Quick Tip: Upper Back Pain During The Squat

I recently had client ask me about shoulder and upper back pain during the back squat. This reminded me of a devastating time in my training career. When I was first starting out, I could not place a barbell onto my back in a high bar position without excruciating pain. This left me squatting low bar for an entire year until I could high bar squat heavy. 

During the squat, you should actively think about squeezing the back together to create a muscular "shelf" for the bar to rest on. 

The Chinese lifter Lu Xiaojun performing a high bar back squat. Notice how the upper back is squeezed and this created a shelf on the traps (trapezius muscle)

As shown above, the barbell should rest on the upper traps during a high bar back squat. One of the best cues I like is to bring your elbows UNDER the barbell (think about doing a behind-the-neck press). This will bring out more of the trapezius muscle which can provide a larger shelf for the barbell to rest on. A common mistake is for the bar to be TOO high up, which causes neck pain. Now, this high bar position does require you to have some muscle on the upper back to begin with. If you don't already have this muscle, the weight on the bar may still create pain. 

So the solution to this is to just switch to the low bar squat. The low bar squat can be performed by basically everyone as it requires the bar to be places on the rear delts, which are well developed in most trainees. 

Proper bar positioning during the low bar back squat. The upper back is still tight, but the bar is now on the muscular rear delts (rear shoulders) rather than the traps (hence the name "low" bar)

Using the low bar position will require you to widen your grip, but it will provide a pain free solution for most. Before you squat, make sure to warm-up shoulders with some light face pulls or shoulder external rotations. If this still doesn't work for you and you still experience pain in the low bar squat as well, consider switching to the front squat or the SSB squat temporarily (or any other squat variation that doesn't induce pain). 

So, how should you gain the upper back muscle to squat pain free? Well, I recommend doing upper back work at least 2 times per week at the end of your upper body sessions. The best exercises to use here include facepulls, rear delt flyes and upper back inverted rows. The loading with these exercises isn't as important as the volume, so I recommend you do 100 total reps in each of these sessions. Also, you can do loaded carries like farmer's walks to directly build the upper traps.

One of the best exercises for the upper traps is the snatch grip high pull. Whenever I do this exercise for higher reps, my traps feel like they've been hit by a truck the next day. Try these out for 4-6 sets of 5-10 reps.

Basically, if you want to squat with a barbell pain-free, choose a variation that doesn't induce pain temporarily whilst building your upper back musculature. After about 1-3 months of this, you should be good to go!

- Hawtsauce