Hip Flexor Pain Squatting

Training Discussion
1

Background: Male, 24 years old, Intermediate lifter.

After missing 3 weeks of training due to being away, I was briefly on LP just to get my strength back, which I ran for like 2.5 weeks before restarting The Bridge. One week back to training, on a hard set of squats I felt something in my right hip tighten up/seize up. I wasn’t too worried about it and was able to finish my sets for the day with minor discomfort but nothing really wrong. From then on whenever I squatted I had pain at the front of my hip but was still able to train through it. However in my last few training sessions it had started to become more significant and despite deadlifts feeling 100% fine, when I was warming up for squats the pain was so prominent I decided to just leave off the 2 sets of squats for the light day.

Currently whenever I squat, regardless of the load (even bodyweight), I feel pain in my hip at the front. I did Day 1 of week 1 on the bridge on Saturday and despite doing a lot of warmup sets and even some leg swings wasn’t able to feel any better. I decided to try and just do the tempo squats that day and see if just squatting with a much lighter load might allow me to train pain free, which it didn’t. When I went to bench I noticed I had a tendency to not want arch as much due to discomfort in the front of my hip. The Rack Pulls were 100% pain free though.

Monday I did the Day 2 of the Bridge and said I’d try the regular Squat w/ belt I was supposed to do 2 days ago. All the warmup squats I did, bodyweight, empty bar, and light sets felt pretty shit honestly, the pain was quite distracting. However my sets @6, @7, and @8 actually didn’t feel -that- bad, oddly enough they kinda felt a bit better which didn’t make much sense, but after the set I would get a dull after-pain that was quite distracting. I also felt I might have been a lil more bent over than usual squatting, which may have alleviated some pain, and also felt a lil like I wanted to shift to the other leg a little. This after-pain continued when i went to Overhead Press and Barbell Row. When I was doing OHP I would also have pain when squatting to getting under the bar to start the lift, and while executing the lift would have been in the hip,and noticed again a tendency to want to shift off the right leg a little, and also seemed to want to lean back less to start the lift. That after-pain was honestly really distracting for presses and rows, and if I didn’t have that afterpain I’d probably have no problem just training squats completely normal.

I had also tried to see a physical therapist last friday, which was litterally useless. But she put my hip through loads of random tests and said she couldn’t find anything really wrong with the hip at all and just gave a lazy recommendation of just do loads of stretching and foam rolling. She didn’t even check at the end if I was still getting pain when squatting…The only thing I got out of paying for that appointment was really bad DOMS in my hip flexor from her massaging it for ages lol. But if nothing else I can conclude that there’s no real acute tweak/partial tear I think, but now I’m really confused as to what to do since load doesn’t appear to be the issue. Do I just keep deadlifting and wait for it to stop hurting?

Open to any advice on it right now as I’ve no idea what’s going on with my hip.

2

Obviously this is the unmoderated forum and I’m not sure if in general I’m a good person to be giving advice like this, but I’ve had (and might still have) a very similar issue.

I’d watch the BBM pain podcasts (watch them again if you already have). Don’t think too much into why or what you could have done to make it happen and just do your best to keep training. When you train next time, don’t go in expecting or fearing pain, just proceed as normal. If you experience pain, no worries - do any sort of variation that you can tolerate (I could tolerate front squats so I did that). Sometimes I could do pause, pin or tempo squats and othertimes I couldn’t. I see that you’re saying even empty bar sets were causing you pain - don’t go into your training session thinking that will always be the case. If they improved a bit when you increased the load, that’s probably a good thing?

On my squat w/ belt days I experienced pain for basically 5 weeks straight. But for the past 3 weeks or so I don’t think I’ve experienced pain (although one day I was worried RDLs caused a similar type of pain). Lots of people at the gym recommended stretches, foam rolling etc, but I didn’t bother with any of that.

Basically it will go away. Just stay positive and don’t worry about your squat being detrained. I also would NOT wait for it to heal by skipping squats altogether.

Finally Jordan told me this in regards to my hip issue, and it might apply to you as well:

“It may come and go unrelated to anything. I probably would just keep squatting and sure, pain is going to influence the loading for the day…”

1 Like
3

Today i found that low bar squatting drastically reduces the pain, so was able to train normally today. I had done high bar through LP as whenever i tried low i got wrist pain, though i may have nocebod a bit from too many ”WHY YOUR WRIST/ELBOW HURTS” videos. With high bar the pain is hard to tolerate at all, but with low bar it feels like just a mild annoyance i can train through (though still definitely there).

I actually seemed to get much more pain getting in and out of the arch position benching (raising or lowering the leg) than i did squatting today. So im just happy to be able to train the squat again and hopefully the pain will go away soon enough.

4

Not sure if this is your issue but the two people I’ve known who have this anterior pain in the hip flexors both had form issues, once resolved, got rid of the pain (after a short deload period once form was fixed). Both had an issue standing too wide and b/c of this having trouble getting and keeping their knees out. You might consider getting a form check.

1 Like
5

Im actuwlly the opposite where i just did shoulder qwidth stance when i was doing high bar but going wider when i did low bar made the hip feel better

6

One thing that helped me personally a lot was to do the external hip rotation stretch religiously.

7

I’ve had a very similar pain, even still feel it when I wake up from a long sleep and go to moving. That being said it wasn’t my hip. Alot of people assume it’s the hip because it’s in the general area. My pain felt like it was from my ASIS(the bony nob of the pelvis)… when i described my symptoms to a PT they said it sounds like an iliacus strain. when lifting my leg knee to chest and felt a pinch in both external rotation and internal and when I fully extended my leg to straight leg and lifted about 2-3 inches off the floor and keeping my other leg flat I would feel it cramping up and spasing and even pinching . I first experiences this during the squat . I racked the weight and it just felt like a knot tightening up in my ASIS. Thinking it was just a little strain from the set I continued on… the next day my ASIS is killing me and guess what the next day is… squats again . Still not sure the cause of my issue but it is very seldom now. What I have done is any stretch that allows me to really stretch that area… alot of these I found myself so just get in a position where u can stretch it. Aswell find movements to strength that area. Another thing I think was key is form… personal form. Everybody is different so everyone squats a bit different. My stance … feet were to straight foward… now I turn them out… and the width of my stance was too wide. I wasn’t no were near a wide powerlifter stance but a bit wider than shoulder width … and now my stance is slightly under shoulder width… and my feet are point out quite a bit. I think the biggest thing that helped was my stance . LOOK UP JTS squat school Hip anatomy on youtube. Hope I helped any . Goodluck

8

I Have enjoyed this Particular topic in this forum. Loosening your Hip Flexors can actually be easy with a sequential Flow Method.
Learn More here. Hop Error