How To Fix Lower Back Pain From A Sacroiliac Joint Problem

Do you have back pain coming from a sacroiliac joint problem? It’s a joint, otherwise known as the SI joint, it’s all the way down, kind of like where the hips or the butt meet the lower back. If you have this type of problem, it’s hard to fully know unless you’ve been seen by somebody who can diagnose SI joint problem, or sacroiliac joint problem.

But one of the best ways that you can tell on your own at home, is if your back pain is really low, like not necessarily up here or higher. But kind of down here, right above the butt area or kind of almost at the top of the buttock area. Especially if it’s off to just one side, it tends to be a sacroiliac joint problem. The sacroiliac joint is where the sacrum, the tailbone, and the pelvis bones on the side meet, and there is some big joints there.

It’s in the medical field a big controversy over whether they move or not, and how to treat them. There are all these different approaches. And I can tell you from experience and working with patients with these back-pain problems, they’re very real. And when we treat them, they definitely get better. And if you’ve got one, if you’re out there watching this video right now, and you think that you have a sacroiliac joint problem, and you’ve seen people, medical professionals that have told you that it’s not that it’s something else. It might make you feel crazy, it might make you feel like you’re making stuff up or like the pains in your head and nobody wants to believe you.

I want to tell you that it’s very real. And here at this clinic, we help people with that problem all the time. Just a little background about me in case you’ve never met me before. My name is Dr. David Middaugh, I’m a specialist physical therapist, from El Paso Manual Physical Therapy, we’ve been helping out people with back pain problems for years and years. And the sacroiliac joint problems are something that we very commonly see, associated with every low back pain problem.

I’d say over 60 to 70% of the back pain patients that we see here in the clinic have some involvement of their sacroiliac joint. And we address it here in the clinic to make sure that they get to the point where they’re not having an unnecessary surgery. Of course, not relying on injections or medications.

Fixing sacroiliac joint problems is incredibly important because the sacrum is the tailbone, which is the foundation for the rest of the spine. It’s where the spine comes to at the bottom. And so you’ve got a sacroiliac joint problem, that means the there’s little bits of motion that occur in those joints. And if it’s locked up on one side, then it starts to change the way that the rest of the spine moves. And they can set up other problems.

What I’m going to talk to you about today is how to begin to fix a sacroiliac joint problem that’s causing lower back pain. There is a process to this now what I’m going to cover for you today is just the beginning of the process. But in reality, it can take weeks or even months to get the normal motion back in the sacroiliac joint and get the stability needed to keep it there for the long term so that it’s not continuously getting irritated or stuck or moving too much.

That long term relief that everybody’s looking for is largely dependent on two things on how strong they are and the muscles that stabilize the joints, and how well they move in normal everyday motions and use those muscles that need to get strong to create stability in the joints. To give you a practical example of what I mean by this is, for instance, one of the big muscles that gives stability to the SI joints is the glutes muscles, the buttock muscles, the butt muscles are strongest by extending your hip their action, they’re there, the reason for them is to move your hips backwards.

So they help you to do this kind of motion, that’s where they tighten up. If you’ve got a desk job, or you are kind of sedentary, you’re not sitting, you’re not moving around much because for whatever reason, that’s how it is at home or at work. You’re sitting on bent tips, obviously your knees are in front of you. And that puts a stretch on the butt muscles. We know that a pro long stretch for a long time, which a long time is defined as basically anything more than 20 minutes.

Continuously, repeatedly over time you go to work every day and you sit on your butt or at home you’re having to sit for whatever reason that weakens muscles. And so that can be one of the reasons why you’re getting less stability through the SI joint and it’s causing it to get stuck or too loose in some cases as well.

So think about what you’re doing at home, how you’re moving, what you’re doing at work, how you’re moving or how you’re not moving. That might be something that influence That’s what I’m talking about when I when I mentioned there’s a process. It’s not just doing these exercises and getting magical relief for the rest of your life. It’s very much like you can just brush your teeth once and expect to never have cavities the rest of your life.

You have to do some maintenance work to make sure that you stay healthy for as long as absolutely possible. So that being said, I’m going to show you the exercises to get started on fixing a SI joint a Sacroiliac joint problem that’s causing more back pain.

The very first one I’m going to show you is a muscle energy technique, it’s a way to get the joint to free up, we can do it on both sides. And what you got to be careful with this is to not be too aggressive because sacroiliac joints can get stuck in different directions. What we know about the joint itself is that it’s kind of an a long joint, it’s kind of oval shaped from top to bottom, and it’s tilted in certain directions in the body. And then it’s propeller shaped, meaning it’s twisted one way at the top and twisted the opposite way at the bottom.

