Hi folks,

Sorry for the length of this post first of all. I’ve tried to include as much relevant information as possible from the very beginning.

I’m hoping for some advice to take me in the right direction with my squats, as I’m still missing out on all the benefits from them. So far it has been 5(!) months of frustration & even more frustration while trying to get it right, with the sad fact that I haven’t gotten anywhere with them. They are now my weakest lift of all. I struggle with a reoccurring hip pain on both sides. The full story at the bottom.

The pain has forced me to take time off from squats in between each reset, typically 2-4weeks. I have tried to change things each time I’ve resetted. Last attempt I did widen my stance slightly again, and I did them shallow to see if it made a difference (Desperate move, I know) I also focused on not letting my knees travel in front of my toes, which made my back angle more horizontal, and making it harder to keep tight. I’m really focusing on shoving my knees out as well. This approach didn’t make any difference and the pain was already flaring up again at 140lbs.

This is the last set from my 5th attempt on starting a LP: Squat

Background:
Attempted to run The program in April/May. Got my squat to around 200lbs when realizing the increase in weight had been compensated with partial squats (No physical pain at this point). Reset and started over to work on form. Worked back up to 180lbs before a pain appeared in my “hip flexor area” on the right side. Nothing was stopping me after a big reset, so I reread the squat chapter and assumed I was blessed with the very interesting type of tendonitis. Rest doesn’t fix tendonitis so I tried to fix it with a TUBOW and pushed on until 200lbs where the same pain appeared on my left side. It got so bad I could barely get out of bed in the morning, so I took a break from squatting.
Here is the last set done before the pain forced me to stop the first time (May): Squats with pain
Since then it has just been a mess with taking time off from squats to get the pain to subside before trying again with more use of a TUBOW, with no progress at all.

I’m obviously struggling with all aspects of the squat between unracking and racking again, and I realize it might be unrealistic to get anywhere with them. I’m hoping to see a SSC in January (there isn’t any in my country and my work schedule is busy rest of the year) But if anyone has any advice on how to correct my form or any other suggestions on what to do in the meantime I’ll be very, very grateful.

The reason for my impatience is that I did run a NLP for the other lifts while messing up my lower body, believing I would get it going the next time I tried. Upper body NLP went fine without any big issues and I switched to a HLM program in late July. As I’m still progressing from week to week on those lifts I can’t really get myself to just quit, even though it seems wrong to continue like this.