Lower Back Pain from Deadlifts and Squats: Causes, Fixes, and Prevention

Why Deadlifts and Squats Stress the Lower Back

Lower back pain is the most common complaint among lifters, and the deadlift and squat are the most common triggers. This is not because these exercises are inherently dangerous. It is because they load the spine under conditions where form errors create disproportionate stress on the lumbar vertebrae, discs, and surrounding soft tissue.

During a squat or deadlift, your spine acts as a rigid column that transfers force between your legs and the barbell. When that column stays neutral, meaning the natural curves of your spine are maintained, the load distributes evenly across vertebrae and discs. When the column bends, particularly into lumbar flexion (lower back rounding), the forces concentrate on specific structures, especially the posterior annulus of the intervertebral discs and the spinal ligaments.

A single episode of rounding under moderate load rarely causes serious injury. The problem is cumulative: hundreds of reps with a slightly flexed lumbar spine gradually sensitize the tissues, creating a low-grade ache that eventually becomes a limiting factor in training.

Understanding the specific form errors that cause this and how to fix them is the key to a long career of heavy squatting and pulling.

Common Form Errors and How They Hurt

Lumbar Flexion Under Load

This is the primary mechanism for deadlift-related back pain. The lower back rounds as you initiate the pull from the floor, and the load shifts from the hip extensors (glutes and hamstrings) to the passive structures of the spine (discs, ligaments, erector spinae under unfavorable leverage).

Lumbar flexion during deadlifts happens for several reasons:

• The weight is too heavy. When the load exceeds what your posterior chain can handle, your body compensates by using your back as a crane rather than a pillar.
• Poor starting position. Setting up with your hips too high turns the deadlift into a stiff-leg pull with a rounded back. Setting up with your hips too low turns it into a squat-pull hybrid that forces you to shift forward before the bar breaks the floor.
• Weak or untrained bracing. Without proper intra-abdominal pressure, the spine has no internal support column and collapses under load.
• Insufficient hip hinge mobility. Tight hamstrings prevent your pelvis from tilting forward enough to set a neutral spine at the bottom of the pull.

The fix starts with your setup. For a conventional deadlift, the bar should be over your mid-foot, your shins nearly vertical, your hips high enough that your shoulders are in front of the bar, and your entire back flat. Rounding the upper back is a debatable technique choice for advanced lifters. Rounding the lower back is not. For a complete setup walkthrough, see the deadlift guide.

Butt Wink in the Squat

Butt wink is posterior pelvic tilt at the bottom of the squat, where the pelvis tucks under and the lower back rounds into flexion. Under heavy load, this puts the lumbar spine in the same vulnerable position as a rounded deadlift.

Butt wink has multiple causes:

• Inadequate hip flexion range of motion. Your femur runs into your pelvis before you reach depth, and the pelvis tucks to make room.
• Ankle dorsiflexion limitations. Without enough ankle bend, your torso tilts forward excessively, pulling the pelvis into tuck.
• Stance too narrow or too wide for your anatomy. Hip socket depth and angle vary between individuals. Some people squat cleanly with a narrow stance. Others need a wide stance with toes out. There is no universal correct width.
• Squatting deeper than your mobility allows. Chasing depth beyond what your hip anatomy permits forces the tuck.

Mild butt wink (a few degrees of pelvic movement at the very bottom of a deep squat) is normal and not dangerous for most people. Significant butt wink where the lower back visibly rounds under load is worth addressing.

Fixes include limiting depth to just below parallel if deeper squatting causes tuck, widening your stance, using heel-elevated shoes or plates under your heels, and working on hip and ankle mobility over time. The squat guide covers stance and depth in more detail.

Lost Bracing Mid-Rep

Even lifters who brace properly at the top of a rep sometimes lose that brace during the lift. This happens most often at the sticking point of a heavy squat or during the transition from floor to lockout in a deadlift, exactly where spinal loads are highest.

