Hey dudes. I’m looking for the opinions/experiences of people who’ve had the same or similar issues. A few months ago, I strained/tweaked my left lower back/glute area from doing heavy squats the day after heavy rows. More or less, I feel it was a combination of bad luck, and pushing my lower back a bit too far.
About a week after that, I tried doing barbell rows again, and just unracking 365 hurt terribly, so for the next 6ish weeks I did only back work that didn’t involve my lower back much/at all. Same approach with legs for about that time. The pain was extremely sharp, like daggers and stuff.
Fast forward to present; I’m hitting PRs in squats, strength overall is feeling great, but I have this persistent dull/minor cramp-type pain in my left glute. It’s barely present when sitting, not really present at all when lifting. It’s most aggravated by when I sit for a while then stand up, or by stretching out my left leg straight out in front, either on the ground or held in the air in front of me. I figure it has to be a nerve thing probably, since it doesn’t affect strength, but it’s still super annoying.
Ideas?
I’m not really qualified to give advice, but could it be your piriformis? Roll it and see what happens.
I also have a similar condition where it bugs me right at the top of my glute and my lower erector. Sometimes a little twinge of pain shoots into my ass. From what I’f gathered by my web surfing it’s probably the piriformis like hastalles said. I’ve been rolling it and it helps take it away for a while but it always seems to come back. What really seemed to help get rid of it the best was doing ab fall outs with my blast straps and doing the old ab wheel. At work I’d even find a chair with wheels and do ab fall outs by using the arm rests as handles. I focused on these religiously for about 6 weeks and the pain shoots didn’t come back. I then had shoulder surgery and cannot do the fall outs and guess what… cue little creepy girl from Poltergeist… “Their baaaack”…lol.
Oh I almost forgot. Doing reverse hypers or kettlebell swings where I focused on hip drive to swing the bell seemed to help tremendously also.
personally, I find resting and not doing the movements that caused the pain in the first place the best way to recover from minor injury.
so stop heavy squatting and rowing til it goes away.
not very hardcore suggestion but it might help
Ever had a chiropractor look at you? It might help.
[quote]jakerz96 wrote:
Ever had a chiropractor look at you? It might help.[/quote]
No I have not, but have toyed with the idea. I don’t think the military would cover it though, since it isn’t preventing me from doing anything. Just makes standing up a little stiff for a moment. That crap gets expensive lol.
[quote]bluebrasil wrote:
personally, I find resting and not doing the movements that caused the pain in the first place the best way to recover from minor injury.
so stop heavy squatting and rowing til it goes away.
not very hardcore suggestion but it might help [/quote]
Yeah that’s how I got the “strain” or whatever to go away in the first place. However, movements don’t aggravate this symptom…it actually bothers me the least after/while training legs. I’m not sure that this is related, but it seems like a big coincidence timing-wise if it isn’t related.
[quote]StrengthDawg wrote:
I also have a similar condition where it bugs me right at the top of my glute and my lower erector. Sometimes a little twinge of pain shoots into my ass. From what I’f gathered by my web surfing it’s probably the piriformis like hastalles said. I’ve been rolling it and it helps take it away for a while but it always seems to come back. What really seemed to help get rid of it the best was doing ab fall outs with my blast straps and doing the old ab wheel. At work I’d even find a chair with wheels and do ab fall outs by using the arm rests as handles. I focused on these religiously for about 6 weeks and the pain shoots didn’t come back. I then had shoulder surgery and cannot do the fall outs and guess what… cue little creepy girl from Poltergeist… “Their baaaack”…lol.
Oh I almost forgot. Doing reverse hypers or kettlebell swings where I focused on hip drive to swing the bell seemed to help tremendously also. [/quote]
Have done ab rollouts once since having this. They felt find, but haven’t done them consistently enough to say whether or not they’d help. Why do you think ab rollouts or fallouts seem to help? Seems odd to me. Honestly, I suck at knowing how to fix injuries for the most part, because of how rarely I get hurt. I tend to be better at avoiding them in the first place, but that kinda leaves me screwed for when it DOES happen. Oops. If you say it helps though, I suppose I’ll start regularly doing rollouts and such a few times a week. Did you pretty much just do them a lot, sub-maximally?
