Adductor Issues

I started having this issue some time after switching to sumo about 2 years ago after injuring my back pulling conventional.

Not really, for a while I had three lower body days a week (one squat, one deadlift, one squat + dl assistance) and now I’m down to two days (heavy squat, light squat/heavy deadlift) but it hasn’t made any significant difference. I was hoping that having an extra day to recover between the main squat day and my deadlift day would make a difference, but so far it hasn’t. All I know is that pause squats make my adductors real sore, but even though I didn’t do them this week my adductors still got sore and tight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maZpAl_AtJg

Recently I tried doing “recovery workouts” the day after lower body workouts, I got the idea from Dave Tate. I did high rep bodyweight squats and some adductor thing with a band, it made me feel better when I was done but I would tighten up and feel sore again within a few hours. Thanks for the suggestion though.

Basically what I need is something that will make my adductors “release”, it seems like they just get insanely tight and sore. I always feel better the day after my next lower body workout, but it’s the same thing again after I deload.

How often are you stretching? I have found stretching and foam rolling are your friends with hip and leg soreness.

May need more recovery time also. How many days apart are your squat and deadlift workouts?

I do lower body stretches every day that I don’t squat or deadlift. I have a foam roller as well as a PVC pipe, they help with other issues but have yet to make a difference with this. It seems like they don’t put enough pressure on any one spot and the muscle is thick so it just doesn’t do anything. I tried digging into my adductors with a theracane, again no success.

I don’t think that I need more recovery time in general, it’s just that one week after the deload. If anything I might be better off with less recovery time, other times when I trained full body 4-5 days a week I didn’t have this issue but higher frequency full body training presents other issues. That might be the solution though.

It could be that your body is trying to get back acclimated to the heavy lifting after the deload.

That’s exactly what it is, if you listen to people like Greg Nuckols or Mike Israetel the say that part of the reason for deloading is to increase your responsiveness to training. There’s a thing called the repeated bout effect, the idea is that your body becomes less susceptible to muscle damage from doing the same thing regularly, but the training effect also decreases as a result. So my adductors get beat up when I squat after a deload but due to RBE I don’t get the same thing the following week. I suppose I could also try starting a mesocycle with a lower volume week, but that’s almost like a two week deload then.

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So you’ve had this issue for 2 years. Has it gotten worse or stayed the same?

I don’t know. Sounds like a recovery issue at this point and not an injury or even an injury risk.

I like the idea of pump work with the band around your back seated.

I don’t understand why your body has not acclimated. Even if it’s after a deload, you’re still lifting that week. Are you cutting cals during your deload week? Lots of people do that and it’s a terrible idea.

May just be something you have to deal with you special snowflake.

No, it’s definitely not an injury. The only injury risk is that my I could potentially tear my adductors due to them being so tight, but yesterday they weren’t that bad, just hard to get into position. Watch this guy set up, he’s wearing a suit but that’s how I felt raw:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDIeDyPcaEc

I forgot to mention, I march in Antifa protests on my deload weeks…

No, I don’t cut calories during deloads. I cut down on caffeine though, but with the cold, dark weather here at the moment I still drank a few cups of coffee and energy drinks last week, just not right before training.

I could try this:

I tried hooking a band up to my power rack and one ankle and just standing and doing a one legged adduction type of thing, as I mentioned above it provided temporary relief but didn’t last. But my legs were fully extended, I suppose doing it seated could have a different effect. But you know, right now my adductors are barely sore at all and I did sumo deadlifts yesterday and I was sore and tight as hell through the whole thing. Maybe I should just switch to full body workouts.

I know I sound like I’m contradicting myself saying that yesterday it wasn’t that bad and then saying I was sore and tight as hell, I really was sore and tight and it was uncomfortable but other times (when I did pause squats) it was agonizing. I’m seriously considering full body training just to avoid this issue.

This is hilarious, lol. Seriously though, are you getting in plenty abductor work? (Clam shells, banded laterals, walks, etc?) Erector work? (Conventional, extensions, etc?) Have you looked into lower crossed syndrome?

I don’t do any sort of abductor work, but it’s not like my knees are caving in when I squat or deadlift either. As far as erector work, I have been doing good mornings (previously RDLs) after squatting and I do some heavy barbell rows on my deadlift day, other than that it’s just squatting and pulling and variations.

I think I might have had some degree of lower crossed syndrome at one point, up to maybe two years or a year and a half ago, basically my squat and deadlift were hamstring and lower back dominant movements and didn’t use a whole lot of glutes or quads. I spent a lot of time sorting that out, changing my technique, doing glute activation stuff and stretching/releasing my hip flexors, and building up my glutes and quads. I don’t think that is my problem though, and it’s only since I have sorted that out that my adductors get so sore.

Hmmm… Not even going to act like I know. Anytime, I’ve ever had any issues with overuse or tendonitis type issues, I’ve always had luck looking to antagonists being tight or underused and usually a pretty quick fix, other than tendonitis, which takes a little while. Have you looked into tendinopathy? Do you squat fairly wide? Good luck with getting it worked out. It must literally be a pain in the dick.

I’m sure it’s not any sort of overuse injury, it’s an acute problem that happens after the first squat workout after a deload, every time I deload for the last while. My squat isn’t particularly wide, and interestingly my adductors get the most sore when I do high bar paused squats and I do those with a slightly narrower stance than my usual squat. I linked a video above, but here it is again:
https://youtu.be/maZpAl_AtJg

I’m at a loss. It does sound bizarre. Good looking squat btw.

35 posts later and I prescribe:

Suck it up butter cup:)

Just a thought/ question after reading through this…

Do you do any glute work? Or any type of lunge…

That’s been the plan so far, I was just hoping that there was an alternative.

I don’t do either at the moment. I was doing Bulgarian split squats at one time, kind of like a lunge, they are painful when my adductors are sore and tight from squatting. Also no benefit to the adductor issue. As far as glute work, I was doing rack pulls (below the knees) specifically to target glutes in hopes of improving my deadlift, I got the idea from one of Greg Nuckols’ old articles. It doesn’t seem like it paid off, and I’m pretty sure that 99% of my deadlift issues are due to technique and not weakness in any particular muscle group, but that’s another story. I mentioned that I was doing recovery workouts at one point but they didn’t help my adductors, in one video Dave Tate talks about extra workout; “feeder” workouts the day before (or morning if you train at night) as a sort of muscle activation thing and recovery workouts for self-explanatory reasons. For the feeder workouts I was doing hip thrusts, I set the bar on the pins in the the rack so I could squeeze under it more easily. I was doing 3 sets of 20 with 135, just to get a little pump but not cause any fatigue or soreness. Zero benefit that I can see, unfortunately.

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