Category: Back Pain | Author: Stefano Sinicropi | Date: October 8, 2025
If you’re dealing with back pain, the discomfort may not stem from an issue with your spine, but rather the structures that help to support and stabilize it. One such structure is the psoas muscle.
You have a psoas muscle on either side of your spine, and aside from helping to support the spine, it’s also engaged when you move your lower back, hips and legs. If you develop lower back pain, your discomfort could be derived from damage or weakness to one or both of the supporting psoas muscles. In today’s blog, we take a closer look at causes of psoas muscle problems and how to treat back pain tied to these issues.
Causes Of Psoas Muscle Dysfunction
When your psoas muscles become overstressed, the muscles can tighten or contract, and this impacts your entire spinal system. Tight psoas muscles can end up pulling your spine forward a bit, leading to muscle imbalances, an exaggerated spinal curve like lordosis, and increased pressure on spinal discs, potentially speeding up disc degeneration. Strengthening and relaxing these muscles are key to spinal support and comfort.
But before we talk about some of the ways to improve the health of your psoas muscles, let’s explore some of the ways we may be unknowingly overburdening these muscles. Some ways you may be damaging or overstressing your psoas muscles include:
- Prolonged sitting
- Overuse (particularly during exercise or athletics)
- Poor posture habits
- Unmanaged mental and emotion stress causing muscle tension
- Overtraining/Muscle imbalances in the lower spine
- Sedentary lifestyle
As you can see, our psoas muscles can suffer if we are too inactive or if we put too much stress on them, so finding a healthy balance is key.
Treating Tight Psoas Muscles
Targeting your psoas muscles can be a wise move if you’re hoping to improve your low back health. Some ways to help these muscles relax and strengthen them include:
- Targeted Stretching – You can help your psoas muscles relax with the help of targeted stretching exercises. Here are some helpful stretches to pursue.
- Stretching-Based Activities – Activities like yoga or Tai Chi are perfect for slowly and deeply stretching certain areas of your body, including your lower back.
- Physical Therapy – A physical therapist can set you up with a PT routine that strengthens your psoas muscles or targets muscular imbalances in your lower back.
- Varied Exercise – Exercise is great, but it is also helpful to vary your workouts. If you’re only ever targeting your upper body or every workout is a 5-mile run, you’re going to be stressing and straining the same muscle groups, and that can lead to imbalances and weakness from overtraining. Vary your exercise habits, and you’ll reduce your likelihood of overloading your psoas muscles.
- Posture Improvements – Finally, be aware of your seated posture and make adjustments when you notice that you’re hunched or slouching. Bad posture can increase stress on our lower back and psoas muscles, so fix your alignment and you may notice that your back pain disappears.
Of course, for personalized professional help overcoming back pain, whether or not it’s related to an issue with your psoas muscles, connect with Dr. Sinicropi and the team at The Midwest Spine & Brain Institute. Give our team a call today at (651) 430-3800.
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