Piriformis

The piriformis is a flat, triangular-shaped muscle located deep within the buttock region. It connects the lower spine to the femur, enabling hip and leg movement. This muscle plays an important role in maintaining proper posture and balance, and it helps to control the side-to-side motion of the legs and hips. Tightness in this muscle can cause pain and restrict movement in the hip and legs. Stretching the piriformis can help alleviate discomfort and improve movement

Transcript

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Piriformis goes from anterior sacrum.
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Piriformis is a little weird muscle, it
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actually goes from, when I say anterior sacrum that means what side? Front. So it
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goes from the inside of the sacrum and then crosses right behind the greater
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trochanter like this. What is it going to be really good at? External rotation
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right, and then if i raise my leg up like this what is it going to be really good
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at? Horizontal abduction. Can you guys see how that would work? So we got
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external rotation this way, and then you lift up this way and it horizontally
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abducts this way. Your piriformis is actually your primary external rotator
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Yes sir.
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You have it backwards. Yeah so hip external rotation, horizontal abduction
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and if you guys want to take this one step further, above 90 degrees of flexion
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this muscle actually starts causing internal rotation of the femur. I'm
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guessing that's not on your kinesiology tests at this point? It was, yeah so guys
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what ends up happening, so what ends up happening is, that was totally on purpose.
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Alright so I told you guys the piriformis kind of comes this way right,
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alright so imagine it's like this, so that's external rotation there. You come
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like this and it's what joint action, horizontal abduction. If you get any
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higher ,now what just happened to my piriformis it's on top of my greater
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trochanter, can you guys see that? Alright so if it's on top of my greater
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trochanter like this, it now wants to pull it this way which is what joint
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action. internal rotation, does that kind of make sense. I'm gonna show you that
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one more time. Alright so we use my index finger here so here it's what rotation?
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External rotation here what does it do horizontal aBduction and then as it goes
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higher now what does one do pulls the greater trochanter up and does
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internalisation, does that make sense?
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Oh well I needed a leg anyway, be delicate with sling is that okay? Is that
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going to be in your way for notes. You'll deal with it, you get a close-up view.
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Okay all right problematic piriformis. The piriformis does have a propensity to
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get a little overactive. What's this yellow thing right here, does anybody know?
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Yeah it's your sciatic nerve, anybody know what sciatica is? Irritation of
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your sciatic nerve. If this got a little overactive what is it going to do to
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that nerve? It's going to pinch it a little bit. Now we don't want to upset
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the piriformis, what exercise have we mentioned a couple times that might
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upset the piriformis that horizontal abduction machine. Does it work the outer
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thigh, no definitely does not work the outer thigh. The outer thigh is what
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muscle? Vastus lateralis, which does what joint action? Knee
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extension yeah. So you're doing horizontal abduction, the primary
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horizontal abductor is your piriformis to work your outer thigh. With
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the risk of potentially offsetting some sciatica in the futur,e does that seem
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like a good risk to reward ratio to you. No that doesn't seem very good to me
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at all. No, all right.