To me it sounds like a soft tissue issue. If you are training without it getting worse, it’s very unlikely you have a low grade strain there. My guess is trigger point(s) and/or muscle spasming. Glutes are not gonna get much out of a foam roller since they take more of a beating than most muscles. I like to go in there with a lacrosse ball. DeFrancosTraining.com - Piriformis myofascial release - YouTube
I’m very prone to muscle spasms so the trigger points throughout my body tend to act up from time to time during more intense periods of training. You should check out “The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook.” Trigger points can entrap nerves and wreak all kinda havoc. And whenever I get them I too would always describe it as an annoying cramping sensation.
To give you an idea of the havoc I’m talking about (which usually occurs with non-active folks who sit all day) here’s all the common referred pain patterns for a piriformis trigger point:
-referred pain primarily to the sacroiliac region (the joint where the sacrum and big pelvic bone join), over the buttock, and down the back of the thigh
-in cases of nerve entrapment, the referred pain may extend down all the way to the calf and bottom of the foot, the gluteal muscles may atrophy, the foot may be numb and hard to walk on, and there may be swelling in the leg
-pain is worse with sitting and activity
-entrapment of the pudendal nerve may cause impotence in males and pain with intercourse in females, and pain in the groin or area in front of the anus5
-you may squirm a lot and shift positions trying to get comfortable, and have difficulty crossing one leg over the other knee while seated
-when laying face-up, your foot will rotate out to the side, rather than being in straight alignment6
Now imagine walking into an Orthopedic or GP with any of those more serious symptoms? You’d get absolutely nowhere…lol.
[quote]hungry4more wrote:
[quote]StrengthDawg wrote:
I also have a similar condition where it bugs me right at the top of my glute and my lower erector. Sometimes a little twinge of pain shoots into my ass. From what I’f gathered by my web surfing it’s probably the piriformis like hastalles said. I’ve been rolling it and it helps take it away for a while but it always seems to come back. What really seemed to help get rid of it the best was doing ab fall outs with my blast straps and doing the old ab wheel. At work I’d even find a chair with wheels and do ab fall outs by using the arm rests as handles. I focused on these religiously for about 6 weeks and the pain shoots didn’t come back. I then had shoulder surgery and cannot do the fall outs and guess what… cue little creepy girl from Poltergeist… “Their baaaack”…lol.
Oh I almost forgot. Doing reverse hypers or kettlebell swings where I focused on hip drive to swing the bell seemed to help tremendously also. [/quote]
Have done ab rollouts once since having this. They felt find, but haven’t done them consistently enough to say whether or not they’d help. Why do you think ab rollouts or fallouts seem to help? Seems odd to me. Honestly, I suck at knowing how to fix injuries for the most part, because of how rarely I get hurt. I tend to be better at avoiding them in the first place, but that kinda leaves me screwed for when it DOES happen. Oops. If you say it helps though, I suppose I’ll start regularly doing rollouts and such a few times a week. Did you pretty much just do them a lot, sub-maximally? [/quote]
My problem I believe, is because I HATE doing ab stuff so I don’t do enough 90% of the time. I have to MAKE me do it. My back is so much stronger & I believe it’s getting over worked because of my weak ass abs. Knowing only a tiny bit about you in my time here on T- Nation I would suspect weak abs are not your problem but there’s probably no such things as “too strong” for abs.
You still in the Marines man? If so maybe swing by medical sometime and run it by them to see if something gets their attention.
I have exactly what it sounds like you have. Lacrosse ball rolling as others have suggested has really helped. In addition to rolling the piriformis, check out how to get at the glute medius as that could be part of the issue as well.
Give this test a try on both sides and see if one side is more mobile than the other, you don’t need someone to push down or anything just see how far you can let your knee drop on its own.
I’ve found with some people that one side goes down to the floor while the other doesn’t even get past parallel which leads to a few hip rotational issues. Another thing you can do is to stand with your feet along a straight edge and look down and see if your belly button is about inline with the center between your feet.
So the fix if you find you have one side tighter than the other is to do the soft tissue work and piriformis stretching recommended above while also strengthening the other hip to help pull you in line with single leg glute bridge work, x band walks and things like that. Hope that helps
I’ve had some success in dealing with similar issues by doing very high rep work (50-100 reps) on a 45 degree back raise emphasizing glute contraction. My idea was to flush as much blood into the area as possible, and it seemed to work pretty well.
Everyone has already covered what i’ve done to help with my glute problems. Reverse hypers are awesome, as well as lighter high rep work like bosskean mentioned.
The only thing i would add knowing you do alot of sumo deads and etc is to use the lacrosse ball on your hamstrings and adductors. Particularly on the upper/inner part where it originates. If my glute or hamstrings are acting up, that is the place that usually has a knot/trigger point, besides the piriformis area.
Yknow now that y’all mention it, I haven’t rolled that area in forever. About to do it now, I feel like it’s gonna hurt bad just thinking about it. Will report back.
Wow. Just about 3 minutes of painful rolling with a tennis ball, and it’s already feeling much better, less stiff, etc. I’m happy. Gonna keep it up indefinitely for now. Victoryyyyy!
[quote]hungry4more wrote:
[quote]jakerz96 wrote:
Ever had a chiropractor look at you? It might help.[/quote]
No I have not, but have toyed with the idea. I don’t think the military would cover it though, since it isn’t preventing me from doing anything. Just makes standing up a little stiff for a moment. That crap gets expensive lol. [/quote]
It does get expensive, but it usually helps. Here’s a site that will help with nearly everything.
www.mobilitywod.com
I hope it’s not your SI.
For me it was my SI.
It was really bad. Getting in and out of cars was brutal and I barely bend over and it hurt a lot. It took 4 months to get my squat where it was and 7 months till my deadlift was back up to speed.
What helped was lots of that piriformis stretch and stretching the external rotators too.
Reverse hypers with a squeeze and a pause at the top done with a very slow tempo with just bw for reps.
High rep, low weight one legged db RDLs done with a very slow tempo and lots of control and perfect form.
The good girl/bad girl machine helped a lot. I would put it on adduction and set it up to where I would get a good stretch on the eccentric and hold that stretch, then move very slowly in till the pads meet and squeeze them for a second or two and repeat. I’d do this with light weight and very high reps. It was very important to keep my back arched and use perfect form.
Of course the lacrosse ball or a golf ball. I found a tennis ball had too much give and didn’t get in deep enough.
Also, one thing that really helped was propping up a broom handle with the pointier end into the wall and rounded end towards you and putting that end into my SI joint area and lean on it a little. Left a little bruising, but it helped loosen things up and often things would ‘pop’ back into place when I followed that with the reverse hypers and 1L RDLs. It would feel so much better after that.
[quote]Fletch1986 wrote:
I hope it’s not your SI.
For me it was my SI.
It was really bad. Getting in and out of cars was brutal and I barely bend over and it hurt a lot. It took 4 months to get my squat where it was and 7 months till my deadlift was back up to speed.
What helped was lots of that piriformis stretch and stretching the external rotators too.
Reverse hypers with a squeeze and a pause at the top done with a very slow tempo with just bw for reps.
High rep, low weight one legged db RDLs done with a very slow tempo and lots of control and perfect form.
The good girl/bad girl machine helped a lot. I would put it on adduction and set it up to where I would get a good stretch on the eccentric and hold that stretch, then move very slowly in till the pads meet and squeeze them for a second or two and repeat. I’d do this with light weight and very high reps. It was very important to keep my back arched and use perfect form.
Of course the lacrosse ball or a golf ball. I found a tennis ball had too much give and didn’t get in deep enough.
Also, one thing that really helped was propping up a broom handle with the pointier end into the wall and rounded end towards you and putting that end into my SI joint area and lean on it a little. Left a little bruising, but it helped loosen things up and often things would ‘pop’ back into place when I followed that with the reverse hypers and 1L RDLs. It would feel so much better after that.
[/quote]
Well again, training doesn’t seem to hurt it, although it certainly could just be that once the muscles cool down it gets stiff-like again. Hard to be sure. But I digress; I just tried the piriformis stretch, and I can REALLY feel that, so it looks like that’s what it is probably. Maybe try the broomstick idea, and sadly all my lacrosse balls seem to have disappeared; only had a tennis ball in the house tonight. Might grab a few golf balls though, I’m cringing right now just thinking about how that’ll feel haha.
Thanks everyone for advice thus far, already has been very helpful.
