During your workout, your muscle fibers contract and elongate vigorously allowing you to lift and move loads at various speeds and directions.  This causes your muscle fibers to get all knotted and clumped up.  This is all part of the muscle building process and as your muscles rest and recover, the repairing process takes place mending all of your muscles fibers back to their original form.

However, sometimes the recovery process doesn’t mend all of the muscle back to their original form and as a result, your muscles get shorter and tighter.

This can cause big problems.

Shortened muscles can put unnecessary pressure on your tendons, which can pull on the boney structures and cause strain on your ligaments and joints.  

This is exactly what can happen with your low back.  

The culprit is your hip flexor muscles.  The hip flexor muscles are large, strong muscles that originate from your low back vertebrae (spine) and attach to either side of your upper thigh bone just below the hip joint.  It’s main movement is to flex your hips, hence the name.  

The problem is that your hip flexors get used way too much and don’t have a chance to recover, which is why they commonly gets really short and tight.  And this is where the problem lies.  Your hip flexor muscles are the antagonistic, or opposing muscles, to your low back muscles.  So a shortened, tight hip flexor muscle puts excessive strain on your low back muscles, which increases pressure put onto your low back vertebrae (spinal column).

The result is chronic low back tightness and pain.      

The best way to alleviate the problem is to stretch out your hip flexors.  Here’s how:

• Get into a kneeling position with your knees at 90 degrees and make sure that your knees and ankles line up

• Tuck your hips/butt under (posterior tilt).  This is key to getting the stretch right!

• Squeeze your butt and push your hip forward and feel the stretch in your hip area

• Hold this position for 20 - 30 seconds and perform it on both sides

You can stretch them as many times as you like through out the day, especially if you really have a tight and problematic back.

As you allow your hip flexor muscles to recover and re-establish their normal length, you’ll notice the chronic tightness and pain in your low back slowly diminish.  Keep in mind that this isn’t a quick fix.  It won’t happen overnight, but if you’re diligent and keep at it, you will get some relief.