After I go heavy on sumo deadlifts (I’m talking heavy singles), for the next few days I end up getting pain down my legs. It doesn’t feel like muscle pain, but more akin to the arm pain you get from doing straight bar curls. It starts around the back of my knees and goes down to my feet. It makes running and most leg exercises painful. Usually, it subsides about a week after the heavy lifting, but I was wondering if anyone else gets it and what it could be. How would I go about preventing it? It doesn’t happen with the conventional deadlift.
How long have you been lifting sumo compared to conventional? I’ve converted to sumo at the beginning of this year after pulling conventional for 4 years and I haven’t had any problems. It’s likely because I have only been using high reps to build muscles that are more emphasized in sumo compared to conventional so the transition has been smooth. At the beginning of the year my max was 405 for conventional (my back rounded using conventional and it almost looked like a stiff legged deadlift). When I converted to sumo, I lowered my training max to 330 using the 5/3/1 program. Nine months into the program (earlier this month), I hit 325x15 (I go for deadlift PRs during week 2) and I’ll keep training high reps and riding out the gains until I compete for the first time next year. For me, the gains from high reps do transfer to a max single. After hitting the 325x15 PR, I pulled 415 for a single and it came up easy. It seems like your tendons or whatever is causing the pain still isn’t used to the sumo form. You can try to back off and do singles at 85%, see how that feels, and increase the weight by small increments each week to see where the pain threshold begins. I would suggest doing sumo deadlifts as accessory work after the main lift as well if you don’t feel any pain.
[quote]lift206 wrote:
How long have you been lifting sumo compared to conventional? I’ve converted to sumo at the beginning of this year after pulling conventional for 4 years and I haven’t had any problems. It’s likely because I have only been using high reps to build muscles that are more emphasized in sumo compared to conventional so the transition has been smooth. At the beginning of the year my max was 405 for conventional (my back rounded using conventional and it almost looked like a stiff legged deadlift). When I converted to sumo, I lowered my training max to 330 using the 5/3/1 program. Nine months into the program (earlier this month), I hit 325x15 (I go for deadlift PRs during week 2) and I’ll keep training high reps and riding out the gains until I compete for the first time next year. For me, the gains from high reps do transfer to a max single. After hitting the 325x15 PR, I pulled 415 for a single and it came up easy. It seems like your tendons or whatever is causing the pain still isn’t used to the sumo form. You can try to back off and do singles at 85%, see how that feels, and increase the weight by small increments each week to see where the pain threshold begins. I would suggest doing sumo deadlifts as accessory work after the main lift as well if you don’t feel any pain.[/quote]
I’ve been training seriously for 2-3 years. Throughout that time I’ve been using conventional DLs but I’ve been doing sumos on and off for over a year. I use them both and don’t have a preferred stance yet. My max 405-415lb and I hit that recently on sumo. I’ve hit it on conventional as well but I’ve been dieting so I don’t know if I could still hit it. When I use conventional the lock out is with the glutes and I can feel that. But when I do a heavy sumo it seems like the lock out also happens in the groin and the lower back. Even when I am wearing a belt, it feels like both sides of my lower back kind of rotate forward during lock out in sumo. Do you think that this technique difference is giving me the trouble? Last time I went heavy on sumos (many months ago) I also got this pain and it kind of felt like some part of the leg pain was pulling down on my lower back. It was odd. 85% of max would be fine. My program has me doing sumos for 3 weeks and weeks 1 and 2 had sets of 2 and 4; these 2 weeks were fine. There were only singles in week 3, which caused me trouble. The pain was particularly prevalent when I was doing lunges in my other lower body session in the week. It sounds like sciatica even though I don’t think that I have any lower back issues.
Well if you aren’t stronger doing sumo, it doesn’t seem like it’s worth it to continue using them because you’ll risk injury without even benefitting from them. Even if you do think you can pull more with sumo, I think you should take a break from them for at least a few months if it’s a chronic pain. During that time, you can try doing lunges just to make sure those aren’t causing the problem. I doubt they are, they probably just aggravated what was already caused by the sumo pulls. It would be nice if you had videos of pulling heavy doing both conventional and sumo to see whether any improvements in technique can be made. The rotation in the leg and hip could cause the problem. Again, it would be nice to see a video of feet placement, feet angles, position of knees, hips, and back, and how everything moves throughout the lift. From my personal experience, I would advise starting off light, progressing slowly, and using moderate to high reps just like when learning how to squat. It was worth it for me because I started pulling more and have saved my lower back from pulling with shitty form doing conventional.
Sounds like a form issue. post a vid for some real help
I got the exact same pain when I took my sumo stance out 1-2 inches to pull a heavy single. My sumo stance normally is pretty narrow compared to what you normally see, so taking my feet out that far was something new for me.
I just let it heal and stopped deadlifting that wide. When I feel comfortable again, I’ll probably move my stance back in or just pull conventional.