Hello,
I am on week 12.3 in the Beginner Template currently and, as of maybe two-three (?) weeks ago, I started experiencing some pain in the lower left hip area which seems to be most prevalent when squatting and when doing paused deadlifts. I’ve been following BBM for a while, and I feel like I have an idea of how to deal with this inconvenient pain. However, I am writing this post mainly to see if the way I am going about dealing with/managing this pain seems reasonable (I just think some feedback would be helpful) and to get some advice about my future plans after the Beginner Template.
My best squat ever is a 290 lb. low bar squat w/ belt single @ ~RPE 9 (overshot… felt good enough to make a 5lb. jump from the week prior), and this was done last Monday. Today, (a week later) doing the same training session, the pain was more “aggressive”, and I realized that I was probably not doing myself any good by stubbornly continuing to go up in weight or hit previous weights. So, my top single was 185 beltless today, and then my back-offs were as follows: 155x5 (felt uncomfortable), 45x6, 65x6, 75x6, 95x6 (all weights are in lbs); I didn’t really rest much between these sets because they felt quick & easy and the pain was not really harsh. It was more noticeable when the weight got heavier, but not to an intolerable degree. When I warmed up with the empty bar, I did 4x5. The first set was pretty uncomfortable, but the fourth set was pretty much pain free. So, I decided to just start adding weight like I normally would for warm-ups (usually 45>95>135>185>225>?>?), but when I squatted 185 it really just didn’t feel good so I re-racked after 1 rep and chalked it up as the single for today. Originally, I was only really experiencing this pain when doing pin squats and paused deadlifts, and my main squat and deadlift training sessions were more or less unaffected. However, given today’s training, that no longer seems to be the case. I feel confident in saying that I am probably fine, and so I am not really worried about there being something wrong with me. It really is just an annoyance because I was quite enjoying all the progress I was making over recent months. After reading the Pain in training: What do? article, listening to several podcasts where pain is discussed, and looking at other forum posts about similar pain experiences, I reckon that my issue is likely just load management, which is why I made such a drastic drop from my first back-off set to my second. Also, I greatly reduced the load for my paused deadlifts too. When I was doing my normal deadlifts this past Friday (12/4), the session went fine with weight that wasn’t far from my best ever dl number, but the pain started to “flare up” more when I did my back-off sets; despite that, I was able to complete my dl training without really dropping the weight.
tl;dr my hip hurts mostly when I squat and the pain becomes tolerable at lighter loads. My questions relating to this are:
1.) For the remaining weeks of this template, should I just try to progress from what I was able to do today (i.e. only alter load and keep other programming variables constant)?
2.) Does what I did today seem reasonable?
Looking forward, I currently own both the Bodybuilding Template and the Powerbuilding I template, and I am still struggling to decide which to run next; I already asked Jordan about choosing one on an IG live, but I’m just being awfully fickle with it. I am guessing I’ll probably end up doing Powerbuilding atm. However, regardless of which I choose, I’d really like to not go into a new template with this nagging pain holding me back. So here is where I am encountering many questions:
3.) Given that I am experiencing a regression on multiple lifts currently (mostly just due to the pain), would the recommendation just be to move on to different programming?
4.) Since the regression seems attributable to the pain, should I continue to run out the remaining ~5 weeks?
5.) If I am to stick with the Beginner template, does it seem likely that I would have enough time to recover from this setback before starting a new template?
6.) Would either of the two aforementioned templates lend themselves better to getting rid of this pain? I’ve thought that maybe the BB template would be a good choice here because it would offer a lot of variety from what I am currently doing (lots of exercises I am not super familiar with) + higher rep ranges, both meaning lighter weights for me.
7.) Relating to 6, would you expect to see a significant loss in squat, bench, and deadlift strength running a bodybuilding template between more strength-focused programs? To be fair, I’m not a competitive athlete currently (so I guess this question really doesn’t matter much), but I would like to compete in powerlifting meets and potentially bodybuilding shows too in the future.
Sorry if this post is misplaced (I wasn’t sure if it should be under Pain & Rehab or Training because it has quite a bit of overlap).
As always, I appreciate you taking the time to read all of this and share your thoughts/advice!
Thank you for all of the helpful content you continue to put out, BBM!