Low back pain is by far the most common source of discomfort we deal with. The irony is, a lot of times what we feel is rooted in the lower back is actually caused by muscles not in the back at all. In this video, I’m going to show you how the glute medius could be the real cause of your back pain and a quick exercise you can do to relieve your discomfort instantly. Once gone, I’m also going to show you a few additional exercises you can do to make sure your low back pain never returns. The gluteus medius is sandwiched between the glute maximus and minimus and lies in and around the hip area. The role of the muscle is to abduct your hip or lift your leg out to the side in either standing or side lying and to keep your pelvis level whenever you take a step. Prolonged sitting during the day as well as an unequal weight distribution when standing are two of the most common reasons for this muscle to get weak and imbalanced. You can quickly test to see if you have the makings of a weak glute medius by standing with your feet shoulder width apart and lifting one foot off the ground. First take note whether or not your opposite hip drops significantly. If it does, this would indicate a glute weakness on that side. You would repeat with the opposite foot as well. When you do this you would also want to see if you had to dramatically shift your weight to one side just to lift that foot off the ground. If you do, this would indicate that you have an unequal weight distribution when standing and it would be especially troublesome when squatting.
