Hi. I’m Dr. Eric Cobb of Z-Health Performance We’re continuing our low back series by beginning to focus on the hips.
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Alright. So this I believe this is video number five in our low back series. and we’ve covered a lot of ground.
One of the things I keep emphasizing is that there is no such thing as an ideal low back protocol. because everyone’s presentation is going to be different based off your injury history, your life history, what you do for a living, as well as just how your brain is processing, what you’re experiencing. So we’re trying to give you a lot of strategies and ideas.
One of the things that works very well often with low back issues is to focus on some of the musculature and mobility in the hip, the pelvis, and the low back as they link together.
So I’m gonna show you one of my favorite little series of exercises with some modifications today that we’re gonna do seated. So the first thing that I want you to do as all ways is get some kind of assessment. You’re sitting in a chair. I want you to out toward the edge of the chair.
Check your rotations to begin with. Test flexion. Test extension, test your lateral bends, and just get an idea of where you’re at. It’s always important to know, is the exercise I’m performing improving how I feel. That’s all that we really care about right now. So get an idea of where you’re at and what we’re gonna begin with is working on what would most people would consider kind of a classic hip stretch or hip mobility exercise. For this, we’re gonna need to sit cross cross legged. Now, if this is problematic for you, this can be done with a leg on the floor, you will not feel it quite as much, but I just want you to get some type of crossing pattern established.
You can even use a little stool if you can’t make it all the way into this position.
So once we’re here, this is gonna be be very simple. We’re gonna start off with what most people would consider to be me a glute stretch.
So we’re gonna get nice and tall, and we’re just going to come forward until we begin feeling this kind of in the butt. Now, once you’re here, I can, you know, say that some static stretching just staying in this position for thirty, forty five seconds. can be useful, but I like to personally always have people do some type of movement once they’re in one of these constrained positions.
So once you’re here, what I want you to do is simply lift your knee up slightly and then press your knee down slightly. This is an active movement And as you become more comfortable, you can increase the amount of stretch that you’re feeling. Alright?
So we’re just doing a elevation and depression of the knee in this position, and you’ll probably start to feel your hip loosen up a little bit. Once you’ve done that, we’re now going to grab the knee, sit up nice and tall, and we’re going to pull it toward our opposite shoulder, which is going to give us some increased intensity and it’s also, most importantly, going to shift where you feel the stretch in your hip. So once again, once we’re here, we wanna add some movement to it. when we’re adding the movement this time, we’re simply going to be using our pelvis and lumbar spine.
So we’re going to be rocking forward and rocking back because we’re trying to hold this knee in this position. Alright.
So we’ll do five, ten reps of that again just to make sure that you’re comfortable. Now go back and retest your rotation, your lateral bending, your flexions, and your extensions. probably will feel some better. Now from here is where we’re gonna get into the modifications that I really like to use.
Because when you look at the musculature of the hip, it’s a cuff, really.
It’s a it’s a group of muscles that surrounds the hip, attaches to different areas of the pelvis, and we also have fascial connections to the low back. as well as a lot of nerves running through there.
So what matters often is not just what we’re doing with the hip and the leg, but what we’re doing with the pelvis and more importantly with the lumbar spine.
So there are some kind of unique ways if you have the motor control that you can utilize the lumbar spine to more I think intensely and efficiently kind of floss through some of the musculature and nerves of the hip. So we’re gonna go back into this position. We’re gonna go back into that original starting position.
We’re going to get that forward lean until we start to feel a little bit of a stretch.
Now from here, we’re going to go back to one of our prior videos. And in our lumbar spine, we’re going to glide Right? We’re gonna glide away from that knee and you’ll feel as you do this, most likely a shift in the amount of stretch you’re experiencing as well as where you are experiencing it. Think about the idea that if the hip is surrounded we want to work all the way around that posterior aspect of the hip. So again, we’re here. We’re gonna glide away. back to the middle, glide away, and we can also now in this position go through that little elevation and depression. you will want to play in this position because as you do more, you may find that you have far more range of motion available to you. And every time you’re able to move forward and do that little glide, you may find that you’re able to go a little further into the stretch.
Once you’ve done that, we’ll go back to that same position. Now we’re going to rotate away and glide away. This one becomes much more challenging for a lot of people. But if even if you don’t have the exact motor control yet, I want you to try it. forward, rotate away from the hip, and glide away from the hip. And now you can go back through your same elevation depression, and you can continue to also use rotation and these gliding motions to kind of floss through that area. normally when I get people with low back issues, the hip is involved 95 to 98% of the time.
So these exercises I have found to be incredibly useful over the last really three decades. working on the hip. and low back. So make sure that you give these a try and good luck.
