Thread: Hip flexors pain while heavy squatting

So, I've always had slight pain, when squatting heavy. 2 years ago I overdid it and I had an injury, my everyday life did not change at all, but I could not squat weighted for 6 months. Since then, I have been building up back my squat, I do proper stretching after squatting and mobillity work before squatting. I have had minimal problems, until yesterday when I was going to attempt a 1RM. I did not even get to it, as on my heavier warm up set, I felt sudden pain. I just lowered back the weights after that and did some light work for the day.

This squatting problem, has really made me feel down. My squat has always been ahead of my lifts, I did a 3 plate squat, when I could do a a 150lbs bench. But, I have always been struggling with discomfort and depth. As for the form, I have checked it countess of times by now, it has become really good, after years of worrying and retrying.

So, I have hip flexor pain, when squatting heavy. Is it because my hip flexors are weak? Am I not flexible enough? Anyone has gone through the same situation? Thanks.

That sounds familiar.

I have never rated stretching and I think mobility work can be part of a warmup but doesn't necessarily prevent problems like I have experienced (and it sounds like are similar to what you are experiencing).

Hip flexor pain is often referred from the lower back. I've had this. My particular issue was overextending - sticking butt out - at the top - this can't be sustained to full depth so my lumbar was moving under load at the bottom - a recipe for trouble. I had to learn to hold a straight spine position by cueing myself to think about pulling the sternum down with the abs - not raising chest. This takes time and practice to get used to.

Another thing was that I benefitted greatly from was to directly train the upper glutes using a hip abduction machine. These are not well trained by regular squat and deadlift and were the source of spasming which led to hip pain. Generally speaking, any muscle which is not adequately and smoothly trained through a full ROM can cause problems - e.g. traps during jerky movements like power cleans - so it's always good in my experience, to train such muscles directly with isolation exercises done with full ROM and smooth, even resistance.

I feel your pain, literally. I tweaked mine cleaning 150lbs. then front squatting it almost 2 months ago. I haven't been able to have a productive squat workout since. I reaggravate it every time. The pain moved to the rear of the hip a couple days ago when I did deadlifts. That's lead me to believe it's more lower back and glutes as Suffolk mentioned above. I was also able to do a bunch of stretches I found on youtube and eventually pop the joint myself. It feels much better today but I'm going to be doing split squats, no real ones, for a few weeks.

excellent article, thanks for the information