Hip Pain = Pyriformis Syndrome or ?

Hi!

Have been experiencing fairly severe nerve pain inside my hip (impacts sleep and walking the days after I train) due to what I think is pyriformis syndrome, but might be disc issues or maybe even a structural problem in hip joint.

The pain came about slowly over ~1 year, then rapidly accelerated once I did a 3 month stint of crossfit. I feel like I’ve tried everything to make it go away: Rest, Stretching (I have very good flexibility/mobility), Strength training, NSAIDS… and none of it seems to have helped. If I spend a good deal of time warming up, I can make the pain go down to about a 1/10 and it will stay there for the rest of the day, but come back with a vengeance in the middle of the night.

My wife is an orthopedic surgeon and she says, barring surgery, the treatment advice I’d get in clinic would just be conservative management and more NSAIDS. I really want to get back to heavy strength training (maybe even more crossfit.)

Any advice about how to rehab or fix this problem or maybe just understand it better would be appreciated!

We can’t really differentiate what’s going on with you from here, unfortunately. It’s interesting that you can make it nearly go away and train fairly normally (from what it sounds like), but it comes back later. If it bothers you enough, I’d get it checked out.