Episode #27: Inspirational Interview | How to Avoid Hip Surgery With the Barbell & Mindset Shifts

Episode #27: Inspiration Interview: How to Avoid Hip Surgery With the Barbell & Mindset Shifts

Experiencing hip pain with squats, getting diagnosed with a labral tear, and facing the possibility of hip surgery after failed attempts at traditional physical therapy can be demoralizing. It’s possible to overcome a labrum tear and continue barbell training without surgery. If you’re only trying to treat the pain through low level exercises and not addressing technique, programming, and developing an understanding of the pain experience, you may not get the outcomes you were hoping for. 

Our goal with bringing on some of our clients is to share their unique stories, experiences with barbell training, and how their training has impacted their lives positively despite the negative medical narratives and belief systems surrounding barbell strength training in hopes that it inspires even just one person out there. 

In this series of interviews, each episode consists of a PRS client sharing their journey of overcoming injuries and illnesses, recovering from surgeries, and navigating changes in their lives and the role that barbell training has played throughout this process for each of them. These are just a handful of our clients that are truly inspiring and motivating and we hope that sharing their stories will inspire you, your patients or clients, or your family to incorporate barbell training into your life or continue barbell training during challenging times.

In this interview, we’ll sit down and speak with PRS client, Parnell, a 36 year old male who had been dealing with hip pain for about 4 years that limited his participation in barbell training. After taking a step back from Crossfit and spending a couple years attempting to rehab his injury, he returned to weightlifting and even did a competition. But he was still having hip pain and eventually went to his orthopedic for an evaluation and imaging, which showed a labrum tear in his left hip. After continued attempts to rehab his hip, he was faced with the decision of whether or not to have surgery. 

When Parnell changed his approach to rehab and reframed his mindset about pain, that’s when things started to shift in a positive direction, all while continuing to train with barbells. It’s now almost 2 ½ years later and Parnell has made a significant amount of progress. He’s much stronger, has improved technique, put on a lot of muscle, and his symptoms are no longer interfering with his training. This is a great example of how we don’t need to change what we see on an image to resolve symptoms. Parnell has also learned how to understand and manage any symptoms if they do arise and he has a unique perspective on changing his relationship with pain. If you’ve been struggling to address an injury and feel like you’re spinning your wheels, listen to his story. Consider getting a second or third opinion and assess your options for rehab. Even if you feel like you’ve exhausted all options and you have to choose between surgery or parting ways with your barbell training, there may still be another answer to addressing your pain.

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Dr. Alyssa Haveson, PT, PRSCC, CSCS: [00:00:55] Welcome back to the Progressive Rehab & Strength Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Alyssa Haveson, clinical coach here at Progressive Rehab & Strength. And I'm here with my co-host, Dr. Rori Alter, head clinical coach at Progressive Rehab & Strength. And we're back with another episode in our series of inspirational client interviews. Our goal with bringing on some of our clients is to share their unique stories, experiences with barbell training, and how their training has impacted their lives positively despite the negative medical narratives and belief systems surrounding barbell strength training, in the hope that it inspires even just one person out there. In this series of interviews, each episode consists of a PRS client sharing their journey of overcoming injuries and illnesses, recovering from surgeries, and navigating changes in their lives, the role that barbell training has played throughout this process for each of them. These are just a handful of our truly inspiring and motivating clients. We hope that sharing their stories will inspire you, your patients, clients, or your family to incorporate barbell training into your life or continue it during challenging times. In this interview, we'll sit down and speak with PRS client Parnell, a 36-year-old male who has been dealing with hip pain for about four years which limited his participation in barbell training.

Dr. Alyssa Haveson, PT, PRSCC, CSCS: [00:02:11] After taking a step back from CrossFit and spending a couple of years attempting to rehab his injury, he returned to weightlifting and even did a competition. But he was still having hip pain and eventually went to his orthopedic for an evaluation and imaging, which showed a labrum tear in his left hip. After continued attempts to rehab his hip, he was faced with deciding whether to have surgery. When Parnell changed his approach to rehab and reframed his mindset about pain, things started to shift positively, all while continuing to train with barbells. It's almost two and a half years later, and Parnell has made significant progress. He's much stronger, has improved technique, put on a lot of muscle, and his symptoms are no longer interfering with his training. This is a great example of how we don't need to change what we see on an image to resolve symptoms. Parnell has also learned how to understand and manage any symptoms if they arise, and he has a unique perspective on changing his relationship with pain.

