The Golf Fitness Bomb Squad with Chris FinnDo you have pain in the center of your lower back? Chris shares the culprits of low back pain and the simple ways you can relieve your pain NOW!
Psoas Release video (using a golf club - you can use a ball instead): https://youtu.be/wvHyxVbuG0o
Welcome to the Golf Fitness Bomb Squad podcast with Chris Finn, a production of p Foros Golf.
Welcome to the Golf Fitness Bomb Squad.
I'm your host, Chris Finn, and today we're going to fuse some ticking time bombs as well as some I guess just general misunderstanding or no understanding whatsoever of back pain, particularly in the low middle back. Why the heck do you get it there? Where is it coming from? And is there anything you can do about it?
Right?
So that's the topic we're going to talk about today. A couple episodes ago we talked about low back pain just on one side. So it's very common in golfers to have low back pain just on your right side or just on your left side. So if that sounds like something you experienced, definitely go check that episode. I believe it was episode fifty two, but it's definitely a couple of episodes back from this one, So go check that one out if you have one sided back pain.
Actually I would do it after you've.
Listened to this because this also usually applies as well. In some way, shape or form. A lot of golfers will get pain, not only just on one side, but it may feel like it's kind of like in the center and even kind of radiate across your low back, but it feels like it's kind of both sides and one of the biggest So obviously the first misconceptions that you have a back problem. Nine point nine times out of ten, that is not the case. If you do have a true like disc issue or something along those lines, there's usually nerve nerve pain that's coming along with it, and it's going down your leg into your foot. But if it's just kind of like that tightness, or it feels like your low back is just grabbing particularly like hard in that center, it feels like there's almost like somebody's gotten like twisting a knot in that middle center low back kind of right over your sac room or maybe a little higher in that L four L five area A lot of the times, so there's two places that this comes from, generally speaking, so obviously this is doesn't cover every instance, but this covers a lot of them. So the first is that a lot of times comes from your deep hip external road, which are a group of muscles that are around your sit bones, so on each of your butt cheeks. If you're sitting in a chair or sitting in the car right now, you kind of stick your hand underneath your butt cheek. You can feel a little bony spot that you're kind of sitting on. Think about it, if you sit on a hard bar stool, where do you feel the kind of bones hitting?
Those are your Those are your your your p S I.
S your post or sorry p I I S post, your inferior aliac spines or issual tuberosities kind of down in that area. The big bones are usually the typical the issue two riiosities, which are like a bony part on your hip.
Bone that that hit the that hit that spot.
So kind of in that area all around there is where all your your deep hip extronal rotators are. So if you're getting pain in the low back, the number one place to start looking would be there. And the way the way the way you look there is get out, get a softball, a crossball, or a baseball. I will warn you the crossball and a baseball will be more intense than a softball because they're a litt smaller surface area. They'll dig a little deeper. But basically you get one of those, you sit on the ground, you sit on that ball on one of your butt cheeks and basically work that ball around that issuel to grassey to that little bony spot that your your sipbone.
Okay, we're just gonna called sipbones from no one.
So we're going to a round your sipbone on that one side nice and slow, and you probably are going to hit a spot that makes you think of a bunch of four little words that you may or may not have already known.
You may make them up.
And so if you're sitting on that so let's say it's under your right leg, right, it's under your right butt cheek, and you're gonna kind of bend your your right foot up so your right knee is bent, and then you kind of like drop your your right knee down towards the ground, so you're you're kind of leaning a little bit towards the side that the ball is on with that knee kind of bent and out to the side, almost like if you were going to sit uh Indian style or and criss cross apple sauce is what my kids call it these days. Right, we have your your two your two ankles kind of crossed in front of you, and you're sitting down on the ground, so that that right knee or whatever, or the left side if you're doing your left side, whichever side the ball is on that you're rolling around, that that sipbone, that knee is bent up and kind of laid out to the side. That lets those external rotators and the hips shorten up, which allows you to dig a little.
Deeper in with the ball.
And if you hit some spots that making you jump that are really uncomfortable, just sit there, breathe, leave it right. So you just go a nice and slow to you find spot that hurts like hell, leave it, breathe, and just try to let that knee kind of drop down to the ground as much as you can. You may feel it twitching, you may feel it like it will eventually ease up.
But those muscles attach up.
