Discovering CrossFit and beginning his career as a coach was a turning point in Jeff’s life he never saw coming, but it has been one of the best things to ever happen to him. When Jeff found CrossFit, he was working down the street from a small gym that was just about to open. He has spent almost thirty years playing soccer and, in that time, put a lot of effort into developing his speed and strength, both on and off the field. Jeff wants them to appreciate the perseverance it takes to achieve something of meaning and the feeling of accomplishment once they’ve done so.Īthletics and strength have always been a part of Jeff’s life. Coaching allows Jeff to combine his enthusiasm for health and fitness with his love for teaching and opening people up to new experiences and possibilities.Īs part of the team at The Whole Life Challenge, his goals are to endow our clients with a love for challenges and accomplishing goals. He gets to show up each day to work with wonderful coaches, watching his clients grow and prosper with new strength and health. Jeff Baker loves what he does - that’s the simple answer to why he became a coach. Anatomy graphic by OpenStax College, via Wikimedia Commons. Give it a try, then see if your back doesn’t feel noticeably better. Follow along with the video of me demonstrating the world’s best QL stretch. So, today, I’m going to introduce you to a QL stretch that will most likely take you into unexplored territory. The usual go-to movements - such as touching the toes while maintaining straight legs, leaning back and swiveling the hips from side to side, and even the classic grousing about the tweak in your back at the water cooler - don’t seem to have any effect on releasing a tight QL. What you have do is really dig into this area with a stretch that can break up the log jam in your QL muscle fibers.īut, the QL is notoriously difficult to get to. Making use of estim ( electrical muscle stimulation), massage, heat, and ice don’t often have the desired effect when it comes to a long-term sustainable cure for this type of QL problem. How to Effectively Stretch Your Quadratus Lumborum The resulting tightness in the QL can be a source of pain in the lower back. Hiking the hip upward in this fashion will lead to compression of the lumbar region due to excessive side bending. This results in a gait that hikes the hip upward with each step. When the glutes are tight from disuse, the QL will compensate by becoming the prime mover of the hip joint. If you are someone who has tight hips and glutes that are not being worked to their full potential, then you are most likely afflicted with an overly tight QL. This can be compounded by a rounded posture in the upper back (which often accompanies our sitting habit) that causes the QL and its surrounding muscles to work even harder in a seated and standing position. Over time, overuse of the QL results in fatiguing the muscles, tightness, decreased blood flow, and adhesions. When these muscles no longer aide in the support of the spine and lower back, then the QL takes up the slack. Sitting for prolonged periods of time affects the stabilizer muscles of the vertebrae, effectively shutting them off. It assists in forward-backward and side-to-side flexion and extension as well as assisting the diaphragm during inhalation. The QL comes into play in the function and stability of your spine. The pair of QL muscles are located at the rear of the abdominal wall and are connected between the inside of the pelvis and the lower vertebrae. If you are suffering from lower back pain, understanding and caring for your QL can be a major factor in finding and alleviating the source of that pain. While technically an abdominal muscle, the QL is located deep enough that it has tremendous influence over the lumbar region in your low back. The quadratus lumborum, or QL, is a key piece of your core.
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