Anyone deadlift (sumo in particular) with squat briefs?

DopeItUp

I have hip flexor problems (old injuries) that flare up if I sumo too much. I can do it once/week but twice/week starts to give me hip flexor pain during the movement. I've tried everything. So I broke out some squat briefs and gave them a try tonight. They were too tight and I will need to buy a slightly bigger pair but it made me wonder if they could be an effective tool for when I'm doing sumos for volume (5x5 @ 405 tonight). Anyone have any experience in this arena at all? Or other tricks to try? So far I:

Have an extensive stretch/warmup routine for hips. Lots of Chris Duffin stuff (split squats, hip airplanes, etc). I also wear compression cuffs around the tops of my thighs (right up against the hips) which is another Chris Duffin thing. Both helped significantly but not totally. If this doesn't work I'll probably just do RDLs or something for volume day. I'd just do conventional for volume day but it destroys my lower back (which is why I switched to sumo in the first place).

Sarauk2sf

Never used them, but I found a lot of volume on squats and sumos made my hips achy towards the end of a volume block. What does your squat and deadlift volume look like over the week?

nossmf

Where is 405 in relation to your max? I've read, and personally stick to, singles and doubles above 80% of max. (I'm also jealous, you're doing 5x5 at my 1RM, lol.)

I've not had any problems with my hips doing volume sumo squats, but I'm still too new to sumo DL's to give advice there.

DopeItUp

My volume isn't crazy (to me). I'm doing 5/3/1 with swapped assistance work so basically:

Tuesday: 5/3/1 sets deadlift with AMRAP (belted). Then 5x5 squats at about 75% 1RM (no belt, wraps, etc).
Friday: 5/3/1 sets squats with AMRAP (belted) and then another AMRAP with squat briefs (I just started doing this as an overload set, probably irrelevant). 5x5 DLs with about 75% 1RM again (no belt).

Pretty simple. I don't really do anything else hip-related all week.

I don't actually get any pain after my workout. It hurts during the actual movement, at the top (hip-hinge portion). It'll hurt on the way up and then even worse on the way down funnily enough. Weights are largely irrelevant, once it starts hurting it'll hurt at anything over 3 plates or so. Which is relatively light for me. Once it starts hurting, a rest week will make it disappear. Once I restart my program, after a week or three the pain will start to show up again.

So basically I'm just looking for an edge to keep my training in place. If I can't find it, I'll cut out the volume sumos and just do RDLs for sets of 10 or something. It doesn't hurt at all with my feet closer together (conventional stance or shoulder-width squats). All of my squats are shoulder-width stanced, BTW. I've tried wider and it makes my hip hurt 24/7 and during all movements. Given all of this, I pretty much am working with limited wide-stance ability so I limit it to just sumo DLs as they are optimal for me.

MattBrouse

Blanket advice after quickly skimming this thread:

The briefs are likely to provide the most support at the bottom position more than the top of the ROM. Many will find them helpful for keeping the hips healthy - most I've known that use them and find this to be true are heavy gear lifters (triple ply etc) so assume what you want from that - not typically a lot of volume, but a strong reliance on assistive gear through the "bottom" of the ROM.

I would start building repetition, then frequency of the following:

Donkey Kicks
Side Lying Clams
Hip Bridges (Wide and narrow)
Birddogs
and plenty of stretching of the glutes and hip flexors, adductors and abductors as needed...

Again, blanket post, so...