How to address pain with new exercise variations

Training Q&A [Moderated]
1

Hey, BBM.

Thanks for all the great content.

A little background:
I am 30M and have been training consistently since October 2021 but have trained off and on for 10 years. I have previously only done low-bar squat and conventional deadlift for squat and deadlift variations. This year, I have worked through the BBM beginner template, endurance template, and now the general strength and conditioning template.

General problem:
The GS&C template introduces the high-bar squat and the trapbar deadlift which I subbed for sumo deadlift since I don’t have a trap bar. Both the HB squat and sumo deadlift have been giving me pain and I was wondering if you had any general advice on this.

More specifically:
For the HB squat, I am pretty skinny. 5’11" and 165 lbs and when I setup for the HB squat the bar tends to sit directly on my skeleton. For example, even if I start with my hands close together at the edge of the knurling and squeeze my shoulders together before I set the bar on my traps, it tends to sink in and rest on the spine of my scapula. This is pretty painful with 200+ pounds. I’ve tried moving the bar up and down my back from above the low bar position all the way up to my neck and I have found what feels like the “best” position on top of my traps, but it still tends to rest on the bone.

For sumo deadlift, I actually feel pretty strong in this position compared to conventional deadlift. The second week of sumos I hit 265x5@8, which is close to my conventional deadlift PR. However, that night and the two days after I was in a lot of pain in my hips and knees and had a hard time walking. I still tried to get my runs in as easy run/walks and the pain subsided by about three days later. On week 3 I dropped the weight down to 135, but still had considerable pain in my hips and knees, particularly on the left side at the femur insertion in my hip. The week after that I switched back to conventional deadlift and had no pain.

So I’m wondering if you have any general advice on how to address either of these problems. Should I simply keep practicing them and gain a tolerance for these movements? I read the article series on pain and the one on hip pain and thought maybe an entrypoint to the sumo deadlift would be to do higher rep lower intensity sets to practice the movement - for example maybe sets of 12 with the empty bar and work my way up. If the pain is getting in the way of my training should I simply sub them for other movements that I am able to tolerate better? I have no intention of competing in the high bar squat or sumo deadlift and I don’t think there’s anything magical about these movements such that I have to do them. But I do know you all advocate for being a “general” athlete and not specializing early so doing variations provides some value in long term strength performance.

Let me know if you have any advice!

Thanks,
Andrew​

2

Andrew,

Thanks for the post. For the HBBS, sounds like this might be something I need to see to come up with a solution. There should be a position above where you place the bar for LBBS that is suitable. I would be playing around with grip width and bar placement to find a combo that works, but I otherwise would need to see it to help. If there truly is no combo that currently works, I’d do HBBS as a light supplemental squat to get used to this as a hedge that you’ll want to be able to HBBS at some point in the future.

On the sumo DL, sounds like maybe a response to out-kicking your coverage in the short-term. For this, I’d lower the top set’s RPE by 2 (to 6) if you want to stick with sumo or just do conventional.

-Jordan