This is a bodybuilding question and a sports question, though my primary activity lately is bodybuilding.
I have been lifting continously since September. I have put on 30 pounds since then. I am fairly lean. I always warm up.
I am repeatedly injuring my pelvic/groin area. It seems to be a strain, but it keeps coming back. The first one was in October. It was really bad. I never had anything like it before so I kept playing soccer regularly even after it began to hurt. It got worse. I stopped playing for three months. This was the right groin.
I felt that I had recovered so I went out and played again. I played for two hours and it was cool. I went home, feeling good. The next time I played, I felt that strain coming back. Except this time it was in my left leg. For a few days, I had pain while walking.
My routine consists of deadlifts, bulgarian split squats, overhead squats, back squats, and assorted dumbbell exercises for the chest, back and shoulders. I build up to a heavy triple with the deadlifts and also go relatively heavy on the squats.
Has anyone had an injury like this? What is the likely cause in your experience? Clearly, playing soccer (sprinting movements, quick changes in direction) is bringing the injury back to life, but I don’t believe that it is the original cause. I would like to keep playing soccer and find a way to correct this problem. Thoughts?
Your ‘groin’ is a vague area. Many people say this when they could be referring to their inner legs, hip flexors, lower abs, or other areas which I like the physiological knowledge to name.
Where specifically? And how did you injure it initially?
Also, have you iced it before? And if so, how did it feel later?
It’s most likely infammation of a tendon OR inhibited muscles that are causing problems elsewhere. But your description is terrible so you wont get a good answer on a forum. Go to a doctor because it’s obviously not getting better on its own
[quote]silverhydra wrote:
Your ‘groin’ is a vague area. Many people say this when they could be referring to their inner legs, hip flexors, lower abs, or other areas which I like the physiological knowledge to name.
Where specifically? And how did you injure it initially?
Also, have you iced it before? And if so, how did it feel later?[/quote]
The pain in the right “groin” happened directly to the left of the right hipbone. Feels like lower ab, now that you ask…
The left “groin” pain is right below the hip, along the inner thigh and the pain occurs every time I do a lifting motion with that leg (climbing stairs for example).
I iced it the day after the last time I played. It helped a lot and I felt much better the next day.
The initial injury happened in October. I was sprinting over a soccer field and I was totally out of shape, having recently returned to soccer after a year without any exercise. After aa few sessions of playing 2-hour games without warming up, I started feeling it.
Thanks for replying. Really hope to get to the bottom of this
Hope I can help here. I think you need to start warming up properly, and make sure your form on lower-body stuff isn’t retarded. For warm-ups…
Since you play soccer your hips are often externally rotated, so a hip internal rotation stretch/mobility exercise would be good. Cressey has talked a lot about this.
^ Hold that or do a mobilization-type movement (going back and forth)
^ Laying prone make a windshield wiper-type movement for 8-12 reps.
Stretch/mobilize your adductors as a warm-up also. This is ESSENTIAL for preventing groin strains/injuries.
^ Watch the first video that Cressey posted. Make sure you do the stretch in both hip flexion & extension, as shown.
Stretch your rectus femoris/hip flexors as a warm-up too.
Do your foam rolling! Specifically the adductors, IT band, and quads. The more painful the better.
Strengthen your psoas! While this may not be directly correlated to your groin injury, it’s good to knock out in the warm-up to prevent knee pain.
^ See the pics that Mike Robertson posted about psoas strengthening.
Use a resistance band to stretch your hamstrings out for the hell of it at night. A mobilization for this prior to warming-up wouldn’t hurt either (i.e. leg swings).
Also, forgot to mention, stay away from anything that puts that area in an extreme stretch. For example, I can’t do the ab wheel right now because it aggravates my lower ab/groin area, so I’m doing preventive warm-up stuff (like the ones I listed) and once I feel I’m good, I will go back to the ab wheel.
And stop going straight into sprinting! You know better than this. Your muscles aren’t used to this and don’t know how to fire correctly, especially without any kind of warm-up. You are going to get injured easily this way.
