The nice thing is that it's _very_ easy to get to a lifting weight that's considered super heavy in normie reckoning, but a warmup weight for folks that lift regularly. In other words, you can get to squatting 50kg/100lb (one 15kg plate on a side) in a couple of months where you won't even think twice about that much weight, but it's still a huge weight to be squatting. Stopping there, and not chasing the gains is a perfectly good way to work your body out on a regular basis.
The absolutely liberating feeling that comes with the noob gains is incredible. Knowing you can lift those weights, safely, without injury, was an incredible experience for me. I topped off at a hair below 100kg squats before life got in the way.
Yes, I'd say anything you can get with noob gains is fair game. By noob gains I mean everything you can get from just increasing the weight a bit every time you hit the gym.
Once you need more complicated programming to make progress, your noob phase is probably over.
For what it's worth, I got up to 170kg backsquats at about 72kg body weight back in the day. The most complicated programming I did was a weekly cycle. ('Texas method'.)
But that was only down to thighs parallel to the ground. Years later I worked more on my flexibility to be able to squat all the way down (but with less weight).
The absolutely liberating feeling that comes with the noob gains is incredible. Knowing you can lift those weights, safely, without injury, was an incredible experience for me. I topped off at a hair below 100kg squats before life got in the way.