Hi Derek,
Thank you for your quick response. I assume you’re looking for clarification about this quoted text?
In fact, for most of the last 6 months, I have modified my training rather significantly due to both the aftermath of the February glute flare up and an unfortunately timed lower back injury.
It has consisted of a lot of stuff. I’m not sure how detailed you want me to get with my answer, so here goes. The TL;DR would be that I have reduced (at times very drastically) squat and deadlift volume, intensity, and frequency. I have also modified (again, at times very drastically) exercise selection based on pain symptoms. Glute pain symptoms improved for a little while, to the point they were nonexistent more days than not, then returned.
I train for powerlifting and am typically accustomed to training 4x/week with an additional GPP day. I haven’t followed a straight up template for a while, as I’ve either programmed for myself or had a coach, but my typical training is somewhat similar (in terms of how it is organized, volume and intensity selection, exercise selection, etc.) to something you’d find in a BBM strength or PL template. I was working with Leah Lutz prepping for a PL meet when I had my really bad flare up sometime around February 20 or so. The pain had been ramping up for a couple weeks before it peaked around then. I was autoregulating load based on the pain, but likely not enough. I was 6-ish weeks out from my meet at that point and was stupidly trying to drag myself to the finish line, haha.
At first, the pain was so debilitating that I completely rested for about a week. After that, I drastically changed exercises and substantially reduced loading, volume, and training frequency one week post severe flare up. I was basically just doing partial ROM goblet squats and kettlebell RDL 2x/week. I gradually increased those training variables and got slightly more specific with my exercise selection of the course of about 7-8 weeks post glute flare up as symptoms improved. After these 7-8 weeks, my glute pain had subsided to the point where it was nonexistent most days. Training volume was probably a good 50%+ less than normal, intensity was moderate.
I attempted to ramp up training a bit more at this point - even more specific squat and DL variations (still no comp lifts though), moderate volumes/intensities, little more frequency, though I was still just on a 3x/week schedule. Admittedly, I almost definitely increased loading too fast and learned the hard way that my body wasn’t as healthy and ready to go heavy-ish as I felt it was - I popped my lower back after like a week of feeling “back to normal.” This was around mid April. I feel like the timeline from here on gets a little messy because I was making training decisions based on my low back, not my glute, and was definitely paying a lot closer attention to my back.
From mid April until late May, I tried to train around the low back injury as best I could, but it wasn’t getting better. I believe I attempted to add comp squats back in during this time and attempted to go back to a 4x/week schedule, but neither went great. I was basically doing stuff like high bar and block pulls again, as well as belt squats, lateral lunges, and unilateral RDL. Had to really scale back on the volume and intensity during this time - my top sets were basically “work up to a tolerable load” rather than an RPE target. At some point during this time the glute started to get painful again, but I wasn’t sure if it was just pain radiating out from my lower back or not at first.
Since June, I have gotten to the point where I’m able to tolerate more volume and intensity, a bit more specificity, and as of last week a 4x/week schedule. I am still a bit (maybe 15-20%?) under what was “normal” prior to February of this year in terms of volume. On the intensity side of things, my squat and deadlift top sets have not exceeded RPE 7 in a long time, and most of my squat and deadlift work has been around the high 60-low 70% e1RM range. Exercise selection wise, I just started doing comp squats and deads again, but am keeping assistance and supplemental movements fairly non-specific.
The minor glute pain has proven to not be just low back pain radiating outward, though, because it has hung around and gotten a bit worse on some days even as my back has started to feel pretty close to 100%. Like I said, it isn’t bad enough to affect training, but it’s definitely there most days. I just sort of want to stay out in front of it a little better this time and hopefully avoid another bad flare up, though I’m pretty sure I could avoid it getting to that point now that I know how bad it can get and the warning signs.