My Long Story of Chronic Hip Pain

ok so here we go, about 2 years ago i sort of started lifting weights (had always done lots of bodyweight stuff) then beginning of 2010 i started becoming more well read and found a solid program to follow. basic 3x a week, 5x5 program, squats, deadlifts, and press mostly. had some decent success then at around august of that year i began learning more about olympic lifting. i started practicing some of the lifts (power snatch, power clean and jerk etc).

then i decided to try doing squat cleans. felt fine. was still being cautious with weight and form. then tried to add a little more weight on the squat cleans and do 135. on the last rep of my final set i felt a pain when i was at the bottom of the clean. stopped everything, stretched and went home. next day my right hip was aching really bad. the pain radiated from my front/outer hip down my inner thigh.

any sort of lifting of the knee with rotating at the hip gave me a really sharp pain. couldn’t squat pain free whatsoever. tried going on and off to pt but had a really hectic schedule so it made it difficult to keep up with. my hip was only bothered by squats, nothing else. eventually i just stopped squatting all together and tried doing pistols. surprisingly pistols have never given me any hip pain whatsoever. even with additional weight.

maybe like once every other month i’ll try to squat, just to see if i can and find that a similar pain comes back. it doesn’t radiate down my thigh like it did before and lifting and rotating my leg doesn’t hurt anymore. it’s more of a dull pain nowadays. and it’s isolated in the area that i think my tensor fasciae latae is located but i can’t be certain it’s that muscle for sure. but the pain’s still there. and it bums me out that i can’t just do squats. so uh, any thoughts? i’m planning on trying to make a pt visit sometime within the next month.

in retrospect i should have just kept doing basic stuff. there was no reason for me to be doing accessory olympic lifts when i was still making progress as a beginner to lifting in general. oh well.

From what you describe of the pain (radiating from your outer hip down to your inner thigh) it sounds as if it could be your sartorius. It’s a hip flexor; I wouldn’t be so sure of it being your TFL, as it tends to cause pain down the lateral part of the thigh. The sartorius does, however, originate from a similar location to the TFL, which could explain why the dull ache remains in that area.