Squatting pain and inflexibility issues

[jimt91]

After a long break I've been getting serious about lifting again, fixed my diet, consistently gaining weight, doing SS adding lbs to the bar etc. well normally I have some pain in the creases where the inside of my thigh meets my groin, I guess that's a tendon sorry idk the name. I even warm up for usually about 30 minutes before doing working sets on squats with foam rolling, dynamic stretches, and light five minutes of cardio. I lift MWF, so today was my first day back from the weekend break. After a few warmup sets the pain usually goes away and I'm good to go, Friday I did 155 lbs with no problems and felt great about it(I started at 95lbs 2ish weeks ago). Well today I just couldn't manage to get loose it feels like tightness but the pain just wouldn't go away no matter how much I warmed up I just couldn't reach depth w.o the pain. I only feel it when I sit down into my squat (been doing box squats btw). When I got up to 135 lbs today I basically just dropped to the box and couldn't get back up and the pain would not go away making it very hard to reach depth, I tried widening my stance and everything I could think of but it still hurt to sit into my squat. I spent an hour trying to warmup and it just killed my day I'm still pissed off about it. I've been stretching for 10-15 minutes to cooldown, foam rolling and warming up before lifting, everything that I've read to help with my squats and it just seems to be getting worse. Am I not giving my tendons enough time to recover even though I had the weekend off and got plenty of sleep and food? I'm at a loss as to what I should be doing. At night I've also been getting restless legs sometimes even a shooting pain in my hips and thighs, but I figured that was just typical soreness from getting back into lifting. Every lifting session has been great until today I'm not sure what to do any help on this would be greatly appreciated. One more thing I want to add is that my bench press is higher than my squat which seems like a problem.

On another note I've been working on ankle flexibility for months trying everything I can and it seems to be going nowhere. My left knee can only make it about an inch over my toes when I bend at my ankle and my right knee maybe makes it about two to three inches over my toes. It has barely improved if at all over at least two months now. Does ankle flexibility normally take this long to improve. My feet feel incredibly stiff and I feel they limit me a good bit on my squats as well. Has anyone else had this problem? I've watched YouTube videos and searched around here doing different ankle exercises and they don't seem to help.

Thanks for reading, any input on either of these issues would be a great help.

[Brenden061]

On another note I've been working on ankle flexibility for months trying everything I can and it seems to be going nowhere. My left knee can only make it about an inch over my toes when I bend at my ankle and my right knee maybe makes it about two to three inches over my toes. It has barely improved if at all over at least two months now. Does ankle flexibility normally take this long to improve. My feet feel incredibly stiff and I feel they limit me a good bit on my squats as well. Has anyone else had this problem? I've watched YouTube videos and searched around here doing different ankle exercises and they don't seem to help.

Yeah, I do, I dedicate roughly 4 hours on mobility a week and I unlocked my ankle in ~3 weeks. It wasn't hard because I was aggressive and I used a combination of every technique in the book, literally. It's important to note that your rehab may take longer, or even shorter. It will vary due to variables like past injuries or tight tissues.

I used McConnell straps, large rubber bands, ice baths, BAPS board, wobble boards, lacrosse ball rolling, and LOTS of active ROM. It's kinda like wanting to learn how to whistle, you just want to really want it, and that one angle will break up the scar tissue and you regain your human potential.

[jimt91]

So is there a specific routine I should be doing to fix my ankle problems that is designed for people with horrible ankle mobility a lot of the exercises I find I'm not even able to do.

And for FAI, how exactly would I know if it's that or just tight hips? I have had this problem for as long as I remember so I'm a little worried this could be the issue. anyone else have experience with this?

[PaulRivers]

I don't have a suggestion for the ankles specifically, unfortunately.

For the hips, Defranco's Agile 11 has been a huge help for me -
http://www.defrancostraining.com/ask...y-routine.html

I also do foam rolling, and a stretch where you lay on a table and let your top leg fall down behind your other leg (fall vertically). I don't have a quick reference to it though, unfortunately.

[jimt91]

Definitely going to try the limber 11 out thank you for the link. Anyone else able to give any input on a good ankle routine?

[TBU720]

You are, very simply, not recovering from your sessions. This could either be from not eating enough, not sleeping enough, or doing too much other physical activity.

The pain you feel in your hip is called your hip flexors. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hip_flexors

The ones that get the worst are the psoas and the illiacus. These muscles get very short and very weak from sitting all day.

You could try doing some physical therapy to help get some blood flowing to the hip flexors on your rest days: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVbmiI4YSdU

You could also try doing hip flexor stretches, along with internal rotation strengthening http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fk5TSDBAbPI

Also you should try standing more throughout the day and maybe even doing some very light jumping (be sure to fully extend your hip when you jump! and then in the air, try to bring your knees to chest) to get blood flowing to those hip flexors.

Your pain is muscular and has nothing to do with tendons or flexibility. It is a muscular recovery issue. First make sure youre eating and sleeping enough...then do the rehab I posted. If you still have these problems after adding the rehab to your routine, then add lots and lots of ice and cold showers. And if that fails you have no choice but to take lots of weight off the bar and slowly build back up.

Are you gaining bodyweight?

[jimt91]

Definitely could be from sitting around too much, starting to get cold outside so other than lifting I basically just sit around all day not doing much. I do try to stretch throughout the day though when I think to. As far as eating I have been getting plenty of food and sleep, up to 225lbs with an empty stomach from being 210lbs about a month ago.

[jimt91]

I also did those stretches from those links you posted and they were fairly easy with no pain, didnt feel like the same thing as what i feel when i squat. Its like right above parallel my hips just want to stop and theres no easy way to go lower without forcing it and pain.