Your low back isn't tight

You stretch your low back. It feels great for like……20 min?

Then it’s tight again.

You’ve run that loop enough times to know more stretching isn’t the answer.

Here’s what I mean. Pick up a grocery bag and hold it out in front of you.

Thirty seconds, fine. Two minutes, your forearm starts burning. Ten minutes, it’s rock hard.

So would you stretch your forearm? Or would you put the bag down?

The muscle isn’t tight because it needs to be stretched. It’s tight because it’s overworked.

Your low back is holding a bag.

When your pelvis sits tipped forward, your hip loses some of its ability to rotate. You need that rotation every time you take a step, squat, or pull something off the floor.

When the hip can’t give it to you, your low back takes over the hip’s job.

Every rep. Every step. All day.

It never gets to put the bag down.

So you can stretch it all you want. It goes right back to work.

Two drills fix this, and the order matters.

First, give the hip its rotation back with a sidelying stepover. Foam roller on the crest of your pelvis, top knee reaching just past the bottom knee on the exhale, eight reps a side.

Then teach the pelvis and the low back to move separately again, with a swiss ball deadbug. Two sets of eight each side.

​Both drills, in order, right here.​

The second one only works once the hip has room, so don’t flip them.

Hope you’re moving well and brewing better. ☕

Gabe