Originally Posted by
wktmeow
On a related note, I pulled a lower back muscle doing low-bar squats again. This time on the other side of where I usually hurt myself! Coach even told me not to do squats, but I was stubborn and wanted to anyway. It's super frustrating because I don't ever get to the point of my legs or glutes failing me anymore, just my lower back. Thinking I should dedicate some time to doing lots of lower back work to get it up to snuff. Wonder if it'll even out my hip imbalances though, with both sides being screwed up now
This has always been my limiter with back squats, as well. I'm not sure adding extra back exercises will help all that much, I think a lot of it comes down to morphology and lever lengths. I have a somewhat long torso, and came to the conclusion that low-bar squats aren't for me. I have less issues since switching to high-bar squats which allow me to keep a more upright torso, though I still have to be pretty careful about form.
Another option is iso-lateral exercises like one-legged/split squats which require less total weight since you're working one leg at a time. I like bulgarian split squats using two dumbbells (you can also use a barbell).