Josh Kennedy: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the Cricket Matters podcast. Today we're talking about cricketers, suffering from back spasms, and what is the possible solution? Uh, 'cause we've had this come up a few times recently, uh, haven't we? A few, uh, a few clients have had, um, back spasms and, uh, who are you, you gonna call someone out?
Was it?
James Breese: Yeah. I'm gonna call out myself
Josh Kennedy: to start off with. Oh yeah, you had a back spasm, didn't you?
James Breese: I had a, I had a back spasm, which I helped, uh, recently. Yeah, it was being a pair of socks. It was gonna cricket. And I had to get myself out it. And also it was, uh, I think ever Sam Everson, who's listening into the podcast hopefully can hear this as well, because, uh, once he got back spade, he's got tight back and then he's got slight groin pull, which is all part of the same system we wanna talk about today.
So back spasms. Now back injuries are kinda rife in cricket. Yeah, in fast bowling. And that's the rif. The RIF in life,
Josh Kennedy: I would say
James Breese: now buying cricket. Absolutely. Now. We're not talking about back stress fractures. That's a completely different thing altogether. [00:01:00] And that's the thing, that's the hot topic for fast bowlers in the, in the professional game.
Yeah. What we're talking about is the general back spasm. What is it? What causes it? What happens, what do I do to get outta it? 'cause it is crippling, right? Mm-hmm. Back spasms are the reason I I reasons, well, the reason I fell into the fitness industry. I, I was having back spasms all the time when I was in the police couldn't fix it.
I had to find a way to get out myself. And that's what happened. So. There's a couple of reasons and there's multiple reasons why, but on a whole, right, it's down to your lateral subsystem. Don't worry about terminology just yet. Okay? So in a nutshell. There's a muscle in your body called the ql. The quadratus lumbars, or lumborum, if you wanna call it specifically.
It's by, it's by its name, and it's a muscle on the side of your body. We can touch it usually around the fatty bit on the side where the love handles are. Okay, let's just go around that area there. [00:02:00] Now, if that muscle gets overworked. For a variety of different reasons, namely the opposite side. QL isn't doing its function, or more importantly, the opposite side.
Glute and inner leg isn't doing its function. It gets grumpy, it gets pissed off. It therefore goes into spasm and that's why you can't move. That's why you have that shooting pain. You can't move. The body's going into protection mode 'cause a QLS gone. Nope, I've had enough. I'm out. I'm done. Okay. Yeah. It's a really important thing to look at it.
So for example, I recently had, I literally was putting my socks on. I was on one leg in the kitchen, slipped in the tile, had on the tiles, or try and run to play cricket, put my socks on, and literally I slipped. My body went into complete lockdown mode. 'cause I had previous injury back spasms. So I thought it was gonna protect myself again from doing it.
So it was going to a mini spasm because of it. I could feel the QL directly on my right side. The QL [00:03:00] was just a symptom of the other issues that was going on, and that was my glutes on my left side and my adductors on my left side. The muscles on the entire side of the leg, the groin area, were extremely tight.
Right. And as a result, they weren't doing their function properly. They were overworked. This was becoming overworked and it got grumpy and it just went ping. Mm. Right. So when we are looking at getting people out of spasm. Most of the time it's the system. Now using ever was a great example. Recently, he came to me other week and said, Hey Brizy, I've got a really tight back here.
I've been seeing the physio a few times. It's really tight here. What's going on? Well, I have a look at him, put him on his front, checked his Intel external rotation on the opposite side, and guess what? Did not move. Did not move. Mm-hmm. Okay. And that's what we're looking for is looking at what the opposite side, glute area complex.
It hurt. It was super tight. He's now getting massaged to get it fixed, but the point was. Where you think the pain is, is not where [00:04:00] the problem is coming from. Are we gonna fix it? Yeah. So the lateral subsystem is, is a network of muscles that work synergistically together in terms of gait pattern, gait patterns, forces, bowling, running, walking.
Mm-hmm. You name it, it's really, really important. And if the lateral subsystem is dysfunctional. This then impacts forces while other forces will be transmitted into peripheral joints that may be recruited for stability and becoming overworked. Okay? Mm-hmm. So in terms of if you're no anatomy it, it makes up of the glute medias.
TFL, the Tena Fascia, uh, the adductor complex, uh, which has multiple abductors in the Magnus. The BRE is the longest, the Ulus and the Pectineus, I think it is. Is that the one Pectineus? Um, I think that way. And then the opposite. QL side. So whatever you look at, like it's the opposite side. Okay. So right QL means you're looking at the left glutes, [00:05:00] left TFL left adductors.
Yeah. If it's the left ql, you're then looking at the right glute mead max, TFL adductors on the other side. So what do you do? What do you do is the first and most important
Josh Kennedy: question, well, before we. Just briefly before we dive into what you do, if people out there are wondering, do they have, potentially have a problem with the lateral subsystem?
You might have, these are some, some symptoms you might have. Knee pain, hip pain, ITB, uh, pain. The O tial band syndrome on the, that's on the outside of the leg. A lot of runners get that. You might have a pulled groin, you might have, um, uh, plantar fasciitis, sciatica, ankle pain, low back pain. So there's lots of things going on, uh, that might be related to, uh, to this subsystem.
Absolutely. And guess what you also may be struggling with, I. Performance on the cricket field
James Breese: rotate properly. If you've got all those pains,
Josh Kennedy: then you probably are. Exactly.
