Intense adductor soreness

Pain & Rehab Forum [Moderated]
1

Hey BBM,

Around 2.5 weeks ago, I attempted to return to squatting after several weeks without performing any barbell squats. I started the powerbuilding 2 template and got extremely sore after the first day, particularly in my adductors. This soreness seemed to increase in pain over 48 hours and even walking was painful. It wasn’t like I was squatting weights that were way out of my strength potential. Anyway, the soreness got very intense and uncomfortable. There were a few times where I moved a certain way or maybe overstretched the muscle and it would aggravate my adductors. I would feel a sharp, painful sensation that would last for about 20-30 minutes and then slowly decrease in pain after that. The pain would eventually go away after about an hour and a half and I would just feel the typical soreness I had been feeling the past few days. This happened multiple times to both my left and right adductors at different times each over two days. I didn’t know what that sharp pain was, so I took it easy the next few weeks. Now i’ve sort of returned to normal training and I’ve followed the same program, adjusting RPE to avoid getting too sore. I also did a lot of direct adductor work to try and strengthen the muscles. However, I did the Week 2 day 1 workout of the program a few days ago and I had gotten really sore in my adductors again. The soreness increased in intensity over a few days like last time, and I ended up feeling those same sudden sharp pains. Once it happened to my right adductor when I was just getting out of my car, another time it happened to my left one when I attempted to do a bodyweight squat just to stretch out the muscles. I haven’t felt any pops in my adductors and all of my workouts have been absolutely painless. What could be going on? What are these intense pains that only last for about an hour or two, are they injuries? Just cramping or something from the soreness? Should i continue the program and further adjust my volume and intensity? Sorry for such a long post but any help would be really appreciated. Thanks.

2

We can’t tell you exactly what this is, but this type of soreness is common from squatting when someone is unconditioned to the training load (intensity/volume or a new/detrained movement).

Yes, we would adjust the dosage of stimulus (volume and intensity); if you continue running into issues, you may not be adequately prepared for that particular program, and may need to pull back to more of a beginner-type template until you’re built back up for that level of training again.

3

That sounds good,

I have run many BBM templates, some of them multiple times through such as the hypertrophy II, powerlifting II, and Strength III templates, making great progress over the years. I was left confused why I wasn’t adapting to this particular program. I’ll take the extra time to build my work capacity back up before I jump into this program again.

Thanks for the reply

4

I went through something similar not too long ago. Part of it was just overshooting RPE, the other was that my adductors were just super weak in comparison to my quads. To rectify this I lowered my target RPE like Austin was saying. I also added some Copenhagen planks to my GPP core work. After a couple of weeks it felt like my adductors began to catch up with my quads and I haven’t had many issues sense. Hope this helps!