TL;DR
what type of stretching protocol would you recommend to sufficiently increase adductor flexibility enough for someone who is squatting 2-3” high to get to a legal squat.
THE LONG VERSION:
i have bad hips (nocebo, I know). I have had pins in both hips since I was 15, I am 44 now. I have lifted on and off for about 7-8 years. The last 3 years have been rough. I started having hip pain and it had progressively gotten so bad that I spent a solid year bouncing between moderate to sever pain on a daily basis. I constantly walked with a limp. I began suffering from depression because my quality of life was so poor. I was lifting at the time, squatting in the low 300s. deadlifting in th mid to upper 300s on a low volume program. At the urging of my wife I went and got an MRI and went to see an ortho. The surgeon basically said that I had bone spurs and torn labrum, FAI, and moderately advanced osteoarthritis. He said that this is normal for someone that has had pins in their hips. He said that I would need a THR in my right hip soon and would need one in my left hip eventually as well, (there was no MRI on the left but he took an XRay.) I decided that I wanted to do everything that I could to avoid THR before I went down that road. Fortunately BBM had just released some podcasts on pain and arthritis as well as an article (though most of the content seemed focused on other joints besides the hip) I decided that I would lose weight and at the same time de load to the point of basically starting over on the squat because I have had problems with tendinitis in the past so I couldn’t be sure that 100% of my pain was arthritic. So I focused on form. I have lost about 35 lbs and have gone from about 5-7 on the pain scale to 2-3 on a daily basis. I still cannot put on shoes and sox or trim my toe-nails without discomfort, and my squats are cosistantly about 3 inches high and my current working weights are sub 200 higher volume and taking it slow. I would like to see if I can get my squat to parallel without any return to pain but I am very cautious and I have anxiety about it now. I worked today on pin squats and adductor stretching between sets I still couldn’t get lower than about 2” high. So I am thinking of tryin a stretching protocol to see if that will help and was wondering what you would recommend.
thank you.