Pain was more to the middle of the hips, somewhere below the bone of the hip that protrudes at the front. After a couple of months the pain shifted to the side of the legs where thigh meets the hip. It happens during back squats. When I do front squats it’s all fine. I believe front squats are even deeper, but even the high bar squat feels weird that gets to similar depth. After squats I just feel sore at those spots and the soreness can come back after sitting for long periods.
Another symptom is that during the last 5-8 months my back squats are slow from the first rep. The weird sensation happens during the ascent almost immediately after starting to go up and all of the squats are insanely slow that I can’t even gauge the RPE. I can put 90kg on the bar, or 105kg, they all feel similar and slow and exhausting.
Front squat on the other hand gets slower with more reps and feels completely natural when it comes to loading.
I’m thinking of completely dropping the back squat.
Have you sought consult for this issue and if so what were you told?
Have you tried adjusting loading to the area (sets, reps, external intensity, internal intensity via RPE, range of motion, etc.)? If so, what have you tried thus far?
I did not ask for help about it because after training I do not have huge issues and the pain is only present during squats.
The same training session can have other squatty exercises and I do not feel any pain. For example, Bulgarian Split squats at 40-50kg x12 no issues.
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I feel pain from the first set that goes above 65% (around 80kg), although it can happen on lower weights but it’s not as paralyzing.I’ve tried doing paused, tempo and pin squats but the ascent is still bothering me on heavier loads.
Most I’ve been doing is 120kg for 5 and it was 8 months ago and I was starting to feel issues. Since then I’ve been lowering the weights, trying to change my squatting form and I’m currently doing 90x8 but even that feels way too grindy. I’ve lost 10lbs BW (86kg currently) in this period but my deadlift, bench and ohp dropped at most 5%. Squat is the only exercise where I had to really decrease the load. Most weight drops were after I had 2 week pauses (vacation/travel) and I would gain almost everything back after 2 weeks of training.
Currently I’m doing 10 week hypertrophy II template (5th week, high bar, sumo) and have improvement in all lifts except squat (I started high bar squat at 105x8, now I’m doing 90x8), before that I was switching between high rep and high intensity macrocycles (3 sets at most).
In the last 8 months, for the first 5 I was benching once a week (had some wrist and elbow issues but nothing as painful as squats) and improving on it week by week (RPE wise) reaching PRs (singles, 90kg), OHP 3 times a week and deadlifting once a week.
Gotcha. I’d say given the chronicity of this, you’d likely benefit from a consult with us so we can help guide this path for you.
It sounds like you are on the right path with managing load but may just need some more guidance with how to better implement that approach. Pain & Rehab Consultation