How Muscles Can Make You Look Older and What to DO: Part II

Hi Doug,
I don’t know if you were serious about people responding to you about other structures needed for upright posture, but I will weigh in.  The psoas muscle.  The way I like to elongate, or rather, reset/retrain the muscle to lengthen and function is with stabilization exercise on the floor or, better yet, on the foam roller.  The person really needs to “get” the relationship of opening up the hip with stability of the lumber spine and be able to differentiate the movement of the hip and lumbar spine.  One can also do hip opening stretches, like a kneeling lunge position and a whole slew of yoga postures/stretches, but still the  lumbar spine has to be in check.  What do you think?
Thanks for your articles and the iposture link was funny, and probably just the thing for certain people!
-Carol
PS.  I have some 5 Fingers too (in your pec minor video) – that is a whole other subject that is very interesting.

Thanks Carol – I was completely serious and really appreciate you weighing in on the topic. And I agree with you. The hip flexors, psoas being one of the them, can create a chain reaction up the body leading to a slumped posture. And, you’re on to something too about being careful with the lumbar spine (lowback). It’s really easy to over load it when you go after tight hip flexors.
Just so we’re all on the same page, the hip flexors consist of primarily of several muscles although you’ll hear the most about the iliopsoas and the rectus femoris. But let’s not leave the others out:

The Hip Flexors

• Sartorius
• Tensor Fascia Latae
• Pectineus
• Adductor Longus
• Adductor Brevis
• Gracilis

So you have eight muscles to contend with. And, if you look closely, the psoas muscle doesn’t run in a straight line. It curves. It starts around the back side of the spine, curves around the front, then twists and dives under the femur. Remember that because we’ll use it later. Fortunately, a couple of moves cover all of them at once and I’ll show you a couple ideas on that later.

Just a reminder – there’s a difference between muscles that are tight and muscles that are short.

Tight muscles have more tension in them whereas short muscles are physically or structurally shorter and are much more difficult to change.

You can tell which is which by using simple contract-relax type of technique. For example with the hamstrings, place your foot on a chair, stay straight and still in the spine, bend forward at the hips until you feel tightness in the hamstring region and your motion stops. Now, push your foot down into the chair as if you’re trying to bend you knee. Hold that tension for 5-10 seconds, release it,  and then try moving forward. If you can bend forward, your muscles are tight. If you can’t, they’re short.

In this article though, we’re covering tight muscles because that’s what most people have in the front of the hip.

How do you end up with tight hip flexors? Lots of sitting.

And when you sit, you also tend to let the hips sort of roll out. If you look at the picture, the psoas in particular, starts on the back side of your body, then comes around the front side and dives toward the femur. So, when you sit with your legs apart and rolled out and with a slumped lower back, the two ends of the muscle get closer together and the muscle basically learns that this is the new length/tension relationship. Then when you try to do something upright – walk, run, lift weights, reach overhead, the muscle can’t get back to it’s normal length easily – like trying to stretch a really tight spring.

And this goes for the other muscles too like the adductors. We forget that these muscles are also hip flexors and when you sit a lot, guess what? Yep – they get tighter for the same reason the psoas did. The two ends of the muscle are closer to to each other.

But what does this have to do with your posture?

When these muscles or springs are tight, they pull the pelvis forward when you stand. This moves your center of gravity forward, which your brain recognizes and corrects the shift by slumping the thoracic spine a bit, tilting the head back thereby allowing you to keep your eyes looking straight ahead. That’s one adaptation. There are others but this one seems to be the most common.

Look at the image. Notice the forward tilt of the pelvis, increase in the thoracic curve, forward position of the shoulders. This posture is just not corrected by saying,”Stand up straight”. It won’t work.

It’s a three pronged attack. The anterior chest wall – Part I – and the anterior pelvis or hip flexors – Part II.

How to Stretch the Hip Flexors

If you run a simple Google search on this topic, you’ll get about 100,000 options. A lot of stuff to wade through with a lot of opinions.

So, here’s mine.

You’ll need a swiss ball for this drill. Take a half kneel position, as in the picture, and using your hand on your thigh, gently push your self toward an upright position. At some point, you’ll feel the tension and tighness in your leg. Stop there. Now, remember that the psoas is a sort of twisted muscle?  Well, to get it all in the stretch, now roll your foot back and forth on the ball. Especially outward (so the femur turns inward). That’s when you’ll really feel the stretch deeper in the hip area.

You’ll hold a position for 30 to 60 seconds (lots of debate on this but most of the research falls  in this range) then try to push your self more upright but make sure you don’t arch your lower back. Keep it still. Make the movement from the hip joint.

Now, FusionTribers, you get this stretch in video format and three more ideas too. Just login to see the videos at the end of the post.

Ok, so, what’s part three? Anyone? Put your answers in the comment box below. And hey – this isn’t school. No grades. I won’t slap your hands with a yard stick. Take a guess. And there could easily be more than one answer too. Whatever you know, add it to the discussion.

We all learn from it.

Part III soon.

The password for the video is fusiontribe.

Hip Flexor Stretch with Swiss Ball

Hip Flexor Stretch with Foam Roller

Hip Flexor Stretch with Vector

Hip Flexor Stretch – Bretzel