Thursday, September 08, 2011

Meet your Muscles: The Iliacus


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. 

All these names make me wish I'd paid more attention in latin class 8/

(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.

2 comments:

  1. If that muscle is weak, is that what causes pain in the hip flexor? Especially when climbing? Or cycling?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I make a habit to stretch hip flexors after every run, like you mention.

    ReplyDelete

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