29/11/2018
**Long Post Ahead**
There has been a reoccurring question that I have gotten from a few of my clients as of late: Have you ever done an ab exercise like V-ups, Russian Twists, Dead Bug, or even leg lifts and struggled to keep your back from arching?
There are quite a few factors that feed into why it is difficult for an individual to keep their lower back stabilized when doing such exercises, but today I wanted to touch on the concept of muscle balance. Excuse the crude muscle drawings- yes, I am aware they are not anatomically correct. This picture depicts a straight on view of a skeleton on the left and a right-side view of the skelton to the right. The Psoas Major and Illiacus are two big players when it comes to this issue that we are talking about and are labeled in the picture as well. Your Psoas Major originates on the front of your Lumbar vertebrae. It is a huge hip flexor, crossing the hip joint and inserting onto your femur. The Illiacus is another hip flexor, starting on the inside of your pelvis (Illiac Fossa) and inserts next to Psoas Major on your femur.
Why am I mentioning hip flexors when talking about a lower back issue? Well, when it comes to muscles and how the body moves, EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED!
When muscles move bones into ranges of motion, there is typically a fixed or stabilized point and a mobile point. A fixed/stabilized point is important because it is what a muscle anchors onto to pull at its other point(s) or attachment- i.e. the mobile points. When thinking about Psoas Major and Illiacus, ideally your spine and pelvis are the stabilized points so these two muscles can move your femur resulting in hip flexion. But, since we are talking about muscle balance and we, unfortunately, don’t always live in ideal conditions sometimes, the femur is more stable that our trunk/hips.
What does this result in you may ask? Ding, ding, ding: an arch in your lower back!!! How? Look at the drawing on the right. This picture focuses on Psoas Major in particular. Since Psoas Major begins on the front of your lumbar vertebrae it has a direct line of pull on your lower back to pull the vertebrae anteriorly when the femur become more stable than the trunk.
What about Illiacus which is hidden in this picture? Well, the pelvis is a huge junction between your lower body and your trunk. Countless lower back muscles insert and originate onto your sacrum and pelvis. Take the QL for example. A huge lower back muscle- with a bad reputation for lower back pain. Side-tangent for another day. Back on track- when Illiacus contracts and the trunk is not stabilized, guess what it moves- your pelvis! Like Psoas, it pulls the pelvis forward, and the lumbar vertebrae- which stack on top of one another from the sacrum, which articulates with the pelvis- follow in suit. So, really, it’s not just your lower back arching, but also your pelvis is moving forward as well when your trunk is lacking stablity.
Remember muscle balance! So how do be deliver stability back to the trunk? From a MAT perspective, we have to look at the other side of the spine! As I just alluded to, countless back muscles anchor onto the pelvis as well as the posterior side of your vertebrae and ribs in order to stabilize your trunk. However, recall that the body doesn’t always get to operate in ideal conditions! So if some of these muscles are not working well, then we’ve got ourselves an arching lower back and a trunk stability issue…
MAT is a great tool to use to restore muscle balance and stability back to your lower back. MAT can go, one by one through each muscle and test to see if it is contracting appropriately. So you can keep working on your core with those terribly effective exercises, no arching lower back included!
