Do you have tight butt muscles? Are you diligent with stretching your glutes but they aren’t feeling any looser? Maybe its coming from the inside of your pelvic floor???
Your pelvic floor muscles reside within the rectum for men and retum and vagina for women. Muscles such as the puborectalis, obturator internus, piriformis and coccygeus can become tight and interfere with bowel function, cause muscle spasm and alter how the pelvis, tailbone and hip move. If these muscles become tight, it will feel like having tight butt muscles.
Below are pictures of a female pelvis…hip bones to either side…at the top is the spine moving downwards to become the tailbone and at the very bottom is the pubic bone. This gives you an idea of where these muscles are located inside your vagina/rectum.
PUBORECTALIS MUSCLE
OBTURATOR INTERNUS MUSCLE
PIRIFORMIS MUSCLE
COCCYGEUS MUSCLE
As we move throughout our day, our bones move and change position as well, bringing the muscles along with them. If we consistently have, for example, one side of our pelvis that is too far forward or a back that is always in a slouched position, this changes the pull of these muscles and not in a good way.
When these muscles become too tight, they don’t initially have to be giving you a problem in your pelvic floor….they can contribute to problems elsewhere in your body. If you are having chronic discomfort with your low back, hip or SI joint and have had lots of treatment with no long lasting change, it would be worth it to see if the ‘inside’ muscles are the real culprits.
The best first step is to see a pelvic floor physiotherapist and have an assessment of your pelvic floor. This assessment will let you know if one or more of those muscles are tender and have too much tone in them. Treatment often involves some trigger point release for these muscles, home stretches/release exercises and a postural correction. There is always a reason why these muscles become tight and if that remains a mystery, they will continue to tighten. Posture is always involved and simply changing the way you sit, stand or move throughout your day can make a huge change with the amount of tension running through your muscles.
Check out further posts to find out how to stretch/release these ‘inside’ muscles and have a look at my youtube channel for some great videos!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJqDcZOOLoNKdBwxmY_wawA