As we launch our new business in the Florida Keys, I've decided to repurpose some of the content from our old website in New Jersey. While the topics may not be specific to the Keys, I hope you'll find the information helpful and informative.
Here at Island Sports Chiropractic & Joint Center, we treat many patients suffering from lower back pain. I see this a lot in my police officers who carry a gun on the right side or patients who just tend to favor one side, maybe you tend to hike one hip more than the other? I'm going to show you a quick test you could do at home to see if this video applies to you.
We're going to be assessing, what's called the gluteus medius muscle. A lot of you have heard of the gluteus maximus, that's the most popular, right? This is actually the gluteus medius, and it's a big player in low back pain. So a quick at-home test you can do is just stand on one leg, hands on your hips- make sure you don't fall. And if you tend to sag away from the side that you're standing on, as you do that, that could be a sign of gluteus medius weakness. And that can cause low back pain and things like the SSI joint, the sacred iliac joint, or all the way up into the lumbar spine. I'm going to show you a quick at-home exercise that you can do if you've noticed that you tend to sag away from the leg that you're standing on.
We've established that gluteus medius weakness is you by that standing test on one leg. Now we're going to show you a variation of the old clamshell exercise. This used to be a way that we thought would strengthen the gluteus medius, but this is actually a little bit better of an approach for that muscle. We're going to keep this bottom leg nice and bent for a nice stable support system. This way you're not rocking back and forth. And we're going to lift the leg parallel with the ground. Now that's going to be our starting point. So, when we do the exercise, we're going to return to this point. We're not going to return to the floor. We're going to return right to this point.
To attack that gluteus medius muscle, we're actually going to rotate our foot out just a little bit. When you do this, I want to make sure you're not doing this. You're not opening your hips up. Your hips are staying straight, stacked on top of each other and just a slight rotation of the foot and the hip, rotating that outwards. Once you get there, you're just going to elevate the foot about 30 degrees and return it to that parallel position. Again, we're not returning to the floor, just to that parallel position.
You should feel a contraction right above your back pocket if you're doing this correctly. It's a nice exercise but it’s going to be very difficult if you have gluteus medius weakness. So, that might be tough. Start with maybe three sets of 10 at home, work your way up to three sets of 15 and go from there.
If you have any questions or please do not hesitate to reach out!
Jesse J. Suess, DC CCSP®
Seaside Chiropractic
Key Largo, FL