Hip flexor 'discomfort'

[julianwlsn]

Hi all,

I stupidly injured myself a month and a half ago doing some horrible squats. On one rep with a lot of knees in, zero hip drive, and no glute activation, I strained my abductor and definitely my hip flexor. It felt like some kind of impingement. Since then I've worked very hard on my technique and have since had no other problems. My squat has increased about 40 pounds to 260 3x5 and usually after I do the first set of 5, my hip is sore for about a minute. Not painful, just sore. I can make it more sore by sitting down and trying to internally rotate my leg and flex it. Afterwards and during the next two sets I feel no pain. When I get home, I can reproduce the discomfort for a couple hours before it goes away.

I've had this 'discomfort' for about two and a half weeks now, and I'm just wondering if this is anything sinister or if I should just continue to work through it (I REALLY want to hit 315 for a single). I'm going to try to really focus on 'knees out' next time.

Thanks,

Julian

[John Hanley]

Sounds like your TFL is unhappy. Total shot in the dark here...are you standing all the way up on the top of your squats? Some folks have a weird habit of maintaining something like 15-20 degrees of hip flexion at the top of the squat. This really irritates TFLs.

Also: in your second sentence, did you mean aDDuctor? If you indeed meant abductor: which one?

[julianwlsn]

Sounds like your TFL is unhappy. Total shot in the dark here...are you standing all the way up on the top of your squats? Some folks have a weird habit of maintaining something like 15-20 degrees of hip flexion at the top of the squat. This really irritates TFLs.

Also: in your second sentence, did you mean aDDuctor? If you indeed meant abductor: which one?

I didn't even know there were two. Haha. I mean the one in the inner thigh, the one that removes the 'thigh gap'. I guess I mean my right adductor then. Are you referring to this?

http://www.ericcressey.com/newsletter150html

I suppose I do have a weird habit of not locking the knees out completely and finishing the reps. I'm not sure if I lean over though. I'll really work on that next session. It seems like the guy in the video is really squeezing his glutes at the top to stand up tall. Is this type of thing easily discernable via video?

Thanks for your help,

Julian

[John Hanley]

I didn't even know there were two. Haha. I mean the one in the inner thigh, the one that removes the 'thigh gap'. I guess I mean my right adductor then. Are you referring to this?

http://www.ericcressey.com/newsletter150html

I suppose I do have a weird habit of not locking the knees out completely and finishing the reps. I'm not sure if I lean over though. I'll really work on that next session. It seems like the guy in the video is really squeezing his glutes at the top to stand up tall. Is this type of thing easily discernable via video?

Thanks for your help,

Julian

Eric Cressey drives me a little crazy...but - yes - he's demo-ing exactly what I'm talking about.