James Breese: So there's lots of things going [00:06:00] on here. It's such an important system. And again, the, the body works in mysterious ways. Um, we look at sub sling systems, we look at all sorts of things going on here.
Now we'll save them for another podcast and maybe a video to, to actually showcase it and how the body moves. But in terms of back spasms. The lateral subsystem is where we wanna look at first and foremost, for the majority of people to begin with before we start to go more specific. Okay? Again, this is a very wide, general sweeping generalization, but a lot of times the issues come to here.
Now, what do you do when you go into spasm? Well, just from my own experience over the years, you go to spasm, the first thing you gotta do is reduce the threat level, which means you gotta take your head closer to the floor, right? What I mean by that is the brain's a long way from the floor, and the software and the hardware gonna talk together.
So yes, it's gonna be a pain in the ass to get down, literally onto the floor, but you get down there, you're gonna [00:07:00] reduce the threat level, and from there you're gonna start moving. Okay? And that means rocking back and forth in Quaded. All fours with your like, just like in like a, almost like a squat pattern going back and forth.
Mm-hmm. To tell the body It's okay, it's okay. And whilst doing that, we've gotta make sure we are breathing right. It sounds harder and more simple than it really, but it really is good. We're gonna do all this. Once we do that, we've gotta start working out, well, what's going into spasm? Normally it's the ql.
Now my professional recommendation is you need to see a, a very good massage therapist and dry needling specialist as soon as you possibly can, because the fastest way to get that outta spasm is by massage and by dry needling. Let's get a dry need into there and actually just loosen all that up to release all that tension.
Whilst doing that, you release the opposite glutes and the opposite. Opposite adductors and TFL at the same time [00:08:00] you go into that area because they're gonna be tight too. They may not be hurting, but they're also gonna be tight. So we releasing those opposite areas and whilst we release those areas, guess what?
What else we gotta do? We have to activate the other side. So we've gotta activate the QL on the other side of where you're going. And activate the, the adductors in the inside of the right, the opposite leg and the, and the glutamine and glut max as well. So we've gotta think about releasing the problem areas, but then activating the opposite side of the things you're releasing.
Mm-hmm. Because if you don't do that, then it's, you're always gonna fall back into this trap because they stopped working for a good reason because the other side got grumpy and wasn't doing its work properly. That's the easiest way to try and explain it. Yeah. So you want to go in, release it, activate it, release all the things you possible as fast as you can.
Me personally, I went in for a massage the day [00:09:00] after I went into spasm, had dry needling at the same time. I had another massage two days later and I had another massage three days later too. That was three intense massages over the course of three days. I didn't wake up, wait a week. Between sessions, I went in for an hour and a half, two hours, two hours to release it all whilst still doing a lot of integration core work.
Back at home myself. So I took a massive week of rehab and training to myself to get the system up and working and fine. So again, you may not think, oh, I haven't got the time to do this. What was the question of, do you wanna be in a spasm for months on end? Mm-hmm. Or do you wanna get down to it as fast as you possibly can?
And it comes down to the whole whole point of back spasms being, we've gotta release it. The areas that was problematic. Find out what those areas are. We gotta activate the muscles that aren't working on the opposite sides. We then gotta integrate it into some type of core work, in some respects, in how we, how we tie the core.
'cause sometimes the core switch is off, [00:10:00] which is why the add that was turned on, the hamstrings turned on this whole complex, which is off right. And then we go locomote, which is just move. Right. And if you can only move by rocking back and forth and crawling, well great. We can do that. Yep. Little baby crawl on the
Josh Kennedy: floor, that's easy.
That's moving.
James Breese: Absolutely. So I see so many cricketers who are suffering from back spasms who can't play. Mm-hmm. They're not doing anything about it or they haven't been shared. They go to the physios, the doctors, and they say, just move. Well, moving is great, but how? Why? But I promise you, a huge majority of the cases that we see with athletes from personal experience is the lateral subsystem of that contralateral, contralateral ql with glute me, which means opposite side.
Yeah, sorry, yeah. Using big words. Now, James, using big, fancy words to make me sound even more important, like every other SSC in the whole planet. There we go. Well, I do that, and then you add that big group on the opposite side too. So again, this is just a, we're talking about the ideas and the principles today.[00:11:00]
Yes. I think we may need to do a video again. There's another article called Ben Kins I know who's got tight back all the time because see him stretching, trying to stretch his back out the other week. And it wasn't because he's. He was tight. It was 'cause his muscles just weren't working. Yeah. Like his, literally, I took great pleasure in just elbow dropping him into his PI performance, his glute mid.
So that was quite, that was like, it was quite entertaining. But that, you've gotta think about this and you can test it easily by testing your internal external rotation on the opposite leg. You know, lie, lie prone, lie with your face down on the floor, put your, kick your leg up to your heel to your bum and try and to see if you can drop your legs left and right.
That's the best way to look at it. If you can't, you know you've got an issue, but do it without rotating your back and moving your back. Have a steady pelvis.
Josh Kennedy: I
James Breese: think
Josh Kennedy: we probably need to do a video on that as
James Breese: well. Actually. I think we do. So we're testing all people coming in, but let's just hold it there unless you have any other questions.
Josh, do you think I should talk about
Josh Kennedy: No, no. I think, uh, I think [00:12:00] that's good as you, as you say, you know, there's a lot of conditions that it could possibly