Nerve Pain in Quads while Lunging

[Primal]

Hey everyone, hope everyone had a good holiday! Recently when I have been training legs I've had some troubling issue with some nerve pain, but first I'll break down my routine for what I do on leg days.

Leg extensions: (warm up just to get some blood in my quads and to warm up my knees for squats)
Squats:bar, 95 lbs, 135 lbs, 185, 205, 225 and if I'm feeling it, 230 or 235 (the bar and the 95 lbs are also just slight warm up for my knees) So usually for squat anywhere from 5-7 sets in the 3-5 rep range.
Hack Squats: 4 plates and drop down to 2 plates for 2 sets. Both are drop sets to almost failure.
Lunges: Bodyweight. 4 sets (This is where the nerve pain happens)
Leg extensions: 2 sets, 6-8 reps
Hamstring curls: 2 sets, 6-8 reps

Lunges are where the nerve pain happens. I used to do them with a barbell with 45 plates but then this pain started. It only hurts in my right leg right along the Vastus Medialis (the teardrop). Quite certain it is the saphenous nerve and at first it started off with just a small prickling sensation. A weeks later when I kept up with the lunges when I pushed off from my right leg I felt the nerve pinch and my whole upper quad spasmed. I almost dropped the weight right then. Took a few weeks off from doing lunges and then started them up a few days ago again. Instead this time instead of spazing (that's a word right?) a sharp pain shot up my whole leg followed by numerous prickling feelings along my vastus medialis. I immediately dropped the weight and tried agiain. This time just my body-weight and everything went fine.

My guess is that when I finally get around to lunges my knees and quads are so weak that when I push up from bottom of the lunge, my knee shakes and I entrap my saphenous nerve which is not good at all. As much as I hate to admit it, 225-235 is decently heavy for me and I usually do them for a double. After that, my knees get very shaky and weak... I used to have this problem actually when I was first starting out 2 years ago. Whenever I did dips from a bench (how Arnold used to do them) I would pinch a nerve by my right elbow (the funny bone one) and it would go numb for a while. This went away eventually but the weird thing is I never switched up how I did the bench dips, I just took a break from them and when I went back to doing them for a while I had much more mass in my triceps and it was gone.

Has anything like this ever happened to you guys? Especially in the leg area? If it did, how did you get rid of it/work around it? I would really hate to not be able to do weighted lunges, they target my glutes better than squats and isolate my quads really well on the concentric.

Thanks!

-Primal

[TT Eric]

I use to have never pain also on the right side when doing lunges, my right quad's skin was often numb. For me what helped is stretching the hip flexors, at first it was very painful (triggering the nerve pain) and make the leg more numb, sometime I could barely stretch it, some other time I could, but eventually flexibility improved and it does not pain me anymore, very little numbness here and there, but nothing compare to what I had. Numbness/pain was more on the lateralis then medialis though.

BTW I would suggest to work more higher range for legs/squats, they respond better to high reps. Tom Platz always said heavy weight/hi reps.

Eric

[Primal]

Thanks Eric do you know any stretches for the hip flexors? I'll give that a shot if nothing else.

-Primal

[TT Eric]

This one is easy to do:



30 sec each side a few time a day.

Eric

[Primal]

Awesome thanks Eric I'll try it out tomorrow for my leg day!

-Primal