I have been training using Starting Strength Linear Progression for a month and a half now. I started because I thought I might have improved enough from lyme disease to start training. After a year and a half of dealing with a broken foot and the very strange symptoms of lyme disease I was so ready to be an active person again. Well over the past couple weeks pain near the back of my pelvis has gotten worse and worse with nothing showing up on my form videos to change to keep that from happening. Also there are also a bunch of other small things that keep adding up and stressing me out. I have no idea what to do at this point because if I have to quit this due to my condition, I will be so completely devastated. For the past year and a half, all I have known is failure to be able to be an active, healthy, strong person. Here is my reddit account from which I post form checks and ask q’s on /r/StartingStrength: Reddit - Dive into anything
And my youtube channel is here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm97V4K2L1t-b1LcY0XFdaA?view_as=subscriber
Sorry to hear about your difficulties. Chronic pain is a very difficult thing to deal with, and Post-Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome is unfortunately a poorly understood condition.
Continuing to train is crucial, but may require some modifications of volume and intensity depending on your symptoms - you may also benefit from some lower intensity conditioning work as well.
With all this said, one thing I can tell from your post is that you’d benefit from what we call “Therapeutic Neuroscience Education” - in other words, learning about pain. Specifically, this line tells me a whole lot about you:
Also there are also a bunch of other small things that keep adding up and stressing me out. I have no idea what to do at this point because if I have to quit this due to my condition, I will be so completely devastated. For the past year and a half, all I have known is failure to be able to be an active, healthy, strong person.
This shows evidence of catastrophizing, learned helplessness, and possibly even depression (though, of course, I can’t diagnose this through a forum post). Learning about, and working on this mindset is going to be critical for long-term success. You may need professional help or benefit from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (either in-person or web-based).
I contacted my naturopathic doctor that is treating Lyme and she said she has a medication that may help the inflammation that is most likely causing the pain. However, if the pain doesn’t improve, do you think switching to front squats is a reasonable proposition if it feels better for my back/pelvis area?
If you can find a way to squat that doesn’t hurt, that is better than not squatting. I’m just going to leave the “naturopathic doctor” part alone.
Also, is two days a week training too little volume to make any progress? I am wondering if that could help out my body a bit too. (I am also studying at a rigorous college right now so extra time to study might help me academically and mentally)
“Two days a week” tells me nothing about how much volume you’re doing, so I don’t know.
For what it is worth, I was recently diagnosed with Lyme. I took about a week off of training, just because I was tired and my joints hurt and I was concerned, because this was new to me. However, during that week my symptoms got worse, especially my joint pain. After a couple days of antibiotics I decided to train again. I found that training and being active made me feel better.