The mobility of your hips can make a big difference in how your lower back feels. In fact, athletes who seek to improve speed and strength may be selling themselves short if they don’t account for the range of motion in critical joints such as the hips, which can be used to produce a lot of power and should be used to initiate quite a bit of movement. The hips should be one of the primary agents involved in lifting; we lower to the object by squatting with the hips then lift by producing a forward thrust of the hips. Instead, most of us just bend over and lift, exposing the lower back to a potential calamity that leaves many people sore and stiff for weeks afterward. Because lifting and rotating are two unavoidable motions we do daily, the range of motion must be accounted for somewhere, and often the lower back, which is already trying to support the weight of the upper body, is called upon to compensate. 

This is a matter of regaining what was lost: as children we have seemingly unlimited range of motion in our joints, but as we grow and enter the work force, more time is spent seated which shortens the hip flexors and weakens the glutes, compromising the integrity of the posterior muscle chain which includes the trapezius and posterior deltoids. What we want to do is start using this muscle chain, and the hip joints to generate power and perform rotation instead of the lower back and knees. 

At Scorca Chiropractic Center, we help by teaching the mechanics of the human body and how to use them so that weight and the forces we interact with throughout the day are born by the right muscles; no one muscle group or structure should be exposed to an inordinate amount of stress when the body is trained this way. Let’s make rotating and lifting with the lower back a thing of the past in your life and start relarning how to use your hips and posterior muscles to reduce pain in the lower back and live a happier, healthier life. 

Dr. Francis Scorca, D.C.