Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Stretch Your Psoas Peoples




The psoas (soh-as, like the P in pneumonia) is a nasty little critter of a muscle. And as an aside, it is the fillet Mignon of the human body (helpful if you should crash your plane with your Crossfit team in the Andes.) The superior attachments of this thick bastard are along either side of your lumbar spine (with fibers potentially going even higher.) Then, the psoas crosses over the pelvic bowl and inserts on the inside of your femur. You could say the psoas is a two joint muscle but it ends up crossing upwards of at least eight functional anatomical segments. We tend to think of it as the powerful hip flexor it is, but this is a little simplistic. The psoas also acts to flex the trunk at the hips if the legs are planted as in a glute ham sit up. The psoas also acts to position the head of the femur in the acetabulum. All this AND this hard working "hip-flexor" stabilizes the spine (poorly) and helps keep us in a solid extended position (this last piece is a problem sometimes when we deadlift--over extension.).

So, you can imagine that a tight psoas can potentially cause quite a few problems. Imagine the crazy lumbar extension load that goes on in sprinting when a tight psoas gets super stretched when the hip is at full extension behind the athlete (stronger abs anyone?)

We hear about hard working athletes that get an achy low back after sleeping on their backs all night. Psoas anyone?

Needless to say, psoas warming up/stretching has been addressed by a million different people in a million different ways. When you perform the Sampson stretch as advocated by the "better Crossfit warmup" you are hitting the front or anterior hip capsule/structures and a bit of the psoas.

But, we want to advocate for a little bit more psoas focused/biased stretching
movement.

The set up will look the same for any kneeling hip opener, but the difference is the blocking of the upper back by a pole or door way.

So, take an extreme kneeling position in front of a pole or door way while thinking about maximally opening the hip of the trailing leg (that would be going through the doorway behind you.)



Normally we would tell our athletes to imagine tucking their pelvis under to facilitate the hip/psoas stretch.



Instead, think about pushing your upper back into the pole or door-jam as above. This will act to fulcrum your pelvis forward and simultaneously keep your back upright.

Practice your contract relax by imagining that you are driving your back knee forward.
Five seconds peak contraction, ten seconds of moving further into your new range.
Shoot for a long 90 second exposure.

Oh, and that horrible ripping sensation going on in your pelvis?
That's just you becoming better at everything.

Kstar

22 comments:

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Anonymous said...

Thanks K*. I had never seen or heard about this slight variation and I love it. Thanks

Twinkletoes

Pete said...

Great post Kelly. Loved the stretch. I've had that low back pain fronm sleeping for years and never knew what it was from. Can't wait to see if stretching helps it. Thanks for all the great content you put out both here and through the CFJ.
Pete

Anonymous said...

Will Blaker from OneWorld here.

I'm looking to get some variation in my training, shake things up a bit in my head. Anyone mind if i come down to crash the party and do a WOD with you sometime next week?

Anonymous said...

Will,

We welcome all fellow crossfitters. Come on down and train with us beside the Golden Gate.

Lucas

Anonymous said...

Suffered from severe low back pain for almost 18 months before someone (a CF Chiro at CF Newport Beach) finally diagnosed it as extremely tight psoas. Years of kickboxing, CF, and then sitting at a desk for hours at a time is what happened.

After a month of dedicated stretching (sometimes more than once a day), and some TPT massage, it was like night and day. 2-3 months and I was good as new.

I still get some back pain from running occasionally, and GHD sit ups in large numbers can make me cry like little girl. But it wasn't until this piece of the puzzle was brought to my attention that I was able to get past the sore back low back.

I have found that even sedentary people who sit a lot can get very tight psoas as well. If they are more comfortable with a pillow under their knees than laying flat, I am pretty sure that they need to stretch out those 'mignons'. I have had a number of people report much better sleep after doing the samson stretch right before bed.


Thanks for the new version of the stretch! Now I am going to see if I can find some grassfed psoas for lunch.

-jj

Gracewanderer said...

I love this blog, guys, it's helped me out in a lot of areas. Thanks for maintaining it!

Two questions about this entry.

1. How do I know if my psoas is/are long enough?

2. I tried this and I definitely felt tension in a very unfamiliar place when I pushed my knee forward. But when I relaxed and went to do the post-effort elongating phase, I wasn't sure how to do it - do I push my back up? Open the hip of the trailing leg more?

Thanks again!

Patrick Haskell said...

Thanks for posting on this. The GHD went from completely intolerable to merely sucky, once I figured out that the Sampson stretch wasn't enough to stretch my psoas. The stretch I've been doing simply adds a slight twist and flexion away from the trailing leg to the Sampson stretch. This gives me a new way to attack that pesky muscle. Thanks.

Janis Caruana said...

This was the best stretch I have done in months. I have suffered for months in my hip area and no amount of acupuncture, ART or massage treatment has helped as much as this stretch. I went to the chiropractor and she couldn't believe the improvement. So much so, that she did not need to treat the area she had planned to work on.
This will now be part of my regular stretch routines.
Thank you so much!

Joe Agliozzo said...

can doing this stretch lead to pain/soreness right above and into the belly button area? I have about a quarter sized area of pain when pressed on and all I can think of that I have done differently is to start doing this stretch. Doesn't hurt when lifting/squatting/pullup, etc. just a little ache and more pain when palpated..

Happy Programmer said...

Psoas tightness can be serious. It seems to be the main culprit behind prostatitis where the prostate is sore. So you can't sit down for very long. Trust me it's painful. I had prostatitis for months, doctors gave me drugs which helped but the side effects were heart attacks.

So I started stretching the psoas and I can now sit for an hour. After stretching I don't have that sitting-on-a-golf ball feeling. The psoas major is way more complicated than we give it credit for and the author of this blog is dead on.

The best one thing to hit it is IMO the yoga pigeon pose, but these stretches also help in a different way. It's such a complicated muscle I think many types of stretching are needed.

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