Overuse of the Back
by Lesley Powell
Many overuse their backs due to weakness/stability in other areas of the torso. Another issue is overuse of the superior muscles of the back and weakness of the deeper muscles, the multifidus. Learning correct stabilization is key.
Laban’s concept of mobility/stability is about differentiation. To mobilize a body part, one has to stabilize somewhere else. If the attended mobilized body part is rigid, the body will hypermobilize above or below.
In the last post, we talked about the psoas. This post addresses when the thighbone is not moving well in the hip socket and other compensations in the body. Sometimes the back and sacrum compensates when there is a lack of mobility in the hip socket.
When the thighbone moves inside of the hip socket, it needs to roll, glide and slide. If the thighbone is not moving well, the hips will unleveled or tucked to lift the leg up. There is some posterior tilting of the pelvis, but it is in degrees.
In standing, the back can compensate with a weak standing leg. Many clients (dancers as well) have weak gluteal medias on the standing leg. They compensate to make the hips level using the quadratus and/or shortening the psoas.
As in a prior post about the abductors:
I took a wonderful workshop at the Laban Conference in Novemeber in NYC with Diane Woodruff, CMA, PHD on hip abduction. Diane had us observe different initiations of side leg lifts. Many people were lifting from the back, the quadratus, the tensor facia latae, etc.. She had us do some very simple things to wake up the hip abductors and make sure the initiation stays correct.Alignment is key. Do you have a good head-tail-conncection? Diane had us tap the side of our hips, the gluteal medius & minimus. Then we lifted our leg up cueing to where we had tapped. After each lift, we had to rest.
The rest helped me to get a new length of my abductors and assure the initiation was happening in the correct muscular use. It was amazing how by working correctly how standing changed. So many people are lifting their legs without being conscious of their form. Form is key. Doing a 100 legs lifts wrong can do more to train your back to shorten than toning your legs.
I think of side kicks (abductors lifts) as a sideways differentiation of the thighbone moving in the hip socket and stability of the pelvis. When people cannot feel how to move the thighbone freely in the hip socket, the muscles around the pelvis have to work harder. Harder does not mean functionally well. If the qradratus is working instead of the gluteal medias, this takes away from training the tone of the leg muscles.
In footwork on the reformer, a lot of clients are pushing from their backs and muscles around the femoral fold. I have clients start doing small pushes out half way without unleveling and/or tucking the pelvis. As they learn to feel more stability, they have to work their legs better. Than I increase the range of motion of footwork without the pelvis changing. If the pelvis changes as the legs extends, the workload ususally travels away from the leg muscles and Core.
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