[quote]bushidobadboy wrote:
Being aware of what pelvic neutral is is a necessary thing, but being too aware of it or prioritising its importance, can lead to frustration, etc when you realise just how impossible it can be to achieve.
Sure, for those with the necessary ROM, then finding and holding neutral may be all that is needed to correct the tilt - a sort of ‘neural reprogramming’ if you will. Simply set your watch to beep avery 5 minutes and when it does, find an maintain neutral.
However it is a very small proportion of cases that exhibit the necessary flexibility to do this. Any degree of muscular tightness will both reduce ROM and inhibit the muscles needed to achive and hold pelvic neutral.
Add to this any fibrous changes in the muscle, and you can feel doomed to hold an APT for the rest of your life - I certainly was. No amount of stretching the psoas and rec. femoris made any significant difference to me.
It was only when I pondered the neurophysiological mechanisms associated with posture and the ‘gamma loop’ that I considered that I could use the very mechanisms that were undoing me, namely reciprocal inhibition.
So instead of tryin to loosen muscles that were bilaterlly tight and holding me in APT, I focussed on strengthening the antagonists. Actually ‘strengthening’ doesn’t really come into it; first you have to learn to fire the muscles, by re-establishing the mind-muscle connection. There is no ‘weight lifting’ when a muscle is inhibited; other muscles will take over and do the job for you, and you entirely miss the point of the exercise in the first place.
Exercising bilaterally (as opposed to unilaterally) creates problems in those with impaired force couplings. Tissue tension takes over and causes painful and damagind end-ranging of joints, especially in the lumbar spine. So instead, unilateral exercises are preferred by myself. A particular favourite is the split-squat, preferably with a barbell not DBs, as the use of a bar encourages you to keep the torso erect. This in turn forces the psoas on the side with the leg behind, to really lengthen out. This is what I mean about ‘resetting the gamma loop’. It’s a neurological concept that (to keep things simple) forces the inhibitory interneurones (renshaw cells) in the spinal column to become more active, reducing the tonus (residual electrical activity) in the target muscle (psoas in this case). Once tonus has been reduced, then the muslce is no longer fighting to be lengthened and you can passivly (and actively stretch) the muscle without it constantly fighting you.
A similar phenomenon is encountered in so-called ‘post isometric relaxation’ (PIR) stretching. You take a muscle to end-range and then contract it about 20% of max voluntary contraction for 10-20 seconds (the temptation is to count quickly to 10 and let go. However I find that the more chronic the hypertonicity of the muscle, the better the relaxation, post contraction, the longer you hold the contraction - so don’t cheat yourself) where the signal from the ‘golgi tendon organelles’ (GTOs), found in the tendon, sense the stretched, loaded position and send inhibitory signals to the spinal cord which then reduced tonus to compensate.
That is a good, valid technique to reduce tonus during stretching, however I’m not convinced it carries enough effect over into daily activity in the chronically hypertonic. Using the muscle under load though (as in the split-squat described earlier), resets the muscle spindle cells (stretch receptors, not load receptors, which are what the GTOs are) via the gamma loop (gamma motorneurones).
Anyway, back to practicalities - try this:
- Lie on the ground, face down. bend one leg at the knee and try to push the heel of that leg up to the ceiling, by only contracting your glute max. Stick a tented hand onto the glute and close your eyes. Really feel the muscle kick in and relax, kick in and relax, as you repeat the exercise. Remember this is a short ROM, and your hips should not come off the floor.
If this is not going to plan and you simply cannot fire those glutes (yes, do the other side as well, lol), then you have it pretty bad my friend and either have some spinal fixation reducing nervous transmission (see a chiro) or your glutes are SO inhibited by other means (massively tight hip flexors) that you need to work on other areas first - try a PIR stretch for the psoas and the rec. femoris.
