Hello Dr. Baraki,
Around 6 years ago I was squatting pretty wide with the westside style “back back back back” form (as a raw lifter, not smart but I was young and dumb), and after a set I felt pain in my left adductor magnus. Eventually it healed and I was able to return to squatting and deadlifting. Since then it has flared up on and off over the past 6 years, and in the past couple months or so it has flared up and not gone away (the most recent flare up I believe was caused by running getting ready for Navy ODS).
At baseline I do not have any pain in the left adductor, nor does it hurt when performing squats or deadlifts initially. After a squat or deadlift session, however, the left adductor becomes more sore and stays sore longer than the right adductor. The most significant and debilitating part of the injury is that if I go to perform a movement that involves hip extension while the adductor is still sore, it will cramp up resulting in a pretty significant 7/10 cramping pain that inhibits my ability to perform the movement. Eventually the cramping subsides but the pain still lingers at around a 5/10 or so. I have found that the actual adduction movement on an adduction machine does not cause pain, but doing a single leg glute bridge on the affected side results in a 3/10 aching pain in the same region. The pain is not necessarily at the tendon origin of the adductor magnus, but about 2-3 inches more distal in the muscle belly.
Even with this happening I have still been able to train the squat and deadlift while making progress, just spacing them out long enough where the adductor is not sore anymore, and I am able to perform the movement without pain. The problem is that now when I try to add more squatting and deadlifting volume, it takes longer for that adductor to recover, and thus makes me take longer between those training sessions. I have gone to a sports medicine physician, who put me on meloxicam for a month(which helped, but I was also post meet and in a phase of less volume to try to let the area heal), as well as recommended I do physical therapy (which did not help much). Currently I have not squatted or deadlifted in the past two weeks in an attempt to let the area heal, and while there is no pain if I do a bodyweight squat, there is pain if I do the unilateral glute bridge.
Any advice you have on how to go about fixing this issue would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time.
Max