Hip pain at bottom of squat

[kameramandan]

Hi,

I've recently gotten back in the gym, just doing Starting Strength for now to get back in the swing of things. Deadlift is back up to 105kg and bench is at 60kg, but squat has been at 65kg for about three months now due to a hip issue and I just can't get rid of it.

The pain pops up at the lower part of my squat, when my arse is about an inch above the height of a regular bench. It *just* becomes noticeable as I'm heading down but, once it's there, as soon as I push up it grabs and makes it very difficult to get out of the lower part of the squat.

I've been to two physios who were both useless, basically just said "Keep going and see how it goes, come back in a week." A week later, same thing. One physio literally didn't lay a hand on me in four $100 sessions.

I kept my squat at 65kg (comfortable weight to do about half a squat) and been trying to get more depth rather than increase weight. Three months later I still can't squat to the height of a bench. One thing I notice is that instead of tracking straight downwards, I tend to fold forward at the waist at the lower part of the squat... I've been working very hard on staying upright but I just can't seem to do it. Maybe I just don't bend right to squat to parallel?

The pain is in the inside front of my left hip, almost immediately in front of where it feels like my hip socket is. It gets better (but doesn't disappear completely) when I squat with a wide stance, and focus on pushing my knees outwards.

It gets worse the heavier I get... I can squat quite low with an empty bar, and the pain starts popping up at about 40-50kg.

Any tips or ideas?

If you need any more info let me know. I'm trying to get hold of a little baby tripod to film my form, but I don't have a vid just yet.

Thanks

[Barnaa]

Is it pain in the joint, or is it like more of a burning kind of pain, it could be your hip flexor, trying training your core and doing lighter weight squats, I get hip flexor pain when I increase in weight quickly, but goes away when I pull back and focus on training my core more. using a belt also eliminates the pain for me

[kameramandan]

Is it pain in the joint, or is it like more of a burning kind of pain, it could be your hip flexor, trying training your core and doing lighter weight squats, I get hip flexor pain when I increase in weight quickly, but goes away when I pull back and focus on training my core more. using a belt also eliminates the pain for me

It feels to me like a pain in the front side of the joint. It's started getting sore when I walk and when I lift my leg up too, like in a high knees warmup

I'm only on 65kg squats and the pain pops up when I go over about 40 or 50kg so reducing weight enough to avoid the pain makes it barely worth doing them at all

I'm going to take my squat weight back to 40kg today and try going as low as possible at that weight, then maybe increase in 2.5kg per workout increments while trying to keep my depth... But that's what I did when I started back a few months ago and I ended up stopping at 65kg box squats..

Really frustrating as I'm progressing well in other areas but my squats just suck

[kameramandan]

P.S. It seems to be *better* when doing front squats, but doesn't go away altogether. My front squat balance is worse though and I can only do about 45kg, so I might not be weighting it up enough to cause a problem...

EDIT: scratch that, got to 40kg front squat and same pain popped up. Went to 45kg back box squats and can get as low as the bench on those, that's it

[jamesrobert1997]

Squat with 40-50 kg weight is not much hard. But you are new to training then you must go hard gradually. It is difficult to do reps while hip pain so i think you must find its solution first then go for workout. When i started to do squat i got pain in my hamstring and back which was quite painful. The reason behind that was my wrong posture and poor exercise techniques. My coach advised me to do some stretching before workout and some techniques about how to squat read this https://www.aqfsports.com/blogs/news...s-and-benefits for more details. Keeping focus on correcting posture and workout techniques helped me much in healing my injury and increasing my workout.

[sowilson]

I work on hip mobility for awhile; kettlebell swings are your friends, you might want to do them as part of your warm-up

[WSSH]

I have the same issue.

The way I combat it is stretching and warming up before working out. I go into the sauna for 10 mins before the workout and just lightly stretch my legs there.

While actually squatting, I try to modify things to shift the weight away from the hip. I get the glutes involved and play around with the positioning of the feet, which way the toes point, the distance between my feet. Usually by the third set I’m squatting heavy no problem and there is no pain.

Third, get a foam roller if you don’t have one and just roll your hip, thigh, butt and lower back on it after the workout and on off days. Work on your hip strength exercises. Do the things you see girls do in the gym with their resistance bands.

Try those and see if things improve.