Back pain after squats or deadlifts is not normal. So if you're spending the day after squats nursing a tight back, your technique, loading, or recovery needs work. Because when your back becomes the limiting factor instead of your quads or glutes, you're training inefficiently and increasing your injury risk.

It's fixable once you understand and master the underlying mechanics.

How Your Spine Actually Works During Heavy Lifts

Your lumbar spine isn't built to generate force, but rather resist motion under load. During squats and deadlifts, your spine stabilizes while your hips, quads, glutes, and knees create movement. When this stabilizing system breaks down due to poor bracing, lost posture, or mobility restrictions, your spine handles forces it wasn't designed to manage.

This breakdown creates several problems:

• Excessive stress on spinal discs
• Spinal muscles working overtime instead of glutes and hamstrings
• Compensation patterns that compress vertebral joints

One session might not cause injury, but repeated poor mechanics wear down tissue resilience over time. That persistent soreness is your spine signaling distress.

Big Problems When Your Back Takes Over Squat

Squats force your entire body to work in unison in ways that other lower body exercises don't.

Barbell squats load your body from the top down, so when your lower back fatigues before your legs, you could be making one of the following technical errors.

Weak Bracing

Effective bracing requires creating circumferential pressure around your entire trunk using your diaphragm, obliques, and pelvic floor muscles. This isn't simply sucking in your stomach or doing a crunch, it's learning how to create internal pressure through breathing that stabilizes the entire spine. Without this internal pressure system, your spine compensates by working harder to maintain position. Breathe and brace every rep. Take a full belly breath, expand into your belt if you wear one, and hold that pressure^(2,3).

The Good Morning Squat

A good morning squat isn't a good thing. It's where you begin the lift with your legs, but get stuck about halfway up and find yourself having to perform a good morning to finish the lift. This typically occurs when your ankle mobility is limited or your bar position doesn't match your leverages. The more you tip forward, the more shear force loads your lumbar spine.

The Overarch

Trying to stay upright by forcing excessive lumbar extension shifts stress directly to your spine instead of allowing your legs to work properly. True neutral posture keeps your ribs stacked over your pelvis.

All these issues reduce the work your quads and glutes perform while forcing your spine into a primary mover role.

Perfect Deadlift Setup or Perfect Storm For Injury?

Deadlifts are unforgiving. Even a small positioning error at the start can turn your spine into the primary mover instead of your posterior chain. If the load is significant enough it can cause real problems.

Here's where deadlifts go sideways:

• The Rounded Back Setup. Limited hamstring flexibility or hip mobility forces you into lumbar flexion when reaching for the bar. This rounded position puts your spinal discs at risk under heavy load from the very beginning of the lift.
• The Big Yank. Jerking the bar off the floor without first building tension in your trunk bypasses your stabilizing muscles. This sudden pull creates shock waves through your spine before your hips engage. Think of it like filling your car up with gas when you;re in a hurry and forgetting to put the nozzle back in the pump before driving off. You pull away and yank the hose from the pump spraying gas everywhere. This analogy is akin to leaking energy in your deadlift. Which is to say, just like pumping gas in your car, when you deadlift there is a specific setup that includes crucial steps done in a specific order to do it right every single time.
• The Lean-Back Finish. Some people think finishing a deadlift means leaning backward like they're posing for a photo. This excessive lean puts unecessary pressure on your facet joints (the small joints in your spine). Your glutes should be finishing this movement, not your back.
• The Touch-and-Go Grind. Bouncing deadlifts off the floor can be a great way to increase the volume of your deadlift training, but you need to be aware that as fatigue sets in each rep gets progressively sloppier. By rep five or six, if your back resembles a question mark more than a proper deadlift you need to stop and rest.

Soreness vs. Injury

Some muscle soreness in your spinal erectors after heavy lifting is normal. However, certain pain patterns should raise immediate concerns. So if you do feel discomfort, the first step is to identify if what you are feeling is soreness or an injury.

Injury warning signs include:

• Sharp, one-sided pain
• Pain that radiates down your leg  
• Stiffness that worsens with movement
• Difficulty with basic activities like bending over

When these symptoms appear, reduce your training intensity and focus on movement quality, because no PR is worth a disc injury or extended rehabilitation period.

The Solution is Systematic Correction

Addressing back pain from squats and deadlifts requires a methodical approach. You can try to shortcut the process, but we all know that shortcuts often end up being the long way home.

Here's what to do:

1. Reduce Load and Master Movement Fundamentals

Sometimes returning to the basics is all you need to correct issues that cause soreness. Return to basic movement patterns and practice daily:

• Diaphragmatic breathing. This helps develop proper core activation and trunk stability. Lie on your back, one hand on your chest and one on your stomach. Breathe so your stomach rises, not your chest. That’s the pressure you need under the bar⁽³⁾.
• Goblet squats with pause. This reinforces correct squatting mechanics at lighter loads. Goblet squats are great because they force an upright position without overlloading the movement. This allows extreme control throughout the full range of motion. Got a sticky point of discomfort? Perform iso holds and pump work a few inches above and below that pain point.
• Hip hinge drills. Teaches proper hip movement without spinal compensation. Use a dowel along your spine to practice hip hinging without your back rounding or arching⁽¹⁾.
• Dead bugs and bird dogs. Builds lumbar stability while limbs move. This is a time tested exercise that many professional powerlifters and Olympic lifters perform as part of their warm-ups.

