Tight Hip Flexors: Psoas? Pso-What!

How much sitting do you do in a day? We, as first world country humans sit an awful lot.  It was  the advent of chairs that really screwed us up.  Third world countries may have their fair share of problems, but back pain isn’t typically one of them.  They hinge at the hips when they bend forward and squat when they want to take a load off.  How comfortable would you be squatting for any length of time? Or be able to easily stand back up if you could make it down at all?? 

We sit.  ..A lot!  We sit at a desk to work or when we’re tooling around on the computer.  We sit while we eat. We sit while we watch tv or read a book.  And then after all of this sitting, we sit again when our low backs start to ache from standing. What a tiresome loop!

Back pain can happen for a number of reasons and in different areas of the back and hips. When you feel it in the center of your low back and stretching or rubbing it doesn’t seem to help, the psoas (pronounced SO-as) is usually the culprit. 

***The psoas is almost always the offender when you hurt your back bending down to pick something up or feel like you can’t stand up straight***

Ironically, the psoas isn’t even a back muscle! It attaches along the sides of your spine towards the front of your body and is one of your main hip flexors.  It basically helps fold you in half by bringing your spine closer to your legs. It originates on the front sides of the spine around the fleshy area, just under your sternum, travels down through the inside of your hip bones, and then inserts into the upper, inner thigh.  Every time you bend over, bring your knees to your chest, or (you guessed it), SIT, you can thank your psoas for making that possible.  

The problem with too much sitting is that the psoas gets used to being constantly shortened and starts to tighten up.  This in turn, keeps pulling the spine closer to your legs even when you’re standing, resulting in the curve of your lumbar spine (low back) to increase (think: sway back) and your low back muscles to shorten in response.  …and possibly hurt!

When this happens, working only the back muscles will be a futile effort.  You will never get long-term relief until the psoas is addressed.  When correcting muscle imbalances, a good rule of thumb is to stretch the short/tight muscle and strengthen its’ antagonist.  With the psoas, however, you want to strengthen the muscles of your core to help stabilize the spine.  I find the low abs can be the most helpful to focus on.  (Ugh, core work?! ..I can already hear you groaning in protest) Thankfully, you don’t need washboard abs to reap the benefits of a pain-free spine.  You just need to work them enough to remind them what they’re supposed to be doing.  To all of my ab-averse peeps, you’ll be thrilled to know it’s surprisingly less work than you’d think.

Prevention & Corrective Exercise 

If you find yourself sitting for long stretches of time (regardless if you want to do ab work or not), you should be counterbalancing the effects by stretching your psoas. Here’s the one I like best! If you don’t have a foam roller, you can used a large rolled up towel instead. 

Stretch

Strengthen

Toe Taps -Lie face up on floor (or foam roller for more of a challenge).

With knees up in a tabletop position, pull your navel and low abs down towards the floor and keep them there throughout the exercise.

Tap one foot and then the other against the ground. Do for 1 minute (3x)

Pain Management

Get a massage and have a professional work on it.  I’ll be honest, I’ve strained my psoas many times in my life.  I always try to manage my pain the best I can on my own, but the psoas is a different beast.  Having someone else work on it, gets me out of pain faster, for longer and is sometimes the only option for relief. 

It’s a difficult muscle to access and massage on your own, but there are some products that can help you out with this. The Pso-rite is one of them.  Their website also has instructions on how to use this on other body parts when your psoas needs less attention. You can purchase it here. I will caution that this can be too much pressure for some.  If you already know this is you, stick with the stretch and come in for a session if that’s not enough to get rid of the pain.