Quadratus Lumborum SA Static Release and Stretch

Quadratus Lumborum SA Static Release and Stretch is an effective massage technique designed to release tightness and tension in the lower back, hips, and abdominal area. By alleviating tension in these areas, it may help improve range of motion, reduce pain, and improve overall posture. This technique utilizes gentle, sustained pressure and stretch in the quadratus lumborum muscle - a large, deep hip stabilizer muscle that connects the ribcage to the pelvis. It is

Back To Videos

Transcript

00:00:0000:00:02

This is Brent coming at you with another

00:00:0200:00:06

we're going to do the often forgotten muscle, the quadratus lumborum, commonly

00:00:0600:00:11

known as the QL. Now the QL has a propensity to get overactive and short

00:00:1100:00:14

in those individuals with an asymmetrical weight shift, and those

00:00:1400:00:18

individuals with lumbo-pelvic hip complex dysfunction, specifically an

00:00:1800:00:23

anterior pelvic tilt, may have shortness and overactivity in this muscle,

00:00:2300:00:25

especially if they have a history of low back pain.

00:00:2500:00:28

I'm going to have my friend Yvette come out and help me demonstrate this

00:00:2800:00:30

exercise. Now this muscle is a little deeper.

00:00:3000:00:33

This muscles a little different than some of the other muscles that we've

00:00:3300:00:36

talked about with self-administered release techniques, so I want to take a

00:00:3600:00:38

second to discuss anatomy here,

00:00:3800:00:42

show you guys a little bit of a palpation activity, something you can

00:00:4200:00:46

practice so you get a good idea of where this muscle is. If you find the back of

00:00:4600:00:52

somebody's pelvis, go to their posterior ilium and find the rim.

00:00:5200:00:59

Right, the top edge. You then put your hand on the last rib that you can feel. I

00:00:5900:01:01

want you guys to stick your thumbs on the lumbar spine. You can feel the

00:01:0100:01:07

spinous processes. Then use your index fingers to go to the posterior ilium, the

00:01:0700:01:13

edge of that last rib, that little square you just made with your fingers outlines

00:01:1300:01:19

the quadratus lumborum. You can then take your index fingers, move them inward

00:01:1900:01:25

towards each other and then bring them down into the lumbar spine. All right so

00:01:2500:01:29

immediately, this way, and you should be able to feel the edge of the quadratus

00:01:2900:01:34

lumborum. It's definitely a pretty distinct border. Now what that'll do is

00:01:3400:01:39

it'll give you an idea that this muscle is not superficial. It actually lies just

00:01:3900:01:46

lateral to the lumbar spine underneath the thoracolumbar fascia, underneath the

00:01:4600:01:51

external and internal obliques, as well as underneath the transverse abdominis. This

00:01:5100:01:52

is a very deep muscle.

00:01:5200:01:56

We're not going to be able to hit this with a foam roll across the low back. Not

00:01:5600:01:59

that it would be a good idea, anyway. So I'm gonna have Yvette go ahead and flip

00:01:5900:02:01

over.

00:02:0100:02:07

Now what I've done guys is when I was walking my ginormous chihuahua this

00:02:0700:02:09

morning; I know some of you guys are going to laugh at me for having a chihuahua,

00:02:0900:02:13

but he's 22 pounds and is the biggest chihuahua you've ever seen. You guys can

00:02:1300:02:15

look that up on Facebook.

00:02:1500:02:19

We were at Petco, and at Petco they had a big bin of tennis balls, right, because dogs

00:02:1900:02:21

love to play with tennis balls.

00:02:2100:02:23

The nice thing about that is I could kind of play with these tennis balls to

00:02:2300:02:29

find different densities, right, so some of these--like this one-- super, super, soft

00:02:2900:02:32

and this one is a little bit more dense.

00:02:3200:02:37

Why is that important? Well, if I'm dealing with Yvette here her

00:02:3700:02:42

tissue depth is really not that much, and I just want to get to her

00:02:4200:02:46

quadratus lumborum. I don't want to push past it to the point where we end

00:02:4600:02:50

up with this huge lumbar lordosis. Now somebody like me, with a little bit more

00:02:5000:02:51

tissue depth,

00:02:5100:02:56

I would need a little bit firmer tennis ball. So, I just picked out three with

00:02:5600:03:00

different densities. We're going to use the softer one for Yvette.

00:03:0000:03:04

It's actually a pretty fairly easy technique to show. All you're going to

00:03:0400:03:07

have them do is find the top of the pelvis. They can use their

00:03:0700:03:08

hands.

00:03:0800:03:11

So find the top of your pelvis back there, you got that, now I want you to put

00:03:1100:03:17

this tennis ball underneath your back there, just on top of your pelvis and

00:03:1700:03:22

then what you'll have them do is actually slide sideways in one piece.

00:03:2200:03:26

All right, make sure that they don't do this squirmy pelvis thing because

00:03:2600:03:30

that will actually contract the QL and then relax the QL and make it

00:03:3000:03:34

harder for them to find any sort of trigger point that may exist there. But if

00:03:3400:03:38

they kind of bridge and use their arms and slide in one piece, what they'll end

00:03:3800:03:43

up doing is slide that tennis ball right into the QL and then slide a little

00:03:4300:03:50

further until they find the most tender spot, and then you guys know what the

00:03:5000:03:54

release protocols are. It's 30 seconds to 2 minutes, until we get a significant,

00:03:5400:03:59

significant decrease in discomfort or we see an actual release, right, where we

00:03:5900:04:01

feel that the muscle is letting go.

