You learn to live with pain, and adapt to it. You learn that some activities are off limits, and will probably always be so. The trick is not to start feeling diminished, not fall into depression by comparing yourself to a mythical healed self, and learn to appreciate the life we have, which even with a bad back is still incomparably better than what the rest of humanity experienced for most of its existence on Earth.

There are ways to get better though, if you don't despair: after 10 years of trying countless practices and remedies, a combination of McKenzie exercises and acupuncture is finally working, allowing me to lead a mostly normal life (eg lots and lots of exercise and just refrain from cycling, contact sports, or bumpy activities like offroading).

My suggestion is to try that with absolute dedication (eg 100 repetitions spread over each day, weekly acupuncture sessions), and if you have no improvements in a couple of months, try something else. Improvement is possible, it just takes a lot of effort and time.

I don't know which lift the author was performing (and would ask you not to repeat it if you do know), but of the popular lifts which could cause a problem if you fail:

1) Bench press. Have a spotter or don't use clips (the things that hold the weights on the bar). Some benches will have safety bars which can help as well. If you don't have clips you can tip to one side and dump the weight off the end of one bar, then the bar should roll of you (albeit painfully/noisily). People have died benching alone in a gym, don't get caught out.

2) Squat. Have spotters and/or squat in a cage/safety rack (with parallel bars either side of you). It can be dangerous if you fail, have no spotters and aren't in a safety rack. i.e. you can dump it, but this can be dangerous to you and those around you.

Stay safe everyone.

If you want to just train, go for the safe options and a bit more reps. If you want to really break your limits, never not have a spotter. They will allow you to be a bit less safe on the one hand (e.g. bars with max weights) and provide you with motivation on the other. I never pushed past my limits before I had a spotter.

But naturally by virtue of not increasing the weight on the bar one will reach a point where one ceases to get stronger (measured by the amount of force you can produce). There are limits to what more reps will do for you.

So don't deadlift your 1RM every time you go to the gym, just slowly increase how much you lift in a safe and structured manner.

So unless you are a professional (then you already know about this more than I do), lower the weight and stick rather with 15-20 reps. If you feel that given excercise is too easy during set, just another 5 reps and try to do perfect movements. YOu can get the same famous 'burn' in the muscles. This also builds stamina, which is much more beneficial in real life compared to pure power for few seconds.

Needless to say, since I switched, i didn't have a single injury, not even minor stretches. Even if I am totally exhausted, I can handle the loads I use to put them down/to the rack safely.