Terreible pain in right leg.

[Ben00]

I was squatting last Wednesday and I got a terrible pain in my right quad on my third rep in my last set. Being the hard ass you trained me to be I finished my set, then deadlifted, all the while in bad pain. The next day I could barely put my underwear on; I am able to now. I skipped squats on Friday and manged to powerclean without much difficulty. Today I was unable to squat the bar; the pain was unbearable. I was also unable to deadlift, not necessarily because of the pain, but because it seemed my right leg had no strength.

The pain is pretty much all over my upper right qaud in the pants pocket area. What should I do? Who should I see? When will I be able to train hard again?

[Mark Rippetoe]

See what you get for wearing underwear? Sounds like you have a torn quad. I am assuming you had enough sense to ice the damn thing 20 on/20 off. Has the blood showed up down the leg yet? I'd wait a couple more days to test it, and then start trying to run it through the range of motion unloaded. You should be ready to do the rehab in the sticky by Friday.

[Kyle5000]

How can I avoid this happening to me? It sounds like it really sucks.

[Ben00]

Damn. No I have not used any ice, I'm sorry I'm an idiot. I thought it was just another pain that happens from lifting weights. What do you mean by the blood showing up. My leg has shown no visual signs of being injured. I feel sick now knowing that I'll be living with an injury that will inhibit my entire lifting career. I only just got my squat to 200 pounds.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Calm down, Ben. Everything heals. You just don't want it to heal wrong, so that's what the rehab is for. And Kyle, the only way to make absolutely sure this never happens to you is to quit lifting weights.

[JeffH]

I have a similar pain but it's directly atop my thigh right at the groin crease, and it seems to be along a specific tendon under the skin. Does that sound like the same quad tear?

I've only been doing SS for 2 weeks and it happened during my second workout with my squats. But I've been able to close my stance a bit and work through it. And dare I say it was getting better. But today I went to deadlift after squats, and bench, and I couldn't move the weight. The tendon or whatever it is was on fire. As soon as I stopped flexing and trying to lift, the pain rushed back to it.

Should I start the rehab sticky or perhaps just decrease my deadlift load? I've been able to ad 10lbs to my squats and deadlifts each workout thus far and felt muscularly strong, just had a bit of this pain when I reached the top of my squats and deadlifts.

Thanks for the help.

[Mark Rippetoe]

That sounds like an adductor issue. You're not really far enough along to use the rehab protocol, but do it anyway.