complete mess and it's just not worth it. Why do I need to? What do I have to prove? I hit the standard 2x bodyweight deadlift goal when i was 32 years old and my BW was 190 and I pulled 2 reps of 405. I"m good. Those were the glory days over 8 years ago now. I don't have to live in the past chasing the dragon. New goals and new priorities.

I still squat. I work my way up to decent loads every once in a while on both front and back squats. However, there's a whole complex way of going about it now and it's not the 3x week model. AS I mentioned above, I kind of built up over 6 weeks or longer to a nice 5x5 set of 275 front squats (to parallel not ATG). It felt great but man I was really testing my limits when I probably should not have. In hindsight, I think I probably should have just knocked out one heavy set of 5 and called it a day. That was about a month ago and then I hit the reset button and deloaded, worked my way back up and hit a nice set of 295lb back squat x 5 and didn't try to overdo it this time. I just shut it down after my 1 set x 5.

Belawyer, what are you hoping to get out of this thread?

[DeanT]

I'm deadset on dropping traditional style deadlifts from my routine. I still squat quite a bit.

Have you tried variants? If conventional dead lifts hurt too much, try sumo. Give RDL, SGDL, block pulls ect a try. One (hopefully more) of them may be doable at heavy weights moderately pain free.

You should look at the log titled "1400 lb total at 140" in the competitive lifters section. He had an injury for several months so he really couldn't squat and deadlift but wanted to maintain strength since he had a competition coming up. He did super heavy farmers walks and tons of jumping. It looks dramatically different from traditional training and he still was very strong at the end.

End of the day, do what you can to maintain and build strength. If you can leg press, then do that. No one is going to pass judgement on you trying your best to improve yourself.

[Joe Wilson]

I would look up Baraki's articles/podcasts/videos on pain management and the biophyschosocial model of pain. TLDR is:

a) if your expectation is that deadlifting will cause you back pain, it probably will
b) you should find a variant/ROM/etc. that doesn't cause you pain, and train that, since training is better than not training

[FatButWeak]

48 years old here. Yeah, Im in good health right now - squatting and benching and deadlifting. But I understand OP's question. Its not one of technique. Its not one of cowardice, weaknesss or iunexperience. Sometimes the parts dont work. Would you beat up on a paraplegic who cant squat? This guy feels a similar permanent and absolute restriction on movemenbnt, just not to the same degree. I get it. His days of those movememnts are over.

I would look into the upper body pull up movements (Bar Starz and shit like that) for progressions on how to build. That shits pretty dope. Build up to doing an Iron Cross. The for lower body, fuck, as much as I hate to day it - leg press, leg extensions, leg curls and calf machine. Can you use a rower or does that bother the discs? A lot of strong guys (Brandol Lilly comes to mind) are now doing a lot of indoor rowing stuff on the rower machiones.

[Mugaaz]

48 years old here. Yeah, Im in good health right now - squatting and benching and deadlifting. But I understand OP's question. Its not one of technique. Its not one of cowardice, weaknesss or iunexperience. Sometimes the parts dont work. Would you beat up on a paraplegic who cant squat? This guy feels a similar permanent and absolute restriction on movemenbnt, just not to the same degree. I get it. His days of those movememnts are over.

I would look into the upper body pull up movements (Bar Starz and shit like that) for progressions on how to build. That shits pretty dope. Build up to doing an Iron Cross. The for lower body, fuck, as much as I hate to day it - leg press, leg extensions, leg curls and calf machine. Can you use a rower or does that bother the discs? A lot of strong guys (Brandol Lilly comes to mind) are now doing a lot of indoor rowing stuff on the rower machiones.

I agree with most of what you said, but leg press for guys with lower back issues = bad idea.