Recurring Anterior Hip Pain

Bigger Stronger Leaner Injuries and Rehab
1

During February of last year, I was attempting the Smolov Squat Program. About two weeks in, I began to get a lot of soreness and stiffness in the anterior region of my left hip, but I continued to train until I reached a day where I couldn’t get through my warmup sets.

After this, I had to take a break from squatting for about six months. Even unweighted hip flexion was painful, but the most painful position was stabilizing the bottom position of a squat.

I started training the squat again around August and really didn’t have any issues until I was doing some form work this past December. I did one rep with just 95 pounds on the bar (a little over 30% of my one rep max), and somehow managed to re-injure my hip that had, up until that point, given me no problems.

Over the past five months it has gotten better, and occasionally worse, but it never seems to completely go away.

I don’t know exactly what is wrong, but my best guess is a partially torn iliofemoral ligament. I am going to see an orthopedic specialist in about six days, though.

I’m curious if anyone has any advice on nagging injuries, anterior hip pain, or anything even remotely associated with the issues I’m dealing with.

2

There are a lot of things that can refer pain to the hip. What word would you use to describe the pain? Can you be more specific as to where exactly it hurts? Given what aggravates it, I would hazard a guess that your lateral femoral cutaneous nerve is entrapped at either your psoas muscle belly or getting kinked when it goes under your inguinal ligament. Try getting someone that knows what they are doing to do a psoas release (pretty painful but it hurts so good) and some dynamic or PIR stretching of your hip flexors.

EDIT: any muscle weakness associated with your problem?