Signs of lost bracing include your torso pitching forward during a squat, your hips shooting up while your chest stays down in a deadlift (the hips rising faster than the shoulders), and a visible collapse of your midsection under heavy weight.

The fix is both technical and physical. Technically, you need to take your breath and set your brace before every single rep, not just the first rep of a set. On heavy sets, reset your breath at the top between reps. Physically, you need a stronger core that can maintain pressure under high loads. This is where dedicated core work comes in.

Overextension

While most back pain in lifters comes from flexion, some lifters overcorrect by aggressively arching their lower back. Excessive lumbar extension, especially under load, compresses the facet joints and can irritate the structures on the posterior side of the spine.

This commonly happens when lifters interpret the cue "chest up" too aggressively during squats, or when they hyper-arch during bench press setup in a way that carries over to their standing posture. A neutral spine is not an arched spine. It is a spine with its natural, moderate curves preserved.

Building Bracing Strength

Bracing is the ability to create and sustain intra-abdominal pressure by tensing the muscles of your entire midsection (rectus abdominis, obliques, transverse abdominis, pelvic floor, diaphragm, and erectors) simultaneously. It is the most important skill for protecting your lower back under heavy loads.

How to Brace Correctly

1. Stand or sit upright. Place your hands on your lower ribs.
2. Take a deep breath into your belly, not your chest. You should feel your stomach expand forward, sideways, and into your lower back. Your chest should not rise significantly.
3. Once your belly is full, tense your abs as if you are about to get punched. Do not suck your stomach in. Push it out against your hands and hold.
4. That is a brace. You should feel solid pressure all the way around your midsection, 360 degrees.

Practice this standing, then practice it with a belt if you use one. The belt gives you something to push against, which reinforces the correct pattern. For more on bracing and belt use, see the belt use guide.

The McGill Big 3

Dr. Stuart McGill's research on spinal biomechanics produced three core exercises that are widely considered the gold standard for building a back-protective core. Unlike crunches or sit-ups, these exercises train the core to resist movement rather than create it, which is exactly what the core needs to do during squats and deadlifts.

Curl-Up. Lie on your back with one knee bent and one leg straight. Place your hands under your lower back to maintain its natural curve. Lift only your head and shoulders slightly off the floor, keeping your lower back pressed into your hands. Hold for 10 seconds. This trains the rectus abdominis without spinal flexion.

Perform 3 sets of descending reps: 6 reps, then 4, then 2, holding each for 10 seconds.

Side Plank. Lie on your side propped on your elbow, with your knees bent (beginner) or legs straight (advanced). Lift your hips until your body forms a straight line from shoulder to knees or feet. Hold for 10 seconds. This trains the obliques and quadratus lumborum, key lateral stabilizers that protect against asymmetric loading.

Perform 3 sets of descending holds: 6 reps of 10 seconds, then 4, then 2.

Bird Dog. Start on all fours. Extend your right arm forward and left leg backward simultaneously, keeping your spine neutral and your hips level. Hold for 10 seconds, return, and switch sides. This trains anti-extension and anti-rotation while building coordination between the hips and shoulders.

Perform 3 sets of descending reps: 6 per side, then 4, then 2, holding each for 10 seconds.

Do the McGill Big 3 daily or at minimum before every lower body session. They take less than 10 minutes and build cumulative resilience over weeks and months.

Glute Activation and Why It Matters

Weak or inhibited glutes are one of the most common contributors to lower back pain in lifters. The gluteus maximus is the primary hip extensor, the muscle that should be doing the heavy lifting during squats and deadlifts. When the glutes do not fire effectively, the erector spinae muscles of the lower back pick up the slack, working harder than they are designed to under those loads.

Glute inhibition is common in people who sit for long hours. The hip flexors shorten, the glutes lengthen and become neurologically quiet, and movement patterns shift to rely more on the lower back and hamstrings for hip extension.

Glute Activation Drills (Pre-Workout)

Glute Bridges (3 Sets of 15). Lie on your back with knees bent and feet flat. Drive through your heels to lift your hips until your body forms a straight line from knees to shoulders. Squeeze your glutes hard at the top for 2 seconds. Lower and repeat. If these feel easy, progress to single-leg bridges.

