Suffering with back pain? It could be your thighs…
If you are like one of the 80% of the population who will suffer back pain at some point in your life, you know back pain can be just a real pain. It can interfere with your life, make it difficult to bend and pick up your shoes, make you irritable and affect your ability to participate in social activities with others.
Did you know that poor thigh strength is often a big contributor to back pain? As we get older and along with sitting all the time, our thigh and hip muscles, specifically the quadriceps, gluteus muscles and external hip rotators, get weaker. This affects the support on the spine and makes one action, bending down to pick something up, more strenuous on your back. With the bending down you perform hundreds of times a day, if you don’t have the correct strength in the right places, the stress on your back increases.
Try this…
- Face a mirror
- Keep your head looking forward and your spine straight.
- Squat down, sticking your buttocks out
Are you unable to squat and stick your buttocks out?
Do you feel a lot of pressure or discomfort in your knees?
Does one or both of your knees turn inwards?
If you answered yes to the above, then you probably have issues with your pelvis, hip and thigh strength and mobility. This could be causing your back or even knee pain.
One simple solution is to strengthen the thigh and hip muscles. However, it is important to identify which particular muscles are weak and that is where our expertise comes in. By analyzing the way that you walk, bend and the strength of your smaller hip and thigh muscles, we can pinpoint your trouble areas. Then, we formulate a treatment plan to quickly improve your strength, mobility, muscle coordination and spinal stability.
For more information on our spine program and how the physical therapists can help you quickly relieve your back pain and improve your mobility, contact Innovative Physical Therapy today.