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Wellness Wednesday for May 20, 2026

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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maybe you should look at misfiring of quadratus lumborum while your glutes are sleeping. Normally, glutes should fire first and after that QL should start its work. if the opposite is happening then you will have overactivity of QL which would get into spasm and pain. making the body learn the correct pattern will help in getting rid of this kind of pain.

It doesn't mean that your glutes or QL are weak (so making them stronger is not the solution). The firing mechanism has got reversed, that's all.

If your diagnosis is accurate, do you have any suggestions for how I could correct it?

you will have to look at Lower Crossed syndrome. eg link. (i am not a pro physiotherapist). but the sequence would be something like this:

  1. make the correct diagnosis. self-diagnosis can be done but keep in mind about repeating different tests to make the diagnosis more certain (don't rely on a single test). You can do videos of your posture and deeply feel your muscle while starting various movements (which one contracts first is important, which you check by feeling that muscle).

  2. finding the reason of why the glutes are sleeping or why others are firing first or firing more. two big examples are long sitting hours and shallow breathing (less diaphragmatic breathing, more thoracic breathing). those would need to be corrected.

  3. Then step by step approach to correction. This would include:

A. Relaxing the misfiring / early firing muscles - this you do with foam rolls, egg/tennis ball rolls, or hot fomentation over those particular muscles. This will relax these muscles and stop their inhibitory (automatic relaxing) effect on their opposite group (in this case, the glutes).

B. Relearn the correct firing pattern. The example exercises are: B1. Hip Hitch (the first one in your provided youtube) = stand on a step on one leg, let the other side of the pelvis drop below level, then Hike It Back Up using only the Gluteus medius, do 15 reps very slowly. B2. Side-lying hip abduction with pre-squeeze (squeeze glute first, leg slightly behind the body, toes neutral, take your leg up till your back muscle fires at which point you stop. B3. Single leg bridge with other hip flexed. B4. Dead bugs.

C. Progressive loading with correct sequence. Single leg Romanian deadlift.