I realize this topic comes up quite a bit but I know individual circumstances can be unique, so here goes:
I’m 36 years old, been training for awhile (and running strength programs for about the last 4 years consecutively). Throughout, I’ve been struggling with severe adductor (or maybe gracilis) soreness after squatting. Typically I run my Day 1 (squat day) on a Monday and Tuesday my legs are still fine, but Wednesday-Friday they’re extremely sore (sometimes into Saturday somewhat). The daily life fatigue involves struggles to sit down and waking up in the AM feeling like I got hit by a bus. I can handle the daily life struggles for the most part but it really hampers my Day 3/4 training session with any leg work (Deads, more Squats, or variations). When I attempt leg exercises on these days with any amount of moderate weight (usually 20-30% below normal) I get shooting pain up the sore muscle and immediately have to stop and quit the exercise or the session entirely (as I did today during bent over rows).
I want to emphasize that this has happened throughout various different training blocks, however, here’s what I’ve been doing lately where this has been occurring:
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BBM Bodybuilding template (started early July, currently in Week 2 of Block 3)
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Training schedule for this template has been Mon, Tues, Thurs, Fri.
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Sleep is good–typically get 8.5h per night.
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Was on a cut but that ended in August. Now eating roughly maintenance.
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Video to recent squats (doing 10x4@7): https://youtu.be/l7ltSLx3OsE
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Note I’ve done squats in squat shoes, in wrestling shoes, and tennis shoes. Pictured here is tennis shoes but my shoe choice does not seem to have any impact in fatigue/soreness.
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I rated this an RPE 7 just based on general exhaustion, though I realize bar speed would probably put this at a 6 or so.
Any thoughts here on how I might address this? It’s really been a long struggle for me that unless I take squats to very low volume and intensity, it’s always a battle for me. In the past (on strength blocks) I’ve done things like 5x/week training with squats 2-3x per week with only 2-3 sets at a time at 6 or 7 rpe and that prevented any soreness, but I didn’t really progress at all that way.
Hey AJ,
Thanks for the post! I can understand that this would be frustrating, for sure. I have a few thoughts on what I would do and think about going forward: 1. I don’t see anything wrong with your squat technique or RPE rating. Exertion rating being more global than just bar velocity in this instance.
2. I don’t think I would recommend the BB template for an individual with this recurring issue, as I suspect the dose of squatting is a bit too high for you to tolerate. If you could do non-squat movements for your other slots, that would be my first move before changing the entire template. I’m thinking leg press, hack squat, DB split squat, box step ups, etc.
3. I would NOT terminate your day 3 and 4 sessions regardless of pain. Rather, I would modify the loading, exercise, ROM, tempo, etc. to get the work done.
4. I would put copenhagen adductor planks or the adductor machine before each training session. There are some other programming changes I might make, but I think this is a good place to start.
Thanks for the quick response Jordan! Some thoughts below: 1. Got it–makes sense
2. Yeah unfortunately I’ve already done this at least for BB template. I’ll keep it in mind for future strength templates, if that’s what you mean, but my Day 1 on BB template is: high bar squat, goblet squat (elevated heel), split squat, good morning, calf raise.
3. Yeah–I did this back in block 1 when I had an issue. Dropped the weight. Went to 303 (or 300, can’t remember) tempo and dropped a set off as well. This worked fine without an issue and I did this for 3 weeks, added a set back, then another week before going to normal. Was right back to the same issue shortly after this. Maybe I just should only use tempo and not do much volume at all of normal squatting?
4. Interesting–haven’t heard of this. I’ll give it a try! Would you recommend the low fatigue template for me next? Not sure who this is targeted for normally but seems like I might be a candidate?
Would you recommend the low fatigue template for me next? Not sure who this is targeted for normally but seems like I might be a candidate?
While I don’t think you require particularly low volume or slowed tempo squatting, I do worry about your current training capacity and tolerance. I’d consider the General S/C template first and, if you can run that without issue + see good results, you would be in a good position to pretty much do whatever template you want afterwards- though I would reserve the BB template until one more successful program has been run between now and then.
-Jordan
Just in case someone else faces this issue, I wanted to circle back on it as I believe after long (re: lonnnggggg) last I’ve solved this issue. I did as suggested and moved back to the general strength template (and actually ran it twice). After that, I moved to the powerbuilding template and after Day 1 (week 1 or 2, can’t remember), I again experienced pretty awful soreness in my adductors which prevented me from being able to train much legs in the next 4-5 days. I cannot recall at this point how I noticed this (after doing it for literally years), but basically what was happening was in the bottom of the squat, my knees would flare out a bit off the bounce. Not excessively so, but enough to where I thought “hmm maybe I should try to prevent that.” To do this, I had to feel like I’m firing my quads very hard and keep my knees feeling a little more forward and not let them flare at the bottom. Since I’ve been doing it this way, I’ve had LITERALLY ZERO soreness in the adductors. If you watch my old video I posted here (https://youtu.be/l7ltSLx3OsE), you can see this happening on a couple reps at the bottom, but not every rep.
Overall, I think it was a flaw in my squat form–under reliance on quads and over reliance on hips. Almost like my subconscious brain was going “Oh, don’t use the quads. It would be difficult to fire them that hard to slow the descent and come back up. Just use the hips–they’re stronger.” I try to focus on my knees going more forward, fire the quads hard through the bottom of the movement. From recent videos I’ve seen, it also appears my chest fall issue (which was very prevalent for me in the past), is now pretty much entirely gone.
Anyway, I hope this can help someone else as it has literally plagued me for 5-6 years at least.