Hi guys, today were going to be talking about our lower body nerve glide flow part two.
Continuing on with our lower body nerve mobilization flows, we’re going to now switch to a couple of nerves that basically deal with the front of the leg.
Last week we looked at the tibial nerve, the peroneal nerve, the sural nerve, which are basically supplying muscles and sensory input for the back portion of the leg, hamstrings, gastroc, etc.
So now I’m going to talk about the quadriceps, the psoas, the adductors, And there’s two very simple set ups that you can use to actually mobilize these nerves.
Now these require little bit more body control. They also require some props, a chair.
All right, so we’re gonna show you how to do this standing.
One of the big challenges here is if your balance is an issue, you need to do it in a place where you can hold onto something, because these are very discreet subtle movements that we have to make in order to target the nerves.
Remember, when we do nerve mobilizations, we want to go slowly. We want to keep the tension very low, because again, you don’t know yet how your nerves are gonna respond, particularly if you are new to these things.
So, the question usually is, well why would I do this?
Let me give you some simple examples.
If you have knee pain, you should check these out. You should make sure that the movement is comfortable for you.
If you have problems with quadricep activation. If you are chronically tight through the psoas, illiacus, your abductors are always tight. Lots of different things that we may want to look at.
So, you want to test something.
You can check your hip extension. You can check your lateral lunge, see how your abductor tension is.
If you have pain, you can test that.
So, again, set some kind of baseline so that you know whether or not these drills are effective for you. All right?
So, the first nerve we’re gonna work on is called the femoral nerve.
We always start with this one, because it is the easiest setup, the easiest one to learn. What I’m gonna do,
I’m gonna be working on my right leg. So, I’m gonna put my right knee in a padded chair. I say, padded, it’s very important that this position be comfortable for you. All right? So, don’t do this in some sort of hard wooden chair. If that’s all you have available, put a mat, or a rug, or a soft dog, or something here that you can use to be comfortable.
So, as you can see, I have my knee flexed, my foot is resting up on the top of the chair, a nice comfortable setup.
Now, from here, I’m gonna get nice and tall. The next thing that I’m gonna do, I’m gonna bend my front leg slightly, and I’m going to do a posterior pelvic tilt, all right?
So, in other words, I’m gonna be tilting my pelvis like this. As I do the pelvic tilt, I’m gonna feel some increased tension, usually in the quadricep muscle, or in the psoas.
Now, in this position, the next thing I’m gonna do is while holding that tilt, I’m gonna drive my whole body forward, slightly. You may have to adjust your foot position, based on your level of mobility.
So, now, in this position, again, I’m staying upright, holding the pelvic tilt, pushing forward.
Now, I’m gonna lock myself in this position, and then I’m going to imagine right around my belly button, my naval, that a bar is pressing into my abdomen.
So, I’m gonna roll forward over it, and then I’m gonna turn away from this leg, and then bend away from this leg.
As I do that, I’m gonna feel an increase in the stretching sensation, and it may even feel a bit nervy in the front of your hip, or all the way down into the medial side of your knee. That would indicate that you’re really getting into the femoral nerve.
In the beginning, it will probably just feel like a really intense stretch of your quadricep muscle.
As long as you’re following the directions, and noticing how small these movements are, you should be getting a nice little mobilization in the femoral nerve.
So, the setup, again, is this. Knee bent, resting on a chair, my femur is staying just in line with my body. I’m not doing anything different. I get tall. I do a posterior pelvic tilt, drive my body forward. Imagine a bar is pushing into my belly button. I round forward over it, rotate away from the leg side bend away from the leg. From here, I can use rotation, or fluxion to mobilize the nerve. Super simple. All right?
That’s femoral nerve.
Next we’re gonna go through the obturator nerve.
It is exactly the same. The only difference is, I now need to slide out to the side, because I want to get my abductors under some tension. So, same idea, same basic setup.
I’m just gonna be into a lunging position, again get tall, posterior pelvic tilt, drive the body forward, bar comes into the naval, round down, rotate away, tilt away.
When you do this one correctly, you’ll feel an increased stretch in the abductors.
This is, again, for the obturator nerve.
In both these situations, we can drive or mobilize the nerve through spinal movements or through pelvis movements, it just depends on your level of motor control.
So, again, like I said, these are a little bit more challenging, because they require you to have good control of the pelvis, but the big key here to make these effective is small movements, and once you have obtained the posterior pelvic tilt, or the forward body position, you have to freeze that, and then add in the discreet lumbar movement.
So, you have to just, again, go very sequentially. Don’t try to do it all at once. I’ve taught this to thousands of people around the world.
The number one problem is people see the position, and they try to go into the position all at the same time. That almost never works.
It needs to be step by step, done very sequentially, because you may find for yourself that simple getting in the position, doing a posterior pelvic tilt takes you to that three out of ten level. So, if that’s the case, you’re done.
You don’t keep adding additional stuff to it. This is always the rule that we use whenever we’re doing these initial neuro-mechanic drills.
So that’s it. That’s the femoral and obturator nerve collides.
There are some more for the lower body, but between last week’s blog, and this week, these are the major ones that you’re gonna find yourself needing on a daily basis, again, to improve mechanics, and performance of the lower body.
So, good luck with it.
Let us know if you have any questions.