Dr. Alyssa Haveson, PT, PRSCC, CSCS: [00:03:10] If you've been struggling to address an injury and feel like you're spinning your wheels, listen to his story. Consider getting a second or third opinion and assess your options for rehab. Even if you feel like you've exhausted all options and have to choose between surgery or parting ways with your barbell training, there may still be another answer to addressing your pain.

Dr. Alyssa Haveson, PT, PRSCC, CSCS: [00:03:35] Well, thank you for joining us, Parnell. We wanted to talk to you because, in my opinion, your experience is not very uncommon. You had pain for many years before I met you. And I'll let you give the timeline and rundown of that. But you were kind of spinning your wheels. You were going to physical therapy, doing physical therapy exercises, returning to training, still having pain, back to physical therapy, returning to training. And we were at the point where it was like, well, do I have surgery on this hip labrum, tear or not? And had it seemed to me like you felt like you were basically like at the end of the road, you had exhausted all options, and this was your last resort. And you didn't have surgery. You are very strong.

Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:04:28] Quite strong.

Dr. Alyssa Haveson, PT, PRSCC, CSCS: [00:04:30] I recently and I was talking to Rori about you the other day because, as you know, with your check-in email, I pointed out the significant amount of muscle mass you've gained in the past couple of years. You're strong. You're not having.

Parnell: [00:04:46] a belly, too.

Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:04:46] Power Belly! 

Dr. Alyssa Haveson, PT, PRSCC, CSCS: [00:04:49] Yeah, but you were scrawny a couple of years ago.

Parnell: [00:04:55] Yeah, I was. I was. When you and I started, I was seven 7% body fat.

Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:05:00] Wow. 

Parnell: [00:05:01] Believe it or not, I guess lower. My lean muscle mass wasn't too bad, but it was still lean compared to now. My hairdresser the other day hugged me when I showed up for my haircut, and she's like, Dude.

Parnell: [00:05:19] It's like hugging a refrigerator. I was like, Yeah, I like hearing that - thanks!

Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:05:27] How tall are you?

Parnell: [00:05:28] I am six foot one.

Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:05:30] This is totally unrelated to the episode, but just to give the person listening a picture of the progress. Do you remember how much you weighed when you started with Alyssa?

Parnell: [00:05:45] hmm, I weighed 192.

Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:05:48] And how much do you weigh now?

Parnell: [00:05:50] I weigh 235 now.

Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:05:52] All right. And this is like all muscle. I mean, there's a little bit of a power belly. But that's personal preference, eating habits, whatever. But as Alyssa said, your training was not going well, and you were contemplating surgery. And then here you are a few years later, you put on over 40 lbs of mass to your body and your training consistently. So tell us a little bit. I mean, Alyssa, I kind of interrupted you. 

Dr. Alyssa Haveson, PT, PRSCC, CSCS: [00:06:21] the one thing I wanted to add is that you know, in the last couple of years, you have had some maybe like once or twice symptom flare-ups that we've addressed and talked about. And, you know, the thing that I really, I guess, want to point out here is that you went from having pain to not having surgery and not having pain, and then your rehab process looked fairly normal in the sense that we saw. And even though you weren't still rehabbing, quote unquote. So it was maybe like a year and a half into working on this that, you know, you had some symptoms that came up, and they resolved. So it wasn't like, "oh, no, I'm not cured. I have to go and do something" because it's not about being cured. It's about managing what you have going on, being able to train, and being comfortable. But can you just give us the rundown of your specific circumstances and everything leading up to the question of and after? But, you know, about whether you will have surgery?