2. Build Functional Trunk Strength

The primary role of your trunk (core) is to resist force. This means you need to focus on creating stability in your trunk with exercises that train it in this manner.

Here's how to do it:

• Anti-extension work: Planks, ab rollouts, and stability ball stir-the-pot strengthen your ability to resist your back arching under load⁽⁴⁾. Planks and side planks for anterior and lateral stability.
• Anti-rotation drills: Pallof presses or suitcase carries train your core to resist twisting, something that happens subtly during heavy lifts if one side dominates(4)
• Farmer's walks for total-body stability under load are great for grip strength and total body strength.

3. Address Mobility Limitations

Poor ankle or hip mobility forces spinal compensation, so addressing mobility issues in these areas not only helps you move better under load, but you'll also move better throughout the rest of your day. 

Target these areas every day:

• Ankle mobility: Wall slides and banded stretches improve dorsiflexion
• Hip flexibility: 90/90 stretches and couch stretches increase range of motion
• Thoracic spine: Cat-cow stretches and foam rolling improve upper back mobility
  

4. Implement Smarter Loading Strategies

Often times reducing the load can go a long way to helping you work through pain points and begin to see progress again.

Rebuild your technique using these methods:

• Tempo squats. 3-1-1 tempo (3 seconds down, 1-second pause, 1 second up) reinforces control.
• Reset deadlifts. Complete stops between reps maintain proper positioning.
• Reduced range. Box squats or rack pulls allow perfect form practice in limited ranges of motion.

5. Manage Volume and Recovery

Back pain often stems from volume issues. This means you may need more recovery time between heavy squat or deadlift training sessions. 

• Prioritize adequate sleep for tissue repair.
• Avoid training through pain.
• Core activation on off days: Light planks, carries, or breathing drills reinforce stability without heavy loading^(4,5).
• If your back still feels tight 48 hours after training, pull back the volume or weight on your next session. Fatigued erectors don’t recover by being pushed harder⁽¹⁾.
• Program deload weeks every 4-6 training cycles

To gain a better understanding of exactly what you need to do to reduce back pain, apply these corrections to your training and then assess where you can make immediate adjustments:

For Squats

Film sets from the side to assess spinal position and forward lean. A simple adjustment could be to go from high bar squats to low bar squats (or vice versa) depending on your biomechanics. Once you figure out what adjustments to make, work up to 3-4 sets of 6-8 reps with excellent form before increasing load. Maintain the 3-1-1 tempo until movement becomes automatic.

For Deadlifts

Practice resetting completely between each rep until setup becomes consistent. You don't need to stand up or take your hands off the bar, you just need to reset and maintain sufficient stiffness in the system so each time you pull you practice the same rep each time. This will teach your nervous system to know exactly what you want it to do. Keep volume moderate, something in the range of 4-6 reps per set at 70-80% of your maximum load until you can maintain tension without taking your hands off the bar. Add Romanian deadlifts, 45 degree back extensions, and hip thrusts to strengthen posterior chain without additional spinal stress.

Here are some mistakes you'll want to avoid:

• Ignoring pain signals because they typically subside
• Skipping warm-up protocols due to time constraints  
• Allowing form deterioration in final sets
• Using advanced techniques before mastering fundamentals

The strongest lifters prioritize movement quality and address problems early rather than ignoring warning signals until injury occurs, because consistent pain-free training produces better long-term results than constantly battling through discomfort.

Persistent back pain after leg training indicates technique problems, not exercise selection issues. Squats and deadlifts should challenge your lower body musculature, not stress your spine beyond its capacity. So address your movement quality, rebuild proper patterns, and train intelligently!

And as it relates to your recovery efforts, you need to prioritize sleep above all else. Adequate sleep has wide ranging benefits on muscle recovery, immune function, alertness, reaction time, and optimal performance.

If you're in need of a great night's sleep and want to wake up RESTED-AF every day, add this to your nightly routine!

References
:

(1) McGill J, 2002, Low back disorders, Human Kinetics.


(2) Cholewicki J et al, 2001, Mechanics of muscle contribution to spinal stability, J Biomech, DOI 10.1016/S0021-9290(01)00258-7


(3) Hodges P, 2001, Postural and respiratory functions of the diaphragm, J Appl Physiol, DOI 10.1152/jappl.2001.91.5.1696


(4) Ozawa J et al, 2013, Effect of spinal stability training on proprioception and trunk muscle activation, J Sports Sci Med, PMID 24149989


(5) Hides J et al, 1996, Rehabilitation of lumbar multifidus, Spine (Phila Pa 1976), DOI 10.1097/00007632-199601150-00006