So it’s not like a normal ball and socket joint where we can predict the movement very well or we’re even spine joints that are kind of flat and move on each other like this. It’s a propeller shaped joint, you have two of them as well. So one influences motion the other, the mechanics are crazy, and it’s very poorly understood in the in the medical community. And I think that’s one of the reasons why a lot of people in the medical field just dismiss it as being a factor in back pain, when in reality, it’s one of the main factors to fix with back pain problems.

Let’s show you the same muscle energy technique not to lie, you have to lie down on your back, knees bent just like so. And there’s two motions, you’re going to go through on each leg, you’re going to grab the back of your thigh. And then you’re going to just hold it in place there because with your leg, you’re going to start to push as if you’re pushing out this direction. Now if you think of percentages, like zero to 100%, you’re only going to push it about 25% of what you could do maximally so mild is another way to put it mild, moderate, severe or intense, you’re just going to do a mild amount of pushing, hold it with your hands, do 10 seconds like this.

And then immediately go over to the other side, after 10 seconds, put that leg down, of course relax then other leg and push down like so 10 seconds. And then after that you’re going to push on the top of your thigh against yourself. So by coming up this time, but you’re going to resist it and hold it there for 10 seconds. And then go the other side for 10 seconds. Now what you might feel in going through this process of pushing and pulling on each side, on the mild intensity is that one of those motions kind of causes the pain.

If that’s the case, that’s the one that you’re going to leave out. So for instance, if you went to grab your leg on the right, and you pushed away in that kind of set off, that low back pain off to the right, or the left, that swing that you’re going to skip, don’t keep doing it because it might aggravate you the way that the joints gets stuck, it might be stuck in such a way that if you push in this way, it pushes it further into the stuck position. And without seeing an expert to know which way you’re stuck. It’s hard to tell at home. So you just have to listen to your symptoms and do what feels good.

Let’s say it hurts to do this negative, skip that push the other way, hold it for 10 seconds, go to the other side, hold it for 10 seconds. And you can do this one if it didn’t hurt you and hold it for 10 seconds and need to come back and cycle through three times. In this example, I’m pretending that this one hurt me. So I’m going to skip that. And do this. Hold it for 10 seconds. Other side hold it for 10 seconds. And do this hold on for 10 seconds.

You can repeat this as much as you feel necessary. The big thing that you should feel here is that it’s giving you some relief, you’re feeling like it’s hurting less in the lower back, especially after you get up and move around. If you find the right combination of pushing and pulling and exclude the ones that hurt and just showed you excluding one, you might exclude two or even three, hopefully you can at least do one of them. And just hammer those home do the ones that feel good.

Now one more scenario that you have to be aware of with that that muscle energy technique exercise that I just showed you is that if it doesn’t hurt right away, but it hurts afterwards. Like within the first few minutes after you’re doing that exercise, you have to do a little bit of investigation to find out which of those is hurting you. And the way you do this is the next time you go do the exercise trial and error. Play with it, see which one leave one of those out or two of them if you want and then see how you feel a few minutes afterwards. If you felt Okay, then you can keep doing the ones that felt okay. after the fact.

Find the ones that help but what you’re doing inside your body is you’re moving those pelvis bones. You’re giving a wiggle to the sacroiliac joint to free it up and get the motion going. In some cases you might create a pop in your low back or up like a click sensation, as long as it’s not a repeatable thing, like every time you push your pulley clicks and pops every single time, that’s not good, that’s happening, don’t proceed.

But if you get that, that one click or pop, it might give you some immense relief and you might have freed up that stuck aside joint. And that’s a great thing you want that to happen in some cases, but don’t go purposefully trying to pop your joints just if you’re doing this muscle energy technique, and it happens, great. celebrated, hopefully you get the relief, and that’s great.

But don’t go to try to make it pop, that’s not a good thing to pop your own joints at will. Okay, so the next thing you want to do is begin to get stability in these muscles that stabilize the pelvis bones in the sacrum. So the first exercise to get done is a post your pelvic tilt, or backlighting maneuver, so looks like this same position, you’re going to be on your back, back flat, and then put your hand on your back and flatten out your back against your hand as hard as you can hold it there for 10 seconds, you should feel these muscles tightening up.

And then relax once you repeat this 10 times, so 10 second hold, you don’t have to have your hand there the whole time, that’s just a sheet to teach you how to do it, hold for 10 seconds and then relax, you might feel your muscles tightening up a little bit, that’s good. Hold for 10 seconds and then relax. And what you’re doing here is you’re Of course tensioning up your abdominals every time you do this, when you Tension up those abdominals, they attach to the rim of those pelvis bones.

So you pull them in a way that gives them stability. And as long as you’re doing this symmetrically, because you’re you know, your body’s even on each side, you’re yanking the bones into the position that they should be, and providing the stability at the SI joint, since you’re freeing it up doing that muscle energy technique. So after about 10 rounds of holding 10 seconds, your abs should feel like they’ve been tired a little bit and worked out if they’ve gotten warm, you need to feel your abs worked.

