Last week we learned about the psoas muscle. You may have heard your massage therapist refer to the illopsoas muscle....the illiopsoas is actually three muscles: the psoas muscle (major/minor) and the iliacus muscle.
(N.B: the "Illium" is the big "wing" of bone of your pelvis..)
This iliacus is one of our major "hip flexors". Short explanation: you can lift your knee and a take a step due to these muscles! Pretty important eh?
Unlike the psoas, this muscle does not tie into the spine, so perhaps it's a little less culpable in back pain issues? I really don't know for sure.
The classic kneeing hip flexor stretch (similar to a karate "lunge punch" position) is used to stretch this muscle ..here's a link on how to do this stretch at the livestrong site.
Here's the google body link to this picture so you can play around with the dynamic display.
If that muscle is weak, is that what causes pain in the hip flexor? Especially when climbing? Or cycling?
ReplyDeleteI make a habit to stretch hip flexors after every run, like you mention.
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