Injury help

[gnome]

Hi guys,

I'd like some advice. I think I've a hip joint capsule injury.

I get a lot of pain in teh front area of my hip joint when I go down doing squat. I feel the pain right before I hit parallel, and it is worse when I squat with an empty bar or just my body weight and its not too bad once I start to add weights. I also get slight pain when I lift my legs up while laying down. I'm just concerned that this will potentially lead to a more severe problem if I dont get it treated properly.

When I do deads, I don't hurt as much. I feel at some point when I was doing squat I must have let the knee go forward and hence causing strain in that area. The pain is near the pocket area on my right leg and not so worse on the left.

I did some searching on www, and came up with suggestions that I should strech more. I do very little stretching but I warm by doing rowing for 5min. Would adding more strectching will help anything? I guess it would be a start. Here is the site which recommends streching, the guy who posted seem to be having similar problem as mine - Link

Wondering if any of you's here have had this problem. Any help is much appreciated guys.

I had actually posted this on the Q&A section but it said waiting for approval from the Mods, that was 2 days ago. I coudn't wait any longer for the coach

[Tom Campitelli]

There are a lot of good suggestions in that thread you listed. You should follow much of what was said there. Some joint pain is common in almost any weight bearing exercise. Any mobility and technique problems you have will be brought out in the open by regular squatting in the form of pain. Tissues that receive less blood flow (tendons and ligaments) sometimes get tight, or do not adapt as quickly as muscles to the increasing workloads. If you exercise hard enough to get stronger, you exercise hard enough to hurt yourself. This is a fact and you must learn to manage it, train around it, and learn when you can train through it.

Suggestions:

• Make sure you are squatting properly. Letting your knees come forward, or otherwise getting loose at the bottom of the squat will often bother the hips.
• Do targeted mobility work before squatting. Just rowing may not be enough. Work Rip's squat stretch and explore those positions where it hurts and dig in.
• Use a foam roller and a lacrosse ball. Find where it hurts the worst and keep the pressure on that spot.
• Do the stretches in that post and stretch you calves, hamstrings and lower back. Do it five times a day for two weeks, holding the stretches for 90 seconds a piece and see if you don't see some kind of improvement.
• If none of that helps, see a massage therapist, or, if you are feeling lucky, a good PT.