Dom McKay musculoskeletal therapist this video is all about releasing the psoas
muscle now the psoas muscle is one of your major hip flexors that becomes
short and tight when you sit all day it contributes to issues such as lower back
pain hip injuries and all manner of postural deviations that cascade further
up the kinetic chain and further down it to cause various pain syndromes this
video will be relevant to most people in the modern world so stay tuned without a
doubt the psoas muscle is best stretched with assistance but if you don't have
this then I'm going to show you this method of stretching the psoas which is
effective anyway so we begin in our typical lunge position now the tendency
as we lunge is to arch through the lower back so I'm going to ask you to keep
your rectus abdominus on as you stretch the psoas muscle because that will place
the stretch into the front of this hip which is really what we're aiming for so
begin just in a simple lunge here and you can start to emphasize the stretch
by bringing the forward leg further out and allowing your hips to to open up
more into this position now to emphasize this stretch even more we can start to
try and straighten that back leg so as I push my foot back in space and my knee
comes off the ground I begin to create a tension in the back
of my leg in my glutes which opposed the psoas muscle and that's going to create
a reaction of relaxation within the psoas and then I can just relax more
again drop the knee to the ground and I start to feel that hip open up even more
now another way of getting a the stretch into this into the solos is
to actually try and drag the knee up so this is engaging so as so it becomes
almost like a PMF stretch as I force against the grip of the floor the
friction of the floor and then I just relax and then push my leg further back
and again I feel a further opening into that hip and into the hip flexor the
psoas muscle so we can carry on this theme and and keep driving further and
further into that hip extension another really useful way of releasing
the psoas is to actually use a power band so this gets rid of the need for a
partner in this stretch so you begin by placing the leg through the power band
and you hook it right underneath the hip and then you just step back and you
really want to get a lot of tension on that parent band now again we're going
to keep the rectus abdominus on and we're going to allow this band to do a
lot of the work and as that stretch increases in the hip we can emphasize it
by lifting the arm on the same side and touching the back of our neck so we
start to get a stretch really strong stretch through here so in my opinion
this is probably the best soaz stretch that I have experienced