Have you ever experienced a deep, nagging ache in your buttock? Does this pain sometimes radiate down the back of your leg, feeling like a burning sensation or even tingling pins and needles? If this sounds familiar, don’t dismiss it as just a quirk. You might be dealing with the elusive piriformis syndrome.
Meet the Piriformis: Your Hip’s Hidden Muscle
Deep within your buttocks, you have a small but mighty muscle called the piriformis. It starts near your lower spine and attaches to the top of your thigh bone (femur). Its primary job is to help rotate your hip outward, allowing you to walk, run, and change direction with ease. Let’s start by looking at anatomical terms of movement before we explore the hidden muscle.
Anatomical Terms of Movement
Abduction and Adduction
Abduction and adduction are two terms that are used to describe movements towards or away from the midline of the body.
Abduction is a movement away from the midline, just as abducting someone is to take them away. For example, abduction of the shoulder raises the arms out to the sides of the body.
Adduction is a movement towards the midline. Adduction of the hip squeezes the legs together.
In fingers and toes, the midline used is not the midline of the body, but of the hand and foot, respectively. Therefore, abducting the fingers spreads them out.
Medial and Lateral Rotation
Medial and lateral rotation describe the movement of the limbs around their long axis:
Medial rotation is a rotational movement towards the midline. It is sometimes referred to as internal rotation. To understand this, we have two scenarios to imagine. Firstly, with a straight leg, rotate it to point the toes inward. This is the medial rotation of the hip. Secondly, imagine you are carrying a tea tray in front of you with your elbow at 90 degrees. Now rotate the arm, bringing your hand towards your opposite hip (elbow still at 90 degrees). This is an internal rotation of the shoulder.
Lateral rotation is a rotating movement away from the midline. This is in the opposite direction to the movements described above.
Now that we have a better understanding of anatomical terms of movement, let’s dive into the functions of the piriformis muscle.
Functions of the piriformis muscle
1. Hip joint: External/lateral rotation
An example would be kicking a football with the side of your foot.
2. Hip joint internal/medial rotation.
When might you need to internally rotate or flex your hip joints?
When squatting for one.
3. Abduction
An example of this type of movement would be when we open our legs when in a seated position.
Please forgive this guy guilty of manspreading. Maybe he’s just trying to work out his piriformis muscle?
4. Hip joint stabilisation
Last but not least in this discussion, the piriformis muscle aids in hip joint stabilisation . It reduces pressure and wear and tear on the joint.
Now that we have a better understanding of this hidden muscle, we can continue our investigation into the mystery pain called Piriformis Syndrome.
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