Did you ever get that nagging pain in the glute/hamstring tie in?
Me neither, but lots of other people do.
I had another topic for today, but this popped up this morning and I decided to see if what I did with one of my lifters will help you.
Cheryl was in the office today for a nutrition follow up appointment and she was asking about a nagging issue she has had for a while.
A little background; Cheryl is 50 and has been beating the shit out of her body for about 35 years.
She has an extensive background in Martial Arts and fighting and is now Powerlifting.
She is only 50 pounds from her Pro total by the way. With this much time beating the body up and being 50, shit is bound to hurt, but this current issue is preventing her from getting to that Pro Total.
She has had a fair amount of pain in her glute/hamstring tie in.
She has seen a ton of soft tissue therapists for this and has had some luck, but not much. I decided to put her on the table and see what we could find.
I found that her quads are SUPER tight and this makes sense from being in a Horse Stance for 30 years, her hips were ridiculous, and her Psoas was like piano wires.
I did some RPR on her and have her a few
Acumobility drills to do as well as some stretches and she felt almost 100% better right away.
I then had her add in some Ass Curls after to see if it helped.
One reason I did this was to figure out if I was on the right track to assessing her issue.
She did about 20 reps of single leg, and then about 20 of double leg and I had her stand up and move, then replicate issues that caused it to flare up.
Viola!
No pain, no issues.
No, we didn’t fix it, we did some work to allow things to fire properly and then had her do an exercise to warm up and strengthen the affected area (Ass Curls).
Here is what we did to make the pain go away:
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RPR focusing on Zone 1 first and then the hot spots:
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Glutes
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Hips
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Psoas
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Quads
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Acumobility Quad release: jam a ball in the quad and flex and extend it
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Acumobility Hip Release: jam a ball just above the Trochanter and raise and lower the leg
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Couch Stretch 30 seconds each side
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Ass Curls 2 sets single leg 20 reps, 1 set 20 reps both legs
I gave her homework to do that consisted of:
- Perform the RPR as directed focusing hard on the Hot Spots
- Do the Acumobility releases and then the couch stretch 30 seconds per side twice each leg
- Ass Curls
- 100 reps week 1
- 150 reps week 2
- 200 reps week 3
This is to be done before every training session.
We had great results from this today and I am pretty confident that we will see even more progress, and hopefully a complete reduction in the pain over the course of a few weeks.
Now, let me say, I didn’t invent the Ass Curl, it is something I had never seen until a few months ago when Candace added it to my program.
That's Candace in the above picture. She's a bad ass.
Candace learned it when she worked at the Sweatt Shop with Laura Phelps.
I like to give credit where it is due, so thanks Laura for teaching this to Candace so she could teach it to me.
The Ass Curl works the area at the hamstring/glute tie in where there are a whole bunch of muscle crossing over each other.
It’s easy for imbalances to take over if you are not doing all of your accessory work 100% correctly.
The Ass Curl takes about 3-4 minutes to add in and can make a world of difference for you.
So, if you’ve got some nagging pain in this area, try out my protocol. Obviously, if it makes it worse, STOP. See a Doctor!
I am pretty sure it will help though.
If you are going to add it in to your training, I suggest doing both legs to begin and using very high reps.
You won’t feel it until you get to about 20 or 30 unless you have a severe weakness.
Shoot for 100 reps in as few sets as possible the first week, 150 the next and 200 the last week.
After that, add in single leg using the same protocol.
You can also add this in even if you don’t have pain.
It will strengthen a hard to hit area in a very short time.
This leads to more weight lifted and less risk of injury/compensation.
That’s a win.
Please enjoy the Ass Curl video.
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Vincere vel mori
By: C.J. Murphy
May 3, 2018