Hello BBM team,
Hope you all have been doing well! I am writing this in regards to my right leg that I have been dealing with for quite some time since the beginning of January. During my time in January I developed some pain in my right glute and hamstring after a really rough training day (most likely due to load/fatigue management) and days after it got to the point where it would be quite painful and it would be tough for me to pick up heavy things off the ground, standing on my right leg (pretty much activities where I would have to press down on the ground with my right foot), and even had a hard time walking at first. When it came to training, I tried training through normally hoping it would just be some acute pain that would just go away but it got to the point where the more weight I put on, the more painful it was and got to the point where it was clear the barbell was rising up asymmetrically with the left side rising up quicker than the right. I decided to reach out to Dr. Ray and Charlie for a consult.
On February after speaking with Dr. Ray and Charlie who have both been extremely helpful, I was then running a modified rehab version of the 7 day hypertrophy with 3-1-0 tempo exercises to replace my normal pulling and its variations for high reps starting with 10 reps then dropping it down by 2 reps every 2 weeks until I got to 6 reps. At the end of the rehab, things were feeling great. I was able to do all daily tasks and activites at work with not much issue. I was symptom-free towards the end of my rehab during training and if I did feel symptoms, it was pretty rare and only happened once or twice at my RPE @ 8s but it was 100% tolerable. However, outside of my training, I will say that from time to time I still got some light discomfort/light dull nagging pain outside my training frequently and it did get annoying. This can happen when I’m both sitting down or when I’m walking. The positive thing about this is that the discomfort is extremely minimal that I would just give it a <1-1.5/10 pain scale and in no way does it affect with my daily activities, working tasks, etc. I also took their advice for were trying to focus on the current task you are doing at hand and trying to ignore it. I will say that it has worked many times where I just abruptly ignore the discomfort area, which is great. Once I got back to my normal training, I started feeling frequent flare ups again and I honestly did not know why this was happening all of a sudden after I just went through the rehab process. My thought was I may have added too much weight making a sudden big jump from rehab to my normal training? That’s what I was thinking. However, after having to go through the rehab, it has taught me to be patient with these kinds of things and reading Charlie’s article has def helped me as well. So I decided to repeat the rehab again but starting from 8 reps rather than 10.
After going through the rehab again, I got back into training normally except this time I was doing all my working sets all the way up to @7, and avoiding the @8 sets for now and will slowly work my way back. This is currently on the BBM’s group programming 3x/week. As of now, I am still getting frequent light dull nagging pain on my right hamstring. I still feel it, especially when walking almost every step I take on my right leg, standing (ex:waiting for the bus). And am still feeling very light symptoms when training. This is pretty much identical to what I was feeling the first time after my first run of the rehab, the only difference is that the symptoms aren’t as serious in my training now compared to before.
I guess the main thing I am asking assistance on is whether to rehab or not rehab? To be honest, in my opinion, I feel that a majority of my pain is coming from a psychological aspect due to me constantly thinking about my right leg even outside of training. Then pain is very minimal for the most part. It just comes up frequently. I try my best to not put it in mind, but it’s something I still need to work on. When I’ve been dealing with symptoms both in and out of training, I always ask myself these questions and this is what it is currently:
Am I feeling symptoms?: Yes
If so, can I tolerate it?: Yes
Am I able to do my activities with no interruptions?: Yes
Pain scale?: 1-2 in training.
0.5 - ~1.5 outside training
(Most times I would say the comfort is quite minimal)
I would love to hear your thoughts and recommendations/tips. Based on the information I’ve given, do you think I should do another form of rehab? Please let me know if I need to provide additional information. As always, thank you so much for everything you guys have done!
Best,
Sean