You train your glutes.
You train your quads.
You train your abs.
But what about the only one muscle that quietly connects your upper and lower body?
Meet your psoas.
The psoas is a deep muscle running from your lumbar spine through your pelvis to your femur. Together with the iliacus, it forms the iliopsoas.
Psoas helps you lift your leg , but its bigger job is helping your body organise and stabilise movement.
When you walk, run, rotate, deadlift, carry something heavy your body needs to control the relationship between your spine, pelvis and legs — and the psoas is part of that system.
So why don’t you train it?
Because you can’t just throw more weight at it. The psoas needs attention. With psoas you need to slow things down, breathe, create control and actually pay attention to what is happening deep inside your body.
Sometimes you won’t feel a huge “burn. Instead, you might feel a deep warmth, subtle fatigue or a completely different sense of connection around your hip and lower abdomen. That’s when you know you’ve got your psoas to do the work.
Example of the exercises to train psoas:
→ Seated psoas raises
→ Lying bottom up leg circles
→ Weighted carries
Psoas raises are my number one exercise when it comes to helping people with chronic back pain and disc herniations. A stronger, better coordinated psoas won’t magically fix a disc herniation. But improving deep core and hip control can help your body distribute load better and may be useful as part of managing lower-back pain.
Sometimes your back isn’t asking for more stretching. Sometimes it needs more support coming from the muscles surrounding it.
And the emotional stuff?
The psoas is often called the “muscle of fear” or “muscle of the soul.”
There is no research evidence but psoas muscles have a tendency to store a lot of tension coming from past traumas, higher emotions or stress. All these events absolutely change breathing, muscle tone and the way we move.
So when you slow down, breathe and finally pay attention to this deep part of your body, you might notice things you’ve been ignoring. Properly trained psoas brings to the body safety and better sense of self.
– Coach Asia