And if you don’t, you’re doing something wrong, stop the exercise and figure it out, you have to push your back flat and suck in those abs simultaneously, you don’t want to argue back, you don’t want to stick out your gun a whole lot you want to suck it in and pull push the back into the table or into the meta table into the floor or the bed at home.

Wherever you’re doing this, you have to push your back flat against your hand or against the surface that you’re on. So 10 second holds 10 times. And this one, I would do hourly, if it’s severe, he has severe SI joint problems, I would look to do this every hour as long as it’s possible for you to get down on the floor and do this. If it’s less severe, you might find the right dosage for you. You might do these every two hours or a few times a day. Same with the muscle energy technique, I would do it accordingly to your severity.

Now the last exercise I want to show you is a combination of that app maneuver and your butt muscles to get involved. It’s a bridge exercise. Now bridges are commonly done in the healthcare field and in the fitness field. But the way that you’re doing it here really makes you recruit your abs and your butt muscles. So if you’ve done bridges before, you’re thinking I’ve got this piece of cake, pay close attention.

And make sure you do it just like I’m telling you, you have no idea how many clients you see here in the clinic that say oh bridges. My last PT had me do that. Let me show you how it’s done. And then I show them how to do they’re like, oh, I’ve never done it like that. I feel it a lot more in the muscles we’re talking about. So same maneuver back flat, abs should be turned on. Then before you lift because you’re going to lift up your hips, squeeze the butt muscles as hard as you can tighten these up. Keep your back flat, abs tight. And now you’re squeezing this.

Before you do anything else, check how you feel on the front here, it starts to tighten up party. I don’t want you to get a real severe stretch on the front of your thighs. Keep it mild, but you’re only going to lift up as much as you can before a stretch starts on the front of the thigh. So for me, I feel about right there a mile stretch. I’m just going to hang out there for 10 seconds. keep squeezing back here. Keep flattening out here. After 10 seconds I can relax down.

What I commonly see people do wrong on the bridge is they’ll suck in, do this lift up and then they’re holding as high as they can for 10 seconds. This is stretching out quite a bit and they’re actually not working there but I’d be more than working out their hamstrings or their back muscles and then they start getting the cramp they go Ah, you don’t want to be doing that.

 Make sure that the focus of the contraction is on the buttock muscles and that will keep you safe from getting cramps in overstretching the front of the thigh here to back flat abs tight. Squeeze the butt then lift up to where there’s just a mild stretch in the front of the thighs hold there for 10 seconds. This has given you tons of stability back there on the sacroiliac joints. So if you’ve done your MBT you’ve done some abdominal bracing because you’ve been doing that back flat Now you’re getting the butt muscles to work, you’re creating tons of stability at the SI joints, the sacroiliac joints.

Doing this repeatedly, I would like to do this every day until you start getting more and more relief. Once you get the symptoms under control, then you’re going to be in a position to advance these exercises into ways to get more stability, more strength so that you can have back relief for the long term, you’re not getting a recurring SI joint issue happening again and again over time. If you’re looking for the next steps, you’re looking to get the advancement on which exercise to do next, you want to get more full picture of all the exercises that you can do, we have put all our exercises into an online program.

It’s called the 28 Day Back Health And Wellness Boost Program. This program takes you through progressions over 28 days, so that you can begin to get stronger and stronger, get more stability and get the freedom that you need in those sacroiliac joints. So that you can progress this problem at home. This program is 100% online, it’s self-paced, and it’s perfect for people that don’t have access to a specialist physical therapist, or they want to stay at home and you know, be safe, make sure that they’re taking the right precautions so that they can get the back pain relief that they need.

They can do this program at home, on the computer on their phone as well on their mobile device. So check out that program and just go to the top of our webpage here. There’s a products tab up there and you’ll see the link for the 28 Day Back Health And Wellness Boost Program.

Well, I hope that this video was helpful for you. If you think that we might be able to help out with your back-pain problem. And you are in the El Paso, Texas area. If you’re in Texas at all, we can help you out with your back-pain issue. You can request a discovery visits then we can see if you’re the right type of back pain problem that we’re great at helping out.

The best way to do that is to go up to the cost and availability tab and leave us your details there. And we can set up a either a call or an in person meeting if you’re in the region, so that we can determine if your back end problems a type that we can fix. We can begin to start on a treatment plan if you decide to hire us for that type of issue. We love helping people with back end problems.

We’re especially good at helping people with Sacroiliac joint problems that are causing back pain. And daily we get people that are looking to get off their surgeons’ schedule or looking to end getting injections in their sacroiliac joints or in their lumbar spine as well. Hope that we can be a part of your success story. And hopefully we’ll talk to you real soon. Have a great day. Bye