The Psoas & the Idea of "Special" Muscles in the Body

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I highlighted the psoas in this quote graphic because we’ve probably all heard the claim that many people’s psoai (that’s technically the plural of psoas heheh) are “dysfunctional”, “imbalanced”, “tight”, or some other similarly kind of scary word.

But the psoas isn’t the only muscle we’re often taught to pathologize: the upper traps, piriformis, QL, and glutes (just to name a few) are all special muscles that we commonly hear labelled as problematic or having “issues”.

But the thing is that *none* of these muscles are more special or prone to issues than any of our other 600 muscles.

In fact, our brain doesn’t even know “muscles” - it only knows *motor units* (this is a whole topic I cover thoroughly in my continuing ed courses, btw!)

And to top it all off, our muscles don’t create pain - our nervous system does! (Also covered in my courses!)

All of which is to say that the less we pathologize our innocent, well-meaning psoas & other special muscles, and the more we learn about pain science, the more evidence-based we’ll be in our approach to the body & movement.

Yay for the specialness of *all* of our 600 muscles!