Into the that that kind of the the back of the safe room there, and that will cause like kind of a tug of war and will cause tension in the the central part of the low back.
So that'd be the.
Number one place to look. The number the number two place to look is going to be your so azrali atkus area. So these are deep hit flexers that come from the inside of your your femur or your thighbone and come up and attach along the lumbar the side of each of your lumbar spine. So you have two of these you one on your left, one on your right. The easiest way to find these would be a go to the good of YouTube and go to just type in part for success so as p s as release and you can see the video there. We'll put the link in the in the show notes.
Here as well.
The other is if I can try to describe.
It for you the best I can.
If you get a softball and kind of put it, if you think where your belly button is, put it just off to the side, like to the side of where your.
You know, quote unquote six pack muscles would be, and.
Then you're kind of kind of lay on it and let that ball kind of go into the side of your of your belly and basically from belly button all the way straight down into the hip bone.
That's where that so AS tracks.
So when you're laying on the ground with the softball in that area, if you kind of relax, breathe out, you'll feel the ball kind of sync in and you may actually feel it. Particularly if it's bad, you may feel it actually radiate. You may feel it in your back. You may feel some tightness or discomfort in your back, and that means that the so AS is basically referring that pain or is involved in causing that pain. Uh you know, to that low back area too. So between this episode and I believe it was episode fifty two where we talked about the one sided low back pain. Those honestly those couple areas that we talk about in terms of addressing. If you're getting those low back issues, help to release the tension that and obviously all the muscleture is in your hip, it's not in your back. Like we're not telling you to do anything in your back. Your back gets tight as a response to the tightness around it. Think of it as a tuggle war. And basically all the muscles and the hip are pulling hard down and so that back muscle grabs in order to pull back up right to keep basically an attempt to keep some sort of homeostasis there.
So central back pain.
That's when we look in the deep rotators and the hip around your sip phone. And then you can also look so as an iliacus up in the kind of in the side of the belly.
And then if you have one sided low back pain.
Which we talked about in episode fifty two, that's when you're looking more kind of in the gluten me glut min maybe some TfL it tends to be more unilateral and nature. Now, some of you will experience this just at the end of the round. It kind of gets tight afterwards, or maybe you feel it tightening as the round goes on. There's some cases where this stuff will grab and people will say they, quote unquote, I threw my back out. No, you didn't throw your back out. You spassed your hips out and then your back locked up in response. So that's the proper explanation of what actually happened.
Nobody actually throws their back out.
Okay, and I'm using air quotes there.
That's not a real thing, but it's what we feel like happens, right, We feel like our back just like locked up. It's that is actually a protective response in response to what's going on in the hips. So the key to get rid of the back discomfort is actually to get on the ball. You know, we'll crossball, softball, baseball, whatever you got and try to release the tension in the musculator that is actually seizing up, you know, trigger pointed and locked up too. And once you release that, all of a sudden, the back relaxes. So you know, you obviously can try to do the heat and the cold and stuff on the low back.
You can try to add and build the hell out of it. But the true that'll just kind of put.
A mask or a band aid over what the actual cause of the problem is. The true problem that I really want to drive home in just a quick short episode here is that it's coming from your hips, potentially coming from the so as.
There's kind of those deeper hip flexers too.
But anyway, quick dirty episode here, just get to the to the meat of what you guys needed to know.
Hopefully that was helpful for you.
Hopefully difuse a few myths of kind of that you're you know, you had a back problem or something along those lines. And let me reiterate again, if you are getting nerve pain, so like shooting burning pain down into your foot, that likely could be coming from a nerve impingement, you know, in your in your lumbar area. That's that's radiating down to the foot if it's not going all the way into the foot. You always want to check off the boxes of the soft tissues influences because muscles can refer like nerves in terms of discomfort and pain. So just something that you can kind of try to weed out yourself. And most of the time that's actually what the problem is. A lot fewer people have nerve impingements for those sorts of things. Uh, then we think, uh, it's just unfortunately, trigger point and muscle referral stuff is not a common topic taught in medical.
Schools and physical therapy schools. It's it's it's just it's it's not. I don't know why.
It doesn't make sense to me, but it's not. So I wish it was, and hopefully we will be at some point. But until then, you've been armed with the knowledge to uh, to diffuse that those pains if they come in and and hopefully if you found it's helpful, and appreciate you hanging out, and we'll catch you on the next episode.
