Stuck this in the power lifting forum cause I figured you all have the most experience with squats and deads.
I injured my left hamstring about 5 years ago. Thought I just pulled it a little bit but it was quite a bit worse.
It’s been 5 years, still hurts but only when I squat or deadlift heavy. I started lifting again last year and ran WS4SB, made some decent strength gains. My work has me traveling a lot so it’s kinda fucking with my consistency. Up to 235 bench, 290 squat, and 385 dead. However my hamstring still hurts on heavy squats and deads and it’s kinda forcing me to use my right leg more.
I started running madcow and foam rolling every day 3 weeks ago. Pain seems to be getting a little bit worse due to fatigue but it’s leveling off. Today I noticed something that helped for the first time: On deads I pulled overhand isntead of mixed, didn’t feel the hammy at all. On squats I really focused on pushing that knee out and the pain decreased.
Would squatting and foam rolling be the best way to go from here or does anyone have any insight as to why it only hurts on squats and deads, not ham curls or anything else?
Please accept that any advice you get here is just friendly advice. It would be irresponsible for anyone here to try to diagnose your issue as it would be purely speculative. I would recommend that you go see a doc since it’s been bugging you this entire 5 years it seems.
If you had tendonitis it would have gone away thru the methods you’ve mentioned. It’s great that a D.O. grip has eased the pain but something is going on. Sorry I don’t have a better tip for you but this is really the only sound advice I can give.
Perhaps at home try positioning your feet and slowly squating down until you find a position that irritates it the least. Same with deadlifts with maybe an empty bar. Deadlifts are notorious for f***ing up hamstrings. Bring a foam roller with you to the squat rack and deadlift area and roll Inbetween sets until some of the pressure releases. I do it all the time with my lower back. Look kind of funny rolling after each set but it helps. Goodluck with the injury man. Hope everything works it’s way out👍
My guess is a a metric ton of scar tissue has built up in there, and that is what hurts. Foam rolling wil definitely help as already have been mentioned, but my suggest would be to get a sports massage from someone who know what he is doing. It will hurt (A LOT) but in less than 10 sessions you will feel 80% better.
Thanks for the input y’all. I’m gonna go ahead and make an appointment with a sports doc and figure out if it is scar tissue or what not and go from there. I’ll just keep foam rolling and lifting the best I can in the mean time.
I started foam rolling/massaging the trouble spot between sets as suggested, and by the time I get done with my warm ups and get to my work sets the pain is gone.