Clamshells (2 Sets of 15 Per Side). Lie on your side with knees bent at 90 degrees and feet together. Keeping your feet in contact, open your top knee by rotating at the hip. Squeeze at the top and return slowly. This targets the gluteus medius, a hip stabilizer that prevents the knees from collapsing inward during squats.

Banded Lateral Walks (2 Sets of 10 Steps Each Direction). Place a resistance band just above your knees or around your ankles. Get into a quarter-squat position and take small steps sideways, maintaining tension on the band throughout. This activates the gluteus medius and minimus.

Single-Leg Romanian Deadlift (2 Sets of 8 Per Side). Stand on one leg and hinge at the hip, reaching your opposite leg behind you and your hands toward the floor. Keep your back flat and feel the stretch through your standing-leg hamstring and glute. This drill both activates the glutes and improves the hip hinge pattern needed for conventional deadlifts.

For broader exercise selection on glute training, the best exercises for legs covers compound and isolation options.

Training Modifications When Your Back Is Irritated

If your lower back is currently bothering you, the worst thing you can do is stop training entirely. Complete rest often makes back pain worse by allowing muscles to weaken and pain sensitivity to increase. But you do need to modify your training.

Reduce load, not movement. Continue squatting and hinging, but drop the weight to a level that does not provoke pain. If barbell squats at 80 percent of your max hurt, goblet squats with a kettlebell at a fraction of that load may feel fine.

Try trap bar deadlifts. The trap bar (hex bar) allows you to stand inside the weight with a more upright torso. This reduces the moment arm on the lower back compared to a conventional barbell deadlift and can be a bridge back to full pulling.

Use tempo work. Slowing down the eccentric phase (3 to 4 seconds down) forces you to use less weight while maintaining time under tension. The slower speed also reinforces control and bracing patterns.

Add pauses. Paused squats (holding the bottom position for 2 to 3 seconds) and paused deadlifts (holding the bar an inch off the floor) build strength in the exact positions where form tends to break down.

Swap bilateral for unilateral. Single-leg exercises like Bulgarian split squats, lunges, and step-ups load the spine much less than bilateral squats while training the legs effectively. They also expose and correct left-right imbalances that can contribute to asymmetric spinal loading.

If you are managing training volume around back soreness, the deload week guide explains how to program recovery weeks strategically rather than reactively.

Long-Term Prevention

Preventing lower back pain from deadlifts and squats is not about one magic exercise or cue. It is about consistently doing several things well.

Brace every rep. Not just the heavy ones. Treat every working set of squats and deadlifts as practice for your brace. Sloppy light sets create sloppy habits that show up under maximal loads.

Film your lifts. You cannot feel lumbar flexion as accurately as you think. Set your phone up to record from the side and review your sets. Look for rounding at the bottom of the squat and off the floor in the deadlift. The LiftProof app can help you track your training sessions alongside form notes.

Do your core work. The McGill Big 3 take 10 minutes. Do them. Consistently. The lifters who never have back problems are usually the ones who have spent years building core endurance through unglamorous stability work.

Respect your mobility limits. If your mobility does not allow you to hit a position safely, do not force it with load on your back. Work on the mobility separately and use the range of motion you currently have in your loaded training. See the mobility guide for targeted drills.

Progress patiently. Jumping weight too aggressively is one of the most reliable ways to hurt your back. Small, consistent jumps in load over months and years build far more total strength than aggressive jumps followed by injury-forced layoffs.

Maintain a healthy bodyweight. Excess body fat, particularly around the midsection, shifts your center of gravity forward and increases the demand on the lower back during every standing exercise. This is not about aesthetics. It is about biomechanics.

*This article is for educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. If you are experiencing persistent or severe lower back pain, consult a qualified healthcare professional for evaluation and diagnosis. Serious spinal conditions require professional management.*