Parnell: [00:07:24] Yeah, I'll try to be concise. I also know that for people who experience pain in their body, like whether it's a shoulder or their back or their hips or their knees, it's really hard to sort out all the crap you find on the Internet between like Starting Strength forums where some random dudes were talking about like, you know, my hip started hurting. What is that? And there's like 20 bazillion opinions about that, you know, And some people are like, it's never going to get fixed. You go get surgery, and some other people say, I did this band thing, and suddenly it goes away. You know. It could be confusing.

Dr. Alyssa Haveson, PT, PRSCC, CSCS: [00:08:05] It's accurate, it's so accurate.


Parnell: [00:08:07] So I think my journey with pain in weightlifting started in my mid-twenties. I PR'd on a back squat, a 405 back squat. And I found the video of the squat. I'm going to send it to you.

Dr. Alyssa Haveson, PT, PRSCC, CSCS: [00:08:26] send it to me.

Parnell: [00:08:28] I was like, Wow, cringe hard. I was like, almost. I was the only one watching it and felt embarrassed watching the video.

Dr. Alyssa Haveson, PT, PRSCC, CSCS: [00:08:38] send it over.

Parnell: [00:08:39] I was screaming like I was murdering goats. I was like wiggling and wobbling all underneath that barbell. And it was like 405 on top of me. Anyways, I remember that I had started experiencing hip pain in my left hip after that specific lift. It was probably an accumulation of other bad technique and stuff, but I started having pain there right after that, and a "rolf-er" at one point relieved some of that pain, doing some psoas release stuff. But then it came back, and the rolf-er never fixed it again. So after that, I still experience pain. I got to the point where I decided I just needed to stop doing, at the time, that was CrossFit. I was doing a lot of CrossFit and some of my own, you know, squat and deadlift training in the gym outside CrossFit group lessons or whatever. And so I decided I needed to stop doing stuff like my hip is hurting me. I remember it hurting, sitting in the car and pushing my foot against like the little foot pad on the driver's side of your car. Right? Like, just like, just a little bit of pressure, and I could feel achiness and soreness. And that way, it would go up through the hip and into the lower back and all that stuff.

Parnell: [00:10:09] And so I stopped, and at the time, I was building focused on building my startup, my tech startup, and stuff like that. So I got focused on that. And I was inactive for three years. I think it was a long time. It was a long time. And I remember I was like 28. 28, 29, something like that. And looking at 30, I wanted to start getting back in shape because I was starting to feel like not very strong and winded easily on stuff. So I wasn't doing anything else, you know. So I started going to Bikram yoga for a while because that was what I liked. And it was hard, and I liked hard things, you know? So I would ride my bike to Bikram yoga every morning at 5 a.m. and do Bikram yoga and ride my bike back. And my hip was feeling fine. You know, it was doing well. So I said, All right, well, maybe, I'll try some CrossFit classes again. You know, it was generally feeling pretty good except for the occasional, like little, like a twinge of pain that I'd get in a squat or something. But I figured, like, whatever, it seems fine.

Parnell: [00:11:30] And then there is a guy running an Olympic weightlifting group at the gym, and I just like that was my jam. I just said, you know, fuck CrossFit, like I'm going to go all in. So I started just doing Olympic weightlifting training with him. His name was Tim Rawlings. Awesome weightlifter and a pretty good coach. And it was a four-day-a-week program, you know, shitloads of back squatting, front squatting. Pretty, pretty, pretty intense. Pretty intense programming. And all in service of your clean and jerk and your and snatch. And I competed after a year of training. So this was like 2018? Yeah, like March 2018. After a year of training with him, I competed in a regional Olympic weightlifting competition. And it went, it went well. But I had started experiencing what felt like "junkiness," is the best word I have for it, in that left hip. So I competed, and I did well. I went three for three on clean and jerk. And my snatch. I think my clean and jerk was 275 or something, and my snatch was, like, I don't remember. Maybe it was like 185, something like that.

Dr. Alyssa Haveson, PT, PRSCC, CSCS: [00:13:05] I'm looking at your notes to see if I have that right.


Parnell: [00:13:08] I think it was in kilos. I'm like translating it. It might not be right in my head, but I remember after that, I was like, I was feeling it, you know? You have that. Like, I guess it's the experience of something going on in my body, but I'm in denial about it. So I keep testing it, you know?