I tend to get some minor sharp pain at the bottom of the squat, somewhere on the right side of the tailbone, probably due to my hip shifting or general lack of stability. Usually I feel it only at the bottom, and I just ignore it. Sometimes it gets worse and it slightly hurts to walk for a few days, but it’s more annoying than anything. I’ve been having this problem ever since I started lifting about 8 months ago. It worries me that maybe I’m doing some slow repetitive damage to something - if not for you guys I’d probably be too afraid to squat by now.
I went for a session with an SS coach, and apparently my form is OK apart from the hip shift. He told me that my back is asymmetric and I should go see a physiotherapist. He made me try going faster and “bounce” at the bottom more, but that made the pain much worse, and that was still at RPE 6-7 (I think he thought it was higher, I tend to grind a lot and didn’t think to tell him). We did find out that a belt helps, so I got one since then.
Since the belt is helping, I think that the pain might be just due to bad bracing and lack of stability and the hip shift is just a side effect. Sometimes I shift quite a lot and don’t feel anything.
Some options on what I could do:
A: Keep going as I am. Do more paused squats. I’m thinking about replacing regular squats with paused squats completely, and doing all assistance squat movements with the belt.
B: Go to a physiotherapist. I have it covered by insurance, but none of the people I can choose from seem to have sport experience, and I’m afraid they would just tell me to stop squatting or nocebo me.
C: Do a consultation with BBM. I considered this, but if a coach couldn’t fix it in person, how could it get fixed via video? Btw aren’t you guys planning to do a seminar in Europe?
Likely unnecessary details:
I’m a 30 year old female. My squat is 25% lower than my deadlift. Even if the hip shift isn’t causing the pain, it’s very inefficient and every time I found some cue that helped me reduce it, my squat went up. As I’m going up from the hole, my hip shifts a bit to the right and my right side rises up sooner. Also my left knee tends to cave in and the bar on the left side drifts a bit forward. I am able to stay pretty tight and straight until I use about 50% of my 1RM. After that it gets progressively worse.
TLDR: This hurts. What do?