Assuming step 1 goes OK (we’ll look at psoas stretch later) and you have fired up BOTH sides’ glute max, then you can progress to:
- Grab a bar, don’t load it yet. Place it accross you upper back. Tighten your core (brace, not hollow) and take a long step foreward. When I say ‘long’ I mean that your back foot is no longer flat on the floor, but you are up on the ball of the foot on that side. Other side remains planted of course. Feet should be ‘apart’ as in in train tracks, not on a beam, or you will have shit stability and will wobble and likely fall, which is not a good environment for trying to calm down parts of the nervous system.
Now, staying up on the ball of the back foot, and keeping core on tight and trunk fully erect (without forward lean), fire up your glutes, both sides. Now, slowly and with control and good posture, split-squat down until you feel the psoas of the back leg protest slightly. Hold for a second, and focus on squeezing the glute of the back leg. This forces reciprocal inhibition of the psoas, but don’t expect that chronically tight psoas to just back off like a pussy; it’s here to fight and so are you. Actually, that ‘fight’ mentality is not good. Be stubborn by all means, but just appreciate that you are overcoming a simple spinal reflex, and that the tight glute is not there to ‘f**k you up’, but is the result of a neurological phenomenon that you have the power to correct.
Ok, so you’ve felt the psoas, and you’ve contracted the glute fully. Relax the glute - a bit, not fully - and then come back up to the start position. Go again, this time a little bit deeper. Squeeze at the bottom and come up. Go deeper still. If you get to the point where your kneee almost touches the ground, then wiggle your back foot further back and go again.
Now stop. Pause for reflection. How did that feel? Think about the glutes, quads, adductors etc, not so much about the psoas; it will learn to accomodate. You already have too much nervous input into the psoas and too little into the glutes etc so think about them and not about the psoas.
Take a few minutes, before you switch legs/sides. Why? Well you’ve just stretched out the psoas. Don’t now put it into a shortened position straight away (as you will simply by putting the back leg in front to split=squat the other side) or it mat react be becoming even shorter/tighter. It’s had a shock so let it chill for a minute or two, before you switch sides.
God this post is becoming long.
So, the split-squat allows us to exercise unilaterally in a controlled, balanced way (unlike a lunge, step-up or single-leg squat). It allows us to feel the exercsie and the psoas, at whatever degree of stretch we wish to subject it to.
Once you have mastered the ‘rehab split-squat’ then you can load the bar and indeed, some find greated psoas lengthening effect from loading, than from an unloaded bar - it’s the stretch receptors PLUS the GTOS, adding to the inhibition of the hypertonic muscle IMO.
Ok here is a final little gem that I like to think I discovered for lenghtening the psoas. Once you have the psoas long enough that you can lie on your front for 30 minutes or more, without causing lumbar facet pain, due to hyperextension, then try this:
As you go to bed, lie on your mattress face down, but propped up on elbows. With 20% effort, drive the knee of one leg into the mattress for 20 seconds. Relax the psoas and lean slightly away from it (i.e. towards the non-stretched side) as this will laterally flex the lumbar spine and therefore lengthen the psoas further (remember psoas originates partly from the ant. aspects of the transverse processes of T12 to L5 and functions unilaterally to laterally flex the spine). Hold the position for 40 secs. As a bonus, contract the glute of the stretched side, to use reciprocal inhibition as your aid to switching off the psoas (temporarily).
Now return to neutral position and repeat the exercise with the other psoas/leg. Hold for 40 seconds, before lying down as if to sleep on your front.
Just lay there for as long as you can (my shoulders and arms go numb after about 40 minutes) and feel free to go to sleep in that position if you so desire. Why are we doing this? Well the continuous stretched position (facilitated by the PIR you did) allow for true plastic deformation of the collagen fibres that make up the muscle fascia, allowing it to lengthen properly.
After about 7 nights of this, your psoas are fully returned to roughly ‘optimal’ resting length in my experience.
If you can’t do this without lumbar pain then your psoas need more preliminary work as the combined tissue tension of the tight psoas forces compensatory lumbar hyperextension.
Cheers and if you read all that, well done!
BBB[/quote]
Are there any pictures or videos of how to do this bed stretch online, Im finding it hard to visualise what your describing in your description of it. Thankss
