I have struggled with pain in my hip for the past 2-3 years and have had enough/am not sure what to do at this point. It effects my training (squats mainly) and my day to day life, mainly in the form of painful flare ups when getting up out of a chair or being painful at night when I lay down. It’s made it hard to fall asleep at times. I am a 30 year old male, 6’ 220lbs. Currently using BBM 7 week hypertrophy.
The pain comes and goes, some days much worse than others… training days especially and occasionally when lying down. It will flare up badly during squat warm ups and never really go away completely. On bad days, it’s really distracting.
It feels like it’s coming from immediately under the greater trochanter on my right femur and when I palpate the area, I get temporary relief. If I try to “dig” further toward my femur bone, in a horizontal direction, I get more relief and a tender sensation. Heat also seems to provide temporary relief, especially in the form of a hot tub or jacuzzi.
Using a stretch to target the TFL also seems to provide relief.
I’ve tried narrowing my squat stance, being meticulous about keeping the weight over mid foot, lowering weight, etc. nothing seems to help long term. I took a 2 month hiatus from training about a year ago, and the issue cleared up. So far that’s been the only thing.
Any advice you have on how to take care of this would be so appreciated. Consultation perhaps?
Just circling back, noticed no one has replied. I’m assuming it’s because there’s already a bunch of information on this topic. So sorry to post if that’s the case. I haven’t come across anything for seemingly non-specific, chronic hip pain. Will search…
Hey @tfranc , sorry for the delayed response. Also sorry to hear about the hip issue. We can’t give individualistic advice without a consult. However, have you ever sought consult for this issue previously? if so, what narratives were provided?
The good news - sounds like you are doing your best to stay active which is good. Perhaps, finding an appropriate dosage for squats will help. You can try things like increasing rep range, decreasing RPE, and slowing the movement down with a tempo to see if you can get tolerable squatting in without severely increasing symptoms.
Oh no need to apologize! We are all incredibly lucky you give us access to your insight like this.
I have not previously saught consultation per say, but Leah actually started coaching me online not long after the pain had become more chronic. She told me to adjust the weight and to not stop training. I had just completed a run of the Starting Strength LP (I was definitely not in the 2% that did it correctly) and with her coaching advice… and probably switching to an RPE based training approach, the pain did begin to subside. I had a long break from training, about 2-3 months (which I will never do again), where the pain went away completely. When I picked up training again, I went for the Novice LP. Unsurprisingly, I began to have hip issues again, despite switching to the bridge about 10 weeks after starting the LP.
I ran the bridge twice, but did not adjust for hip pain at any point. Sometimes the pain was ok, sometimes it was almost unbearable. I just sort of thought it would eventually go away.
I will certainly give those things a try. The 3-0-3 tempo squats in the bridge seemed to actually help a lot… very painful at first, but perhaps pushing the painful area is a good thing in this context.
Yeah - the key here is tolerable loading to the area. Tolerable is individualistic but my usual heuristic is it’s OK to have symptoms in the area provided they are not severely increasing above what you are used to and aren’t leaving you feeling debilitated during or after training (unable to go do other life activities). Keep us posted how things go as you make changes.