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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.
