Hip pain and Low Fatigue Template

Training Q&A [Moderated]
1

Hey there Doctor Feigenbaum, Doctor Baraki

Last week I began week 9 of the Low ISF 3 Day Template. Ramp ups felt great, everything moving smooth and fast, hit a PR at 1 @ 7 with 190kg. After the first back off set however I felt some really bad pain in my right hip whereby it felt like I lost all strength in that whole leg and any hip extension, walking, raising my knee to my chest felt very painful. I soldiered on and managed to complete my remaining back off sets, good mornings and GHRs but the pain still lingered during those and once I ‘cooled down’ I could barely move my leg without excruciating pain.

The following day (Tuesday) I could barely put weight on that leg- climbing stairs and performing simple tasks like walking, getting dressed and standing up felt painful and like the leg was giving way underneath me. The only thing that seemed to alleviate any pain was walking up a hill.

Wednesday it felt much better so I tried to do day 2 of the week. Main bench movement it felt great but the following exercise (SSB squats) the pain started up again and I was back to square one. I regret even trying to squat again so soon. Remaining exercises, all upper body movements, felt fine on the hip.

Thursday was the same as Tuesday so I went to a gym (I’m lucky to have a home gym) and hopped on an incline treadmill and walked for 30 mins. Hip felt great again.

Friday I had a play around with what squat and deadlift variations were tolerable per Dr Baraki’s pain article. Nothing I tried worked so I decided to just leave all lower body movements for the time being

Fast forward to now and the symptoms have gotten better but very marginally. Any exercise I do apart from upper body exercises and incline walking results in the pain to flare up again, particularly the following morning.

My question is regarding the template- do I continue with the template as written, only performing upper body movements, leaving all lower body movements out until my hip recovers? When it does recover, do I go back to week 9 and pick up from there?

Apologies for such a long post. I’m really heartbroken about this as training had been going amazingly well and I was truly enjoying the LFT.

Thank you for your time and keep up the great work, you guys are truly changing lives.

Kindest regards

2

Hey there,

Sorry to hear about this! I know these kinds of setbacks can be frustrating, but I think it’s important to keep the big picture of an entire training career in mind, and accept that this will ultimately be a small speed bump from that perspective. I’ve had similar kinds of setbacks before, and ultimately have been able to come back and surpass my strength every time to date.

To your questions here, I’m glad you tried some of the ideas in the article – those will continue to be helpful for you moving forward. I would continue the upper body movements as normally as possible. For lower body work, I would set the template programming aside for now, at least until you feel back to normal again – at which point I would not pick up with week 9, but start it fresh from the beginning. So at this point your lower body training is going to be heavily dependent on your tolerance; the article gives some ideas on how we approach this process of exercise selection (which can certainly involve some trial and error, even under coaching guidance), but I would aim to include as much variety on the affected area as possible, even if it requires little to no resistance. This could mean bilateral squatting, unilateral/single leg work (forward / backward / lateral lunges, machine work, etc. are all fair game). If you need a more structured approach we do have an existing hip rehab template, as well as guided consultation and rehab coaching options with our team.

Hope that helps.

3

Thank you for your advice and getting back to me so quickly Dr Baraki. Your words on perspective are very reassuring.

I will definitely follow your advice and play around with exercise selection based on tolerance- fingers crossed I can get back to squatting and deadlifting pain free.

Thanks again for all you do!