The body is amazing in that everything’s connected. Unfortunately that means when the muscles in your hips tighten up it can lead to low back pain. This compensation is so common it has its own name: Lower Crossed Syndrome.
Imagine an “X” across the hip (or just look at the image!). One line connects the low back and the front of the hip (the “tight” line) and another connects the front of the abdomen to the glutes (the “weak” line).
The hip flexors, the muscles at the front of our leg responsible for hip flexion, can tighten and tilt our pelvis forward. This forces our low back to arch and the muscles in our low back tighten to keep our body upright. This becomes a problem when our hip flexors and low back muscles are constantly active and tight.
This leads to compensations in our abdomen/core muscles as well as glute muscles. These muscles become “weak” or underactive. It’s not necessarily that the abdominal and glute muscles aren’t strong (we see you doing those squats and crunches!) but they’re not “turning on” to help keep us upright.
To fix the problem you have to address both the “tight” and “weak” lines – loosening “tight” muscles and retraining “weak” muscles – and chiropractic can help with both! One of the major causes of tight hip flexors is sitting. So taking breaks every 20 minutes and moving around can help prevent this from becoming a problem. And of course stretching out those hip flexors will help – stay tuned to our Facebook and Instagram pages this week to see how you can stretch out your hip flexors!