Update for anyone who cares:
The pain has died down and I just had an epic workout, putting me only 5 lbs away from my goal.
I saw someone recommend doing less reps with more weight but what seems to have helped is the opposite. I used to do 5-7 reps because Rogan told me the Russians think its the best, but I switched to 7-8 reps and it seems to work a lot better. I also noticed all the pain and lifting difficulty were coming from the one small part of the range of motion which is hardest, so I took weights about 30% lighter and hyper-focused on that one part of the lift doing it with 10 super slow reps per set. Also without going into much detail I think religious/spiritual stuff is helping too.
