Your Psoas Isn't Just Tight, It's WEAK [Don't Stretch, Do These Instead]

if your psoas or your front of the hip area feels achy and tight stop doing the standard hip flexor stretches in this video you're going to learn why that is and five exercises to get to the root cause so you can relieve that achiness and that tightness for good [Music] hey it's coachee here from Precision movement and we're back with another YouTube video to help you move freely and without pain and today we're focusing on this area the hip flexor area and we're going to focus a little bit more on the psoas muscle but there are other muscles involved in the exercises out I'm going to show you and in the problems of achiness and tightness in the front of the hip right here now if you like unique time efficient and most importantly effective exercises to get you out of pain and to keep you moving then make sure you're subscribed to our Channel because that's what we do around here now before we get into the five exercises I want to cover a little bit of background some anatomy and some scientific reasoning behind why the soas muscle and the hip flexor area does get tight and achy and even before that I just want to commend you for being here for continuing to be a student and learning and taking control of your own health and well-being this is something that we need more of and we need more people like you so keep it up good work now the muscle is involved I mentioned the psoas muscle it's a popular one and it's part of the hip flexor group so hip flexion is this movement right here bringing the knee to the chest that's hip flexion the PSO is is one muscle that does it there's also the iliacus and those two muscles are often combined and called the iliopsoas but we like we think of them differently because they have slightly different functions which I'm going to cover in a second there's also the rectus femoris which is a quadricep muscle it's part of the quadriceps group but because it crosses the hip joint it can contribute to hip flexion thing is we just don't want it to contribute to hip flexion too much and the last muscle that I'll talk about is the pectineus and that's a short muscle in the front of the hip here and it does hip flexion and adduction so these are kind of the four main hip flexor muscles and the psoas is the one that we're going to focus on because of where it originates it originates on the different vertebrae and the lumbar spine and this tells us that it contributes to hip flesh and yes but it also contributes to something at the lumbar spine that's something is lumbar stability especially in the neutral position or the slightly extended position so that's a key cue throughout all of the exercises that you'll see is that we need to maintain that lumbar spine's position so that the psoas can effectively work so now that you can see it and you can visualize it it should help you to execute the exercises better and get more out of the exercises so that's one of the cues that is really important when you do the exercise so remember that we're going to cover a couple other now why does this always get tight and weak sitting that's one thing that contributes to so many issues in today's society we sit too much but specifically when we sit we are on our butts often in a posterior pelvic tilt so if we had a tail it would be as if we were tucking our tail between our legs and with a flexed lumbar spine So based on what I just said the psoas can effectively work in that position the other thing is we've got a backrest so we're leaning back we're in this bad position this slumped flexed position so the psoas is shortened up and it doesn't have to work because we're on this backrest so it the psoas doesn't have to contribute to this proper neutral spine good alignment of the lumbar spine and stability of the lumbar spine so if we're not using it we're going to lose it use it or lose it that's a maxim that applies to pretty much everything human at least but if we're not using it we're losing it so it's getting weak it's atrophying it's in the shortened position it's getting short and that causes so many issues so we're gonna do exercises to restore all of those issues now I mentioned at the outside of this outset of this video no static stretching the standard stretch is this hip flexor kneeling lunge half dealing lunge hip flexor stretch where you basically go like this you can stick an arm up you can reach over to the side like that and stretch out the hip flexor I used to prescribe this quite a bit actually but I rarely do so now and when I do there's a few specific cues that we need to keep in mind the problem with this is that number one it doesn't restore strength so if you're expecting lasting changes in muscle length and range of motion from this you're not going to get it because you're not going to strengthen the muscle with this and number two it's really easy to be over aggressive with this stretch you can get in there you can really put your weight into it Reef on it and be aggressive the issue here is that doing so will aggravate the anterior part of the hip specifically the hip joint capsule and the ligaments there when you do that you can increase your achiness and you think oh I need to do more stretching you do it you keep doing it and it's just a vicious cycle and you're going to get worse and worse and more and more achy and you're not going to really improve your hip flexor length so we're going to go through five exercises in this routine that you can do two three days a week for if you want to feel some good effects at least four weeks it could be up to eight weeks but four weeks is a good amount of time to feel some good effects two weeks you might to feel some stuff I mean you might do start to feel some beneficial Effects by doing it just once with me today