Hi T-Nation, I was hoping my first post would be about some progress or something. But unfortunately not. I’ve managed to injure my left glute, I don’t think severely but enough to cause issues when training and getting out of bed in the morning.
I can probably guess why it’s happened, I’ve been on vacation for nearly three months with my wife and half of that was driving through the west coast and some inner states. Then flying to Europe and staying with my parents, even though I’ve been going to the gym kind of regularly (not as much as I’d like but then again it’s not so easy when travelling). I started feeling a dull pain in the side of my left leg about half way up running to just underneath the glute slightly towards the rear of the leg. Originally thought my hamstrings and glutes just needed stretching and everything felt fine at the gym. Went to Paris with my wife for a few days then the day after we got back went to the gym (Friday 22nd Nov) to do a quick full body session. Was working up with triples on the deadlift and decided not to go to heavy and just work up to what should have been an easy 405. Managed 1 rep then my left glute just kind of locked up and I had to hobble around for 5-10 mins until it ‘relaxed’ enough for me to resume normal movement. I finished the workout with no other problems after that deadlift.
Went home foam rolled it for a bit took a cold shower and got plenty of sleep that night. Woke up a little stiff next day, put it down to not having trained enough recently. Took the day off planning to do an upper body session today (24th Nov), got up bright and early whole session went great then went to finish with one set of one arm kettlebell swings with quite a light weight and on the 10th rep my left glute locked up really badly causing me quite a bit of pain and it made me drop the weight. The pain went from the lower mid part of the glute up to where it meets the lower back. Waited 5 mins thought I’d try the right side and just stopped at 3 reps as it was doing it again.
I’ve iced it, stretched it out a bit and done some mobility for my lower body thinking I might just be tight but its still quite painful whenever I bend.
This is my first real injury and I’m not exactly sure what the culprit of it is or how to go about this the right way. I stretch regularly, eat clean 95% of the time, get plenty of sleep and foam roll (will continue to get monthly massages when I get back home this week).
Would just like some advice please, and sorry for the long post just trying to give a lot of detail.
[quote]Samson18 wrote:
Nobody has any input at all?[/quote]
Sorry that no one has helped but I think this section gets less attention then the others. Get your butt (lol) to a good Orthopedic; skip the GP if you can. You’ll only end up walking away with NSAIDs and shitty advice like “Don’t do that again”
[quote]Samson18 wrote:
Nobody has any input at all?[/quote]
Sorry that no one has helped but I think this section gets less attention then the others. Get your butt (lol) to a good Orthopedic; skip the GP if you can. You’ll only end up walking away with NSAIDs and shitty advice like “Don’t do that again”[/quote]
Go to an orthopedic for what? MRI isn’t necessary and they won’t even think about doing an injection considering the acuteness of OP’s injury. Actually rest and NSAID’s sounds like a pretty good plan.
OP lay off the foam rolling during the acute stage of the injury, you probably are causing more irritation than good. Foam rolling and aggressive stretching are more appropriate in most cases for the subacute/ chronic stages of injury. I would consider taking some NSAIDs to reduce inflammation but that is your own personal choice. Are you sure this is a glute injury and not a lower back/ sacral/SI joint injury. Your mechanism of injury sounds like thats plausible. Regardless I would begin gentle exercises to promote glute and core activation such as lateral walks, clams, and maybe planks. Right now the goal would be to reduce pain and inflammation while promoting increases in blood flow. The bike would also be a good option.
[quote]Samson18 wrote:
Nobody has any input at all?[/quote]
Sorry that no one has helped but I think this section gets less attention then the others. Get your butt (lol) to a good Orthopedic; skip the GP if you can. You’ll only end up walking away with NSAIDs and shitty advice like “Don’t do that again”[/quote]
Go to an orthopedic for what? MRI isn’t necessary and they won’t even think about doing an injection considering the acuteness of OP’s injury. Actually rest and NSAID’s sounds like a pretty good plan.
OP lay off the foam rolling during the acute stage of the injury, you probably are causing more irritation than good. Foam rolling and aggressive stretching are more appropriate in most cases for the subacute/ chronic stages of injury. I would consider taking some NSAIDs to reduce inflammation but that is your own personal choice. Are you sure this is a glute injury and not a lower back/ sacral/SI joint injury. Your mechanism of injury sounds like thats plausible. Regardless I would begin gentle exercises to promote glute and core activation such as lateral walks, clams, and maybe planks. Right now the goal would be to reduce pain and inflammation while promoting increases in blood flow. The bike would also be a good option.
[/quote]
Yeah after I posted that comment I checked and noticed that this area of the forum doesn’t receive much love lol.
I took a couple of anti-inflammatories the night it happened and after I woke up. It was a little stiff so did some mobility for it and it felt a lot better. Decided to go to the gym and just go lighter but be careful and leave out things like swings!
I felt one twinge and that was it, I put on a crap ton of layers around it and put on a muscle warming cream during my (for just yesterday) extra long warmup. This seemed to help and its just a little bit stiff today.
I figured I would take the next couple days to relax and try and just keep it mobilised, only problem being I’m flying back to California tomorrow so that’s going to be 10 hours of mostly sitting.
If it gets worse I’ll definitely look into some outside help, and if not then that would be great.
Thanks for the replys guys
Hey doublelung84,
Sorry I didn’t look sooner but thanks for asking I appreciate that. It seems to have gotten better i just did a lot of mobility work on it and recently started my first cycle of 5/3/1. I’m on my second week and the drop in weight at the start of the cycle has really helped me get back into the groove. Fingers crossed it will keep going well.
Thanks again