The Most Overlooked Stretch for Low Back Pain

Mar 11

Low back pain is not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.

According to some health organizations, low back pain and stiffness affects 80% of people in their lifetime.

I’ve suffered from disc injuries in my low back when I was younger. I’ve also broken many bones, wrists, hands, ribs, and I can tell you from experience I would rather the latter than the former.

When you get low back pain or low back stiffness you will have a tendency to try and stretch out the low back and improve the movement.

Although your low back can have deterioration and disc degeneration, there is a limiting factor that is often almost overlooked.

This limiting factor in back pain is the length of the psoas muscle. The psoas muscle is a hip flexor that connects to your lower back and when you are in discomfort it will contract and compress your low back.

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With people working from home, and spending more time than ever in a seated posture, the psoas muscle will lead to increased tightness, and therefore subsequent compression of the low back. This will lead to increased risk of low back pain or the likelihood of low back pain lingering longer than it normally does if you hurt your back.

As a chiropractor I usually see a high correlation between hip tightness and low back pain. The hip tightness caused by the psoas muscle usually presents as the inability to extend your leg behind you. If you sit at a desk for work, have a long commute or drive for a living, or you played/play sports like hockey or soccer where you are forced to drive your knees forward and you have a history of low back pain or low back stiffness, you need to start doing the following.

Here are three different variations of how you can stretch your psoas muscle to help reduce low back pain.

These are in order of what I think are most effective to least effective but the key to any stretching is do it consistently or it will provide little to no results.