but if you want your results to persist and the changes to persist you've got to put in the time and the Reps the first technique we're going to go through is active self myofascial release for the hip flexors and with this got a massage ball here and I'm going to use a weight that's the easiest thing to use for this exercise you can use apply pressure with your hand but it's much easier to do it with the weight for this all you're going to do is in the front of the hip where those muscles are you're going to place the ball then you're going to place the weight on the ball and keep your knee bent to start once you got some pressure there relax all the muscles you're not tensing up the hip flexors and then just slide the legs slowly forwards now you're going into hip extension and then move the ball to another area and repeat if you feel anything weird you might be on a vessel just don't go on that area don't do anything that feels weird or causes more pain so I'm going to reset all around the front of the hip here for one to two minutes and if you only have one side that bothers you do both sides this is good for you and this will help to restore tissue quality break up any adhesions or scar tissue and allow that muscle to work properly through its full range of motion allow it to contract through its full range of motion so that's active self myofascial release for the hip flexors one to two minutes per side after that we've restored length there after that we want to get the activation going right away we never stretch or we never go for massages and then just leave it at that we loosen the tissue up improve the quality of the tissue then we activate that tissue and that's how we can get those changes that we've gained through the massage or through the stretch or the release we can get them to stick so the next exercise is the standing glute contraction this is in the ROM coach app and I've shown this in other videos but it's very simple all you do is you start off good posture good alignment relaxed knees soft not hyper extended just soft and then you're going to slowly ramp up glute activation with a little bit of internal rotation of the hips turning the thighs inside this way just a little bit it could be like one to five degrees that's all I'm gonna wrap it up nice and strong as hard as you can in terms of activating the glutes and then holding that for five to ten seconds and then you release gradually so it's a slow ramp up and slow ramp down the key is that internal rotation that'll help you to keep your weight on your feet even not rolling out to the sides and it keeps that alignment of the pelvis and the hips so again I'm standing here I'm going to ramp up the glute activation with a little bit of internal rotation once I'm holding it as strong as I can without any pain or issues I'm breathing and holding for five to ten seconds or one to two slow breaths and then I wrap it down and what this is doing is it's activating we're focused on activating the glutes but it's going to co-contract around the hips get all the hip muscles working those hip flexor muscles that we talked about earlier and it gets them working in this neutral or slightly extended position because remember we've got our hips stuck in this position from all the sitting so now we're lengthening it and we're activating the muscle so we're starting to restore that activation restore that strength for this exercise two to three sets no one to two sets actually four to six reps holding for five to ten seconds after that we're gonna go to the standing slumpy psoas and this is a great exercise because it dissociates the commonly associated movement pattern of hip flexion which is when we Flex our hips we often posteriorly pelvic tilt and flex our lumbar spines but by doing that we're not effectively targeting the psoas muscle especially so we're going to do the opposite what you do is you stand against the wall lean against the wall and just get in bad posture so we're starting off in that posterior tilt lumbar flexion and slumped spine it's really bad posture from here I'm going to do one side I'm going to flex the hip as I anteriorly pelvic tilt and straighten up and get into good posture good spinal posture at the top here I'm holding and what I'm thinking of is keeping my pelvis level so I might have to drop this hip towards the ground and then breathing naturally and sucking the leg in to the pelvis those two cues so I'm here holding and then from there I slowly lower down and try to feel the hip flexors lengthen and keep them contracted to work that eccentric motion of the hip flexors again let's demo that I'll do the other side so switch sides start off slumped posture bad posture and then I'm going to flex the hip and get into good posture at the same time and hold at the top keep driving the knee up to flex the hip and activate those hip flexors and think of pelvis level here so dropping this hip towards the ground and sucking the leg into the pelvis sucking the thigh into the pelvis not reaching it towards the wall but sucking it away from the wall a strong support leg here and then keep those muscles on as I drop the foot slowly to the ground for a soft Landing that's the standing slumpy sauce and it's a great exercise to work this muscle in the proper way to start to build strength here now once you've got good activation we can actually use them add some external load like a dumbbell to this because by then you're queuing your Technique should be good you know all the cues there and all you do is you start off same way and then place the dumbbell on the knee and then suck that leg in drive that knee up and here we can progressively add load to build strength just like any other exercise we would do in the gym so it's a great way to get that so as activated and then use the same technique and cues to get it stronger now one thing that a lot of people one problem that a lot of people run into is over recruitment of the tfl which is another hip flexor and it's not one that I talked about earlier because we don't really want it to hit Flex too much but if the tfl is working too much the tip you can do a couple tips you can do to shut it off is when you're flexing the hip you're going out a little bit it's a little abduction and a little bit of external rotation and that'll Target more the pectinius the iliopsoas the iliacus and turn off the tfl so those cues there can help you adjust if you're feeling too much tfl activation on the outer hip over here it's outstanding sloppy so us for that do two to three sets four to six reps per holding for five to ten seconds and if you can add load start to add load next up we've got one of my favorite techniques to restore this hip extension range of motion which is your lengthened hip flexor position it's the side lying hip extension and range expansion technique so for this relying on our side and make sure you're in good posture in terms of your spine you're not curled up into the fetal position and I'm going to work this bottom leg I'm going to actively bring my leg back let me switch views for you be a little easier for you to see so I'm going to actively bring my leg back this way so now I'm in hip extension with the glute activation and this is the range that I want to work so I'm driving it back and right there the first activation is holding there glued activation keep trying to drive my heel back holding for 10 to 15 seconds strong contraction of the glutes and then I'm going to place my other foot on the knee and drive my knee into the foot not letting it move and what this is doing is it's strengthening the hip flexors in this extended range of motion again 10 to 15 seconds holding nice and strong keep activating and the last contraction there are three contractions is the hip extension again driving the heel back firing up the glutes trying to get deeper into the range of extension maintaining good posture breathing and then let it go and that's one cycle on that side and I would switch sides and do two to four cycles and that's going to work that end range of motion of the hip flexors that length and range of motion of the hip flexors and it strengthens both the hip blasters and the glutes there the hip extensors there and that's what's going to tell your brain hey I've got strength here so I'm using it so I'm not going to don't don't lose it I need this all right so that's the side lying hip extension end range expansion Erie technique the final one we're going to go through is another one that you can progressively add load two and it's called the front support hip flexion so for this you can see I got some bands I've got these ankle straps here I've got an ankle strap attached over there and then I'm strapping up over here I'm going to crawl forward off the mat here and then front support is basically push-up position and from there all I'm doing is I'm flexing nip same cues apply keep the pelvis level so don't hike the hip keep driving the knee up so I'm activating constantly it's just a two second hold there and then return and then two second hold all the way up sucking the pelvis the leg into the pelvis and then controlling the way back the good thing with this band setup is I can add bands if I need more load and this exercise is an example of functional integration because here I need that good core stability to maintain alignment of the spine and to train this aligned spine which is necessary for any sport you're doing baseball tennis you want good posture and an aligned spine so I've got the core stability going while the hip flexion is going so even if you're running you want good posture and the ability to maintain good posture as you're running and the hip blusters are working properly so this is a great exercise and for this one do two to three sets six to ten reps depending on how much load you got but keep the Reps no more than 12 but if you can get enough load and enough bands so that it's challenging and you can only do six ten reps that's how you're going to build strength so this whole routine again do it two to three times a week the more intensity that you use like the more weight you use or the more bands you use the lower frequency per week you'd want to do if you're only doing body weight you can easily do this three days a week and give it at least four weeks and if you do that and you drop the static stretching you're going to feel looser you're going to have greater range of motion and you're going to have greater strength and if you have pain hopefully you're going to have less pain and I'd love to know how it goes for you so leave us a comment down below so that is today's video hope you found it enlightening and you found something useful and you're going to do this routine more importantly and got some other stuff for you if you want to check it out some other videos that are related here and here and they're pretty popular and if you do have pin if you like this approach the best that we can give you is our hip pain solution program so click the link down there because it includes exercises like this and a lot more and includes the approach and the programming that is easy to follow and time efficient

Channel: Precision Movement

Views: 1,366,097

Keywords: psoas, psoas stretch, psoas release, psoas exercises, psoas strength, psoas strengthening, weak psoas, tight psoas, hip flexors, hip flexor strengthening, hip flexor stretch, iliopsoas, stretches, exercises, stretching, hip pain, hip pain sitting, hips, hip strength, tight hip flexors, stiff hips, hip mobility

Id: h_srhkcJxAY

Length: 18min 52sec (1132 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 31 2023