Today, what we’re going to be talking about is that lovely concept that I keep on hearing about. It’s when doctors tell their patients, “You have one leg shorter than the other.” It always is funny to me when I hear someone say their doctor has told them that because unless you or your doctor measures your bone, you might not have a leg length discrepancy. It could just be caused by a muscle. That muscle, which we’re going to be taking apart today, is your quadratuus lumborum; it’s a muscle that’s in your lower back, and it’s really, really deep.

The quadratuus lumborum is very deep- actually four layers of muscle down and runs from the rib cage to the hip. It’s your back muscle and travels through four layers. Four layers so it’s very much a core muscle. Four layers deep, so this is a very core aspect of a muscle. What I mean by that is, if you mess with this muscle, it has a direct effect on your core structure – meaning your spine, your ribs, and your hips. Those things move, many things move. It’s not like your trap – where your trap is just attached to your shoulders and parts of your rib cage and things like that. This muscle has access to everything – diaphragm, pelvic floor. I want you to understand, when this muscle gets upset and it starts to contract itself, there are a lot of things going on, not just a habit.

The most important activity of the quadratuus lumbarum is that it helps you rotate to one side, so you’re leaning to one side.   If you get out of bed as you should- putting one hand on the mattress and raising, you are using this muscle. This is the big one. It hikes up one hip so if you’re a person that likes to stand on one hip, you’re contracting this muscle to hold that body up right alongside of the glute and other aspects of your hip rotators. This is the main function of this muscle.   When you lean on one hip (picture a mom with a baby on her hip), the muscle goes from straight and balanced to hiking up. The hips change, but you’re still somewhat standing up straight. You’ll never truly realize a half-inch discrepancy, holding at a resting rate. What you realize is, as it hikes up over and over again, that’s now holding a posture. Holding a posture, that’s going to now bring up one leg.

So, what you have to realize is, that that muscle tissue is now bringing one side up. So, if you’re standing relatively straight and if you decided to hike one hip up and your body’s designed stay with the horizon, stay level and stay up, you wouldn’t even notice yourself shifting your hips. If you straight you won’t even realize you’re hiking your hips. Your upper body actually stays relatively level. You’ll never really realize what’s happening down below.

That’s the trick with quadratuus lumbarum, so podiatrists that say, “Oh, that leg height discrepancy, let’s put a heel lift in.” All those things are good and they help you with the pain, but the basic cause of it is not your bony structure, it’s actually your muscle. So, next time a doctor says, “You need a heel lift,” right after that you said, “Measure my bones.” Heel lift? Measure my bones. That’s what you want to do. You want to start measuring from your hip bone to your knee, your knee to the ankle, and do the same thing to the other side. If they match up, you don’t need a heel lift, you need to work with a different muscle tissue that’s jacking up your hip. It’s easy as that. Heel lift? Then you need to measure my bones. That’s it. That’s an easy way to do it. Even better if you get an x-ray. An x-ray, it’s spot on.

But x-rays are costly. You want to go along with that with x-rays for, let’s say, hip issue. Something like that. You accidentally hurt your hip. That’s something good to know, “Do I have a hip discrepancy?” Ask to have your bones measured right there. This muscle is very deep – actually four layers of muscle down and runs from the rib cage to the hip. I want to focus now on that you have been told you have a leg discrepancy, and you don’t know how to fix it. One, you can measure the bone with one of those tailor tapes. It’s not going to be completely accurate, but you’ll see whether you have a leg discrepancy or not. But how do you clean it up? The easiest way to clean it up is actually getting your hips in line.

The easiest way to stretch your quads out some more is cross your feet – one behind the other while standing. It doesn’t matter which foot is in front because they’re both crossed, right? You reach up for the sky. You consistently reach, reach, reach, reach, reach until you feel a tug under your arm about ¾ of the way up your torso. When done right, you’ll see your shirt is going to be, long, long, long, and then it’s going to start pulling on my hip. You’ll see a pull on your pants also.  Once you reach there, all you have to do is now keep on reaching for the ceiling. Reach for the ceiling, reach for the ceiling, and slightly twist and that’s it. Some people might actually get a good stretch without the twist. You’ll get the stretch at that point but if you’re actually somewhat flexible, you’ll be able to extend out. Try to move through the stretch and get a slight range of motion, over across your body. So, you’re are going from straight up and then lean, either raising your right arm, you’re leaning over to the left, opening up that whole right side of your hip and low back and repeat raising the left arm leaning over to the right. That’s where your quadratuus lumbarum resides. You want that to open. You want to do this nice and easy, this is a very temperamental area.

Remember, especially if you have pain during this exercise, you want to take it easy, nice and slow. Done correctly, you are giving your body a compelling reason to not hold a contraction and protect itself. So, be easy to yourself. Be kind to yourself; strengthening that muscle alone will change so many different things. Remember, the quadratuus lumborum is tightly knit to your rib cage, your lower back, and lumbar region, as well as your hip. Those three areas have such a cascading effect if one of those things decides to change for the better; cascade effects inside the rib cage, shoulders, lower back, hips, knees. A cascade effect can be negative too; there are so many different things that could happen because of something going wrong. You want to take it easy on this area but be aware if someone says, “You have a leg length discrepancy, let’s put in a heel lift,” measure the bones.