Psoas Stretch Extreme Exercise For Lower Back Pain and Hips

so what's the big deal about the psoas well it's a muscle that is very

frequently involved with low back pain and it is very very difficult to stretch

so I had a video before with a one person stretch you can do it yourself

and it's a good stretch but it's a little bit limited and people wanting to

know how do we get more in depth than how do we get to the upper part of the

psoas we're going to show you that this is a two-person stretch and you want to

pay close attention because you don't want to hurt the person if you're

working on a 25 year old athlete it's maybe not

they're pretty sturdy you can crank pretty well on most people you want to

be very careful especially people with low back pain so we're going to show you

how to do this very very carefully so if you can get on the table about a thirty

degree angle you want one side of the hip completely off the table and the

other one on then you lay back you grab this leg and then you want to have the

person pull the knee up far enough that the back gets flat on the table now

you're moving the origin of the psoas muscle away so that we can stretch it

better the difficulty is that it crosses so many joints and you have to stabilize

all the joints involved before you can actually stretch the muscle so I'm going

to come in and I'm going to support here and I'm gonna watch her trunk to make

sure that it stays put so if someone is really stiff or in a

lot of pain you want to start with a leg up here even that can be a stretch for

them and then from here you have them push up very gently against your hand so

apply just a pound or two of pressure and you want to hold that for about 10

seconds and then after 10 seconds you have them relaxed and you grab the leg

and you lower it so relax this leg and we're gonna lower it toward the floor so

you don't push on it you don't apply any pressure you just let it go down how is

that is that tolerable you're getting a pretty good stretch yeah so she does

have pretty tight so as and even before we're at horizontal she already gets a

stretch so I'm going to put my hand on the knee and just add a couple of pounds

of pressure here and you want to check with the patient that on a scale from

one to ten where ten is excruciating pain you want to kind of keep it below a

six or a seven so we're still good all right so now go ahead and push that knee

up again

and while you're pushing take a deep breath in and hold and keep the tension

feel the tension and then relax breathe out and let that knee drop a little bit

further perfect and I can feel that that leg giving at the same time I keep an

eye on the trunk to make sure that we're not actually just pulling the low back

off the table we want to keep it flat so we're actually stretching that muscle

and for a first stretch I'll probably leave it at that

so now I'm going to grab her leg I'm gonna tell her don't lift it I'm gonna

lift it for you so we'll lift it up we'll roll the person on their side and

we'll help them come up sideways okay perfect

so then it works the same stretching the other side then you get on the other

side of the table you could do this on a kitchen island it's difficult to do on a

bed because the bed is too soft you need something pretty firm and other than

that just be careful pay attention to the person you're doing it on so you're

not hurting them and go really nice and slow keep in mind you stretch it a

little bit you can tract a little bit you stretch it again thank you so much

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