Piriformis Static Stretch and Modifications

The Piriformis Static Stretch is a common exercise used to relieve tightness in the piriformis and surrounding muscles. This stretch is used to target the piriformis muscle and helps to reduce sciatica pain. To perform this stretch, you need to start by lying on your back, bringing your right ankle to rest just above the knee of your left leg. From here, you would apply gentle pressure to your right knee to bring your right leg closer to your chest. Hold the

Transcript

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This is Brent, President B2C Fitness,
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talking about a static piriformis
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stretch, a muscle that has a propensity to get tight in both lumbo-pelvic hip
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complex dysfunction, as well as some individuals with lower leg dysfunction.
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This is most notable individuals who do a squat assessment and their knees bow
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outward. I'm going to have Vinnie come over and help me demonstrate. Now, your
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piriformis is the muscle that runs from anterior sacrum to greater trochanter.
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That is, it's kind of like a stripe that runs horizontally across your upper glute.
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When you do this stretch, that is where you should feel it. I'm going to have Vinnie go
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ahead and lay down. We're going to go flat on our back, legs straight. I'm going
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to have Vinnie take one leg, put the heel of that leg on the opposite knee, the heel
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is going to stay down. Now, we're going to have Vinnie grab this knee and pull across his
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body towards the opposite shoulder so that we're pulling the femur into flexion,
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adduction, and internal rotation. Now, the one problem we have with the stretch is
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some individuals will feel an impingement pain, a pinching on their
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inner thigh. If that happens we can't get a release and we're not going to get
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anything out of the stretch. So, there're a few things we can do to make this
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slightly more effective. First, we can preceed this stretch with a hip flexor
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stretch, and an adductor stretch. If that doesn't work, you go back to the stretch
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you still feel the pinching, we're then going to go ahead and modify this
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stretch. We're going to do something that most people known as the figure
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four stretch. We're going to have Vinnie put one leg up on the wall so he's nice and
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stable. We'll have him go ahead and take, once again, the opposite ankle, put it
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across the knee, and this time I'm going to have Vinnie push this way. At this point this
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becomes a posterior capsule stretch. Loosening the posterior capsule helps
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open up your hip joint, allows your femoral head
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to slide back in your acetabulum. Once we've done that, he gets a release, and we
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can have him then go back to the piriformis stretch. We should have gotten rid of
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the impingement pain. So, once again, this is a great piriformis stretch. If you do
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feel hip impingement start with a static hip flexor stretch, and a static adductor
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stretch, which you can see in previous videos. If that still doesn't
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work you can do the posterior capsule stretch, and then put this
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stretch last of those. Once you have this stretch hold it for at least 30 seconds
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or ideally until you feel a release and get some lengthening of that tissue.