What is the best way to stretch your psoas muscle?

Question

Dr. AJ Gregg · Answer

What is the best way to stretch your psoas muscle? Let me demonstrate. First thing we want to do is want to take her head forward. Do we feel a slight stretch up through here? We take the same side. Arm going to reach it to the ceiling, and make a fist. I'm going to lean away and then slightly backwards. I usually recommend around 2 minutes of total time under tension that can either be 10 to 12 second holds six 22nd holds for 30 second holds to 60. Second holds just make sure that you're really reaching the arm up leaning away and then slightly back.

Bart Green, DC, MSEd, PhD · Answer

So this question is from Josh. And the question is, "What is the best way to stretch your psoas muscle?" And there's very few stretches that there is necessarily a best way when, again, when we're looking at the scientific literature. I am not even sure if there are very many, if any we call head-to-head trials that look at the best way to stretch one muscle versus another. There are probably a couple, but it's just a lot of it's preference of the person who's doing the instructing based upon what the person who needs to stretch, what their body style is like, and maybe their sport, and their activities. So I'll show you two that I like. And when we stretch a muscle, it's rarely that you're going to get one muscle at a time, and that's true as well when we're doing the psoas muscle where we're getting the hip flexors. And actually other muscles that go along with it, your diaphragm usually gets stretched out really good, you're also going to be stretching out your thoracic spine, and basically you're extending your body. So here we go. I'm going to do the first one standing. Basically, what you're going to do is you're going to put yourself in a pretty big, pretty wide lunge. And you should start to go forward on one knee, the knee and the front until you have a very mild stretch here in the front of your other hip. This is your hip flexor that's stretching it attaches on your femur, runs over your pelvis, surrounding the inside of your pelvis, and attaches to the front of your spine. And puts your arm in the air, start putting some stretching on here. And then you're going to just lean over onto your side and you're stretching out that hip flexor on this side, you're getting a little diaphragm stretching on the muscles in between your ribs. And if you take a big breath in and reach at the same time, feels super good and you're really going to get a good stretch on all that tissue. So that is one exercise that I really like. You can also do it on a gym ball. And have a look to the side so you don't fall over. Same stretch, a little more stable, reaching up and over, touching the wall. You've got 9 seconds to go, so I'll say I usually do it for 30 seconds at a time and use the deep breath. Hope that helps you with your stretching.

Jim Heafner · Answer

The psoas muscle is the only muscle that runs from the spine onto the femur. So it runs from here across the pelvis down deep under the inside of the femur. It has a stabilizing role at the spine and it also has a movement or a hip flexion role at the hip joint because it crosses one versus the other. We need to stabilize the spine as we stretch the leg and because the so as muscles, the hip flexor means it brings the leg up. Where's the body? We need to stretch it by moving into hip extension, and the way they do that is you draw your core in and that stabilizes the spine, prevents movement there, tuck the hip under just slightly, so you can gauge the glute muscle on the back side, to hold that position, and then Lean Forward into that movement. I would like to rock in and out of it. So here because I'm stabilizing, I get a big stretch right across there. Now, because it also plays a role in the movement and stability of the spine we can add in variations. Right draw in pull the hip under now you like to use my opposite hand eye lift and lean. So that gets a little bit higher part of the psoas muscle. I'll reach up overhead and add variations in there, but I'm trying to hit all different parts of that muscle and because our muscles are not just a to be connections. They really they wrap around the body and they help provide three-dimensional sort of stability and control the Most important part of this is that draw in lock the hip into position and then a small lean forward, and finding different edges and ranges of where that needs to be stretched. So, that's my favorite way to stretch the. So as you can increase it and add more quad, flexion by bringing your back, knee up in the air, and that will challenge the stretch, but lock the pelvis position and gauge through the cord, make sure the spine is stable.

Swimming

Strength

Triathlon

Photography

Track & Field

Nutrition

Physical Therapy

Running

Pets

Cycling

Podcasting

HealthCare

Musculoskeletal

Hockey

First Responders

Integrative Medicine

Chiropractic

Cross Country Skiing

Adaptive Sports

Climbing

Mental Health

Surfing

Tennis

Military

Mind Body

Scholars

Criminal Justice

Liquor

CrossFit

Golf

Soccer

Pickleball

Hunting

Public Speaking

Venture Capital

"What is the best way to stretch your psoas muscle?"