00:04:0100:04:04

Now one thing I do not want to see

00:04:0400:04:08

is you guys know I'm very fond of the training softball, right, that's a

00:04:0800:04:16

softball with a soft outside. If Yvette tries to do a softball on her QL,

00:04:1600:04:18

let's look at what happens.

00:04:1800:04:21

So she's going to go through the same motions and then I'm going to go ahead and

00:04:2100:04:24

tell her to relax, right, we can't have her

00:04:2400:04:28

all tensed up or we'll never get a release. Well, as soon as she relaxed and

00:04:2800:04:30

she puts her backside on the floor,

00:04:3000:04:35

we get this lumbar lordosis. We get a little bit of rotation in her pelvis.

00:04:3600:04:40

Probably the scariest thing for me thinking long-term is we get this huge

00:04:4000:04:44

posterior to anterior force on the lumbar spine.

00:04:4400:04:49

Now I'm not worried about one session. What I'm more worried about is if I give

00:04:4900:04:52

this to her for homework, if I put this in her routine to do every day, because

00:04:5200:04:55

I'm trying to correct whatever dysfunction exists that includes the QL,

00:04:5500:04:58

and she starts doing this every day.

00:04:5800:05:03

Is there a chance that posterior to anterior force is going to create

00:05:0300:05:08

adaptive changes in the connective tissue around the lumbar spine, setting

00:05:0800:05:12

up an instability and potentially injury?

00:05:1200:05:17

I'm not so worried with the tennis ball, right, her lumbar spine was

00:05:1700:05:19

flat on the floor.

00:05:1900:05:22

There was no reason for me to think that there was really that much of a

00:05:2200:05:26

posterior to anterior force that I might cause those changes, but something huge

00:05:2600:05:27

like this,

00:05:2700:05:31

that could be a problem. The same could be said about using a foam roll on the

00:05:3100:05:32

low back.

00:05:3200:05:36

It's not so much one session. One session is probably not going to hurt you, but if

00:05:3600:05:37

you did it every day,

00:05:3700:05:40

could you create those changes that eventually set up injuries such as like,

00:05:4000:05:42

a herniated disc.

00:05:4200:05:47

Now once I get this muscle released, now I need to start thinking how do I

00:05:4700:05:50

lengthen it, right, I want to return it to optimal length, so I'm going to have

00:05:5000:05:57

that get into Child's Pose position, which you guys have seen. We actually use

00:05:5700:06:00

the Child's Pose for a latissimus dorsi stretch.

00:06:0000:06:07

The nice thing about this position is it posteriorly tilts the pelvis, which the

00:06:0700:06:11

quadratus lumborum is a very weak lumbar extensor, will actually be lengthened

00:06:1100:06:15

just slightly by posteriorly tilting the pelvis, because it's the same as lumbar

00:06:1500:06:16

flexion.

00:06:1600:06:20

We can then side creep

00:06:2000:06:24

as we did and the progression of that latissimus dorsi stretch,

00:06:2500:06:29

the only thing we need to worry about now, is there a potential that the lat

00:06:2900:06:33

is going to be the restricting structure and I've never actually going to get to

00:06:3300:06:37

the QL? Well that's easy enough to fix. All I have to do is have Yvette

00:06:3700:06:41

relax her arms a little bit, bring them in, she can actually use them to kind of

00:06:4100:06:47

pillow her head. She can go a little bit more into lateral flexion until she

00:06:4700:06:52

feels it at the QL. I do have to know guys, that this particular stretch, unless

00:06:5200:06:55

somebody is really, really, geared up,

00:06:5500:06:59

they're probably not going to feel this QL stretch. It's so deep and it's so

00:06:5900:07:05

medial, so proximal to the lumbar spine, that actually takes a fair amount of

00:07:0500:07:09

tightness before lateral flexion is going to lengthen it enough for the

00:07:0900:07:13

individual to feel, going back to the regular Child's Pose stretch in that

00:07:1300:07:18

case, is probably your best bet. So that, at least you're affecting the other

00:07:1800:07:22

lateral flexors, the spine, being the latissimus dorsi, and the erector

00:07:2200:07:25

spinae on that side. Do you feel this?

00:07:2600:07:29

Yvette actually feels this and she has been having a little bit of SI

00:07:2900:07:33

joint dysfunction and does have an asymmetrical weight shift, so this is

00:07:3300:07:36

probably a good stretch for her. She's going to use the release technique using

00:07:3600:07:41

the tennis ball at the appropriate density. Make sure you guys are very

00:07:4100:07:44

careful at calculating which tennis ball you should be using. I hope you guys get

00:07:4400:07:48

great outcomes from this technique and anybody who has been having some of these

00:07:4800:07:51

problems gets great results. Talk with you soon.

You can only view 3 videos without an account. Become a Member to access all videos on the website.

Quadratus Lumborum SA Static Release and Stretch

Transcript

Any Questions, Concerns or Recommendations?

Please contact us through the
Support Page

Legal

Social

You can only view 3 videos without an account. Become a Member to access all videos on the website.

Quadratus Lumborum SA Static Release and Stretch

Transcript

Certifications, Courses & More

Any Questions, Concerns or Recommendations? Please contact us through the Support Page

Legal

Social

Any Questions, Concerns or Recommendations?

Please contact us through the
Support Page