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I'm making this thread documenting my dealings with hip pinch in hopes that it may help someone else out or that I can get some tips to help myself out. I've been lifting for about 11 years now, and I'm always working through some sort of ache or pain. I have never dealt with hip pinch until recently. It's basically a tightness or discomfort that I feel near my hip when I reach near parallel in a squat. It's most noticeable when stopping the descent of the squat and then trying to come out of the hole. I'm also noticing discomfort when setting up for leg drive + an arch on bench press.
When did this start for me and what triggered it
This started about 3-4 weeks ago. What triggered it? No idea. I've been squatting for a long time and have never had it. I will say I was hitting some PRs on squats and peaking. Another theory is that I got it from catching a clean and jerk wrong. I've been dicking around with the oly lifts for a while, and I've never really got decent at them. I sometimes catch the clean funky at the bottom. With that said, it was never one particular lift where I can say I noticed it. It just slowly crept in. It became a problem one time when I didn't want to come out of the hole of a squat with a weight far below 90% of my 1RM. The tightness and discomfort was too much that I figured it was a bad idea to move forward.
How am I trying to work around it?
As mentioned, this was not just limiting squats, but bench also. I did not want to cut out both lifts. I found that I could do high box squats (squatting onto my Rogue bench a couple inches above parallel) did not cause any pain. I've used this movement before as it's good for overloading my squat. I've found I can 5RM my regular 1RM squat. For bench, I decided to do feet up bench. I actually lay another bench perpendicular across my regular bench and have my feet rest on it.
Is it getting better?
Yes, slowly. The other day I was going to try a normal squat workout. I actually found that I had zero discomfort with squats far below parallel. I did pause squats and pause front squats well below parallel. My mobility has always enabled me to go deep, but I generally cut off squats a bit past parallel as going that deep doesn't help at all from a numbers perspective. I also did pause benches the other day setting up with leg drive. I did notice a bit more discomfort after both the squat and pause bench workout, so I'm at the point where I'll probably alternate days and still use the high box squats and feet up bench.
How bad will my squat and bench suffer?
This is what I'm most curious about. I think my bench might actually improve. I went fairly heavy on my first pause bench workout back, and it felt good. I remember Dan Green saying how much his bench improved after his knee surgery where he had to bench with his feet up. One of his big tips is to try to work on not relying on leg drive and just getting stronger. With squats, it will be interesting. I'm getting fairly comfortable with weight higher than my 1RM on my back. On the flip side, the pause squats way below parallel aren't even at 75% of my 1RM, so my positioning in the hole with heavy weight is going to be foreign.
Stretches, etc.
So I've read a bit on this, and there are a few stretches that they talk about. Honestly, none have really helped. They do help for a warmup though.
When did this start for me and what triggered it
This started about 3-4 weeks ago. What triggered it? No idea. I've been squatting for a long time and have never had it. I will say I was hitting some PRs on squats and peaking. Another theory is that I got it from catching a clean and jerk wrong. I've been dicking around with the oly lifts for a while, and I've never really got decent at them. I sometimes catch the clean funky at the bottom. With that said, it was never one particular lift where I can say I noticed it. It just slowly crept in. It became a problem one time when I didn't want to come out of the hole of a squat with a weight far below 90% of my 1RM. The tightness and discomfort was too much that I figured it was a bad idea to move forward.
How am I trying to work around it?
As mentioned, this was not just limiting squats, but bench also. I did not want to cut out both lifts. I found that I could do high box squats (squatting onto my Rogue bench a couple inches above parallel) did not cause any pain. I've used this movement before as it's good for overloading my squat. I've found I can 5RM my regular 1RM squat. For bench, I decided to do feet up bench. I actually lay another bench perpendicular across my regular bench and have my feet rest on it.
Is it getting better?
Yes, slowly. The other day I was going to try a normal squat workout. I actually found that I had zero discomfort with squats far below parallel. I did pause squats and pause front squats well below parallel. My mobility has always enabled me to go deep, but I generally cut off squats a bit past parallel as going that deep doesn't help at all from a numbers perspective. I also did pause benches the other day setting up with leg drive. I did notice a bit more discomfort after both the squat and pause bench workout, so I'm at the point where I'll probably alternate days and still use the high box squats and feet up bench.
How bad will my squat and bench suffer?
This is what I'm most curious about. I think my bench might actually improve. I went fairly heavy on my first pause bench workout back, and it felt good. I remember Dan Green saying how much his bench improved after his knee surgery where he had to bench with his feet up. One of his big tips is to try to work on not relying on leg drive and just getting stronger. With squats, it will be interesting. I'm getting fairly comfortable with weight higher than my 1RM on my back. On the flip side, the pause squats way below parallel aren't even at 75% of my 1RM, so my positioning in the hole with heavy weight is going to be foreign.
Stretches, etc.
So I've read a bit on this, and there are a few stretches that they talk about. Honestly, none have really helped. They do help for a warmup though.
