Me and My Psoas

The psoas is an under-credited muscle that runs from the middle of the spine down the back and wraps around to attach at the top of the leg inside the thigh. It is part of the hip flexor family of muscles, and is one of the largest and strongest muscles in the body. While you may not spend much time dwelling on your psoas, you could take this moment to appreciate how it helps you stand up, bend forward, walk, and do all manner of neat things with your legs, torso, and pelvis. Heck, your probably using it right now.

The thing about the psoas that I find most interesting is that it is one of the primary muscles that engages by the fight or flight alarm. Some predator leaps out at you, all fangs and death, and the psoas leaps into action to help you react. This means that the psoas is one of the most likely muscles to store trauma and stress. Overstimulated, the poor psoas winds itself up like a winch, tugging on the lower back, pelvis, and leg in a fashion that can become most unpleasant after not so long.

My psoas is seriously overactive. We have a rocky relationship, my psoas and me. I do appreciate the way that it hoists my legs up in the air, and allows me to keep my torso upright, but like a meddlesome maiden aunt it wants to be involved in everything I do, all the time, and manages to make a terrible mess of an otherwise straightforward situation.

From an early age I have suffered from lordosis, otherwise known as a sway back. Kids used to tease me and say I was pregnant because when I was in grade school my comfortable way of standing was with my back so arched that you could have balanced a teapot on the base of my spine. I was brought to you by the letter 'S'.

Of course, it didn't hurt back then. But the more mileage I put on these bones the more my overenthusiastic soas tugs on me. When I poke at it through my abdominal wall I can feel it like a steel cable. If I sit for too long, say on my regular SF-LA commute, it contracts to the point that I am in constant pain until I go into some deep contortion stretches.

But contortion is where the psoas really messes me up. While a short psoas and lordosis can lead to a nice bendy middle back, which I have, it eliminates the possibility of bending in your hips or lower back. How can I lengthen the front of my hips when they are clamped in place by this psychotic muscle?

When I stretch my lower back I can feel the psoas straining against me, and I can't seem to get it to relax. If I push through it I feel as though I am pushing into the very depths of the netherworld. My vision blurs, a ringing in my ears clangs as an alarm bell... turn back now it says. I get queasy and I am filled with an overwhelming urge to run, and a sharp certainty of immanent death. It's no fun.

However I do it, five days a week, over and over again. I pull on that psoas muscle, releasing its load of primal panic into my system, and taste the underworld in my mouth. I've been pushing in particularly hard for the last month or so because its hampering my handstands by contracting at random times and pulling me off balance. I'm trying to stretch it into submission.

Sadly, I've been feeling a lumpy pain in my right psoas and I have a feeling that the stubborn creeper has yanked at the tendon with a tad too much zeal and I'm a bit strained. Now I have to back off, apply ice, and wait it out.

I'm not giving up though. Once the strain has improved I will once again venture into the dark reaches of the psoas, and it will stretch. It will.