This is a post for a gym buddy of mine who doesn’t have access to a computer.
Dude is 5’10", close to 325 lbs, and used to be able to deadlift around 600. And he’s mexican, if that helps diagnosis.
He suffers from a sharp pain in his lower right back, right above his glutes, on his waist, about five inches to the right of his spine. It hurts when he lifts (even if he’s only DLing 95 lbs), and it hurts when he’s recovering in between sets whether he’s standing or sitting (Don’t know about laying down, forgot to ask). It gets aggravated when his back and glutes are flexed simultaneously- I don’t know about seperately.
The second ailment is a pain in his right groin, where the leg meets the hip. Turning his leg inward and bending foward increases the pain.
Both pains come and go. A physical therapist friend of his told him he might have pulled a muscle that runs from the outside of his thigh to inside his knee. From what I remember this is the IT band, though I’m not a doctor, so don’t quote me on that. Said therapist did some massage on the outside of the hip that didn’t seem to do a whole lot.
I thought the groin problem might have something to do with poor stabilizers, but he’s had the pain for close to a year now and he used to do walking lunges with a (lightly) loaded barbell about six months ago and that didn’t really help him, he says.
For practically all his lifts (not just lifts over 80-90%, but even warm-ups) he uses a belt. He’s never, except in the last two days, done serious ab-work. I had an ab-rollout and told him to knock himself out, just not to go to failure. He did.
I don’t know if these problems are symptoms of the same problem or different problems. The main focus is getting him back so he can deadlift pain-free again. What’s wrong and what should he do?