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This is Brent coming at you with another
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after an often forgotten muscle, the gluteus minimus. The gluteus minimus is
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an internal rotator of the hip, plays a very similar role in postural
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dysfunction as the TFL, which is it's very close neighbor. They both get tight
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and overactive, or short and overactive in lower leg dysfunction, the feet
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flatten and turn out, as well as lumbo-pelvic hip complex dysfunction
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where we have an anterior pelvic tilt. I'm going to have my friend Leanne come
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out, she's going to help me demonstrate this exercise. To get into just a little
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functional anatomy, so we know where everything is, I think you have
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probably been on this muscle before, have felt tenderness in this area before, but
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maybe thought it was part of your TFL, or your piriformis. So, if I find Leanne's
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ASIS, or anterior superior iliac spine, right here we know that the TFL is just
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posterior to that. So right about where Leanne's front pocket would be, we have the
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TFL. We know that the piriformis goes from sacrum to greater trochanter, that
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big bony notch right here. Kind of in between those two, sandwiched in between
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those two, so this is her piriformis, this is her TFL, we can kind of hit the
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gluteus minimus, especially where those trigger points lie, right in between. So
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it's going to be on the side, but the posterior side of her hip. Leanne's going to
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get in the same position she would get in for a TFL foam roll. She can roll up
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and down a little bit between her greater trochanter and her iliac crest.
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She can go forward and back just a little bit to to get over the full
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distance of that area, good. Once she finds the most tender spot I'm going to
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make sure that she's not muscle guarding. The way we would do that in this case is
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either have her press her foot into the floor, showing her where that tension is,
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and then having her let go. If that increased in discomfort, we know she was
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muscle guarding. You could also have somebody try to lift up their foot a
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little bit, and then relax, using reciprocal inhibition to try to tone
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down her gluteus minimus and make sure she's not muscle guarding. She would
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then hold this technique for 30 seconds to 2 minutes, as we do all of
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our static release techniques. Now, if this wasn't enough pressure for her,
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we could use our little physics formula: pressure equals force over area,
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which means if I decrease area, I increase pressure. I could do that by
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just going from a foam roll, which has a big surface area, to this softball. Now,
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this isn't a normal softball, this isn't a hard softball, this is a softie, or a
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training softball. They have quite a bit of give, so it's a little nicer for
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Leanne's hip than, like, a baseball or something, or a lacrosse ball I've seen
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used, or a normal softball. But, it'll still be quite an increase in intensity
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as we can see. The other advantage for somebody Leanne's size as well is,
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sometimes foam rolls, for both the TFL and the gluteus minimus, are just too big.
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So if this is her iliac crest, and this is her greater trochanter, what
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sometimes happens with a foam roll is it creates a bridge over those two bony
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notches, and she can't get deep into these tissues that lie between. So
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sometimes we have to move to a softball with some of our smaller individuals.
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Once again, 30 seconds to 2 minutes until you feel a
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release. Hopefully you will get a change in your movement patterns and an
