Nicole Hollar explains how sitting shortens your psoas muscle, the only one spanning your lower and upper body, causing back pain, hamstring tightness, and gluteal weakness. Break up sitting every 50 minutes, stretch your psoas regularly, and strengthen your hip abductors to reverse the damage.
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Welcome to the Own It Podcast with me, Nicole Hollar, where we're going to talk about stuff to help you get out of your way, take charge of your life, and, well, other stuff too. Hey guys, welcome back to the Own It Podcast with me, Nicole Hollar. I wanted to talk to you today about something that affects most people I know, and that's that you're sitting all day. If you are working in an office, you drive a lot for a living, you are sitting too much. I often remind people, if you've got a smartwatch, set that move reminder and you have to get up every 50 minutes. I try to get up every half hour, at most 50 minutes. I'm currently writing and I still need to get myself up. I mean, I remember being in college and you'd sit there not eating, drinking, going to the bathroom for hours at a time, powering through that research paper. But you really can't do that. The body is not adapted for that. And the muscle groups that are primarily affected when we sit all day in this anterior tilt is the iliopsoas. The iliopsoas is a really important muscle. In fact, it is the only one that crosses the lower and the upper plane of the body. And any athlete will tell you, you've got to have your hips capable of moving both dynamically statically. It's the powerhouse of your body. Now this psoas, it connects to the spine and it crosses diagonally through the pelvic region and attaches to the femur. So if you can imagine, if you're sitting all day, or maybe if you've ever been like, um, like a catcher and like that was your job, is your, this knee tuck position that you sat in. I had a client once who was like this. She had really shortened hip flexors. So dynamic movement was really difficult. We were able to strengthen and stretch them over time. This had, you know, come from an old college thing and she was not of college age anymore. But more present day for people who are sitting all day, this tightening and shortening of the psoas can cause all sorts of problems. It can cause energy buildup through the hips, nervous system responses like Stress. It causes emotional drain because of the signals that are constantly being fired from that region back to the brain of being so tight at the body's most grounded point. If you're into yoga, you know that they will always tell you the hips are your grounding point because everything really connects over there. So if you are somebody who is working In an office and you have the ability to get up and move around, do it. I'm going to throw water in here too. Too many times I've heard people say, well, you know, I don't want to get up because I'm in the flow. And that makes sense, but it's so important to get up, go use the bathroom, take that walk to the bathroom and make it worthy because you've been drinking water. You want to have that hydration as well. You know, stillness, we may not realize it, is still an overuse activity. It's not just about doing a bunch of activity. The absence of activity is also an overuse activity because the human body was not meant to stay still. So if you have that ability and you're at home or you're in an office, get a standing and sitting desk. I know myself, I stand up, I sit down if I want to keep typing. Sometimes I recognize like where I'm standing occasionally is not ideal, and then I sit back down. But it's because I don't spend all day sitting behind a desk. I'm only going to be doing it for about an hour and a half bout at a time, or if I'm on a call or something like that. Some people, and I had actually had a client the other day tell me she sat for 13 straight hours and got up to use the bathroom one time. Please do not do this. She also ended up, by the way, at an urgent care because she was so dehydrated from not drinking water. So if you're sitting all day, you're probably also not taking care of yourself in other ways. You've got to keep yourself moving and know that you also have to take some corrective action in order to restore the imbalances that have already occurred. Like I said, this psoas, it crosses diagonally through the hip region from the femur To the spine. So what it's doing, it's creating this pulling and lack of movement. And you might notice you are experiencing middle or low back pain. You might have hamstring pain, some kind of distension of the gut because your gut is billowing forward from that pulling of that tight muscle. You could also have decreased blood flow and nerve response in the hips. Weak gluteals, knee pain. All of this can come because of your sitting all day. So while the psoas is the primary muscle that's getting tightened, you're also allowing yourself to get gluteal laxity. Sometimes it's called gluteal amnesia. And what happens there is it becomes so weakened that we want to refocus on restrengthening our gluteus medius, our abductors, the muscles responsible for opening the legs and stretch that psoas. If you are into yoga, there are lots of moves that people do for that. I actually created a stick figure diagram for you guys. I'm going to put it on my podcast page. It's some basic stretching and strengthening moves in order to help you relieve some of that hip and back pain that you may find that you're having. And if you need some more help, I would definitely recommend talking to a local physical therapist. If you're experiencing some really deep tension in there that you just can't activate with a therapy ball or massage, you might want to consider dry needling. If you're not really sure what kind of activities to do besides basic leg movement, then perhaps you want to also consult with a personal trainer who may know specifically the types of exercises you can do, and that person can also work directly With your physical therapist. So I'm going to encourage you, you got to get up. Definitely get up at least every 50 minutes, move around, stretch about, strengthen those glutes, strengthen that low back, strengthen those abductors, and make sure that you are definitely stretching that iliopsoas region and take care of yourself. That's it. Remember, this is your time. I hope you have an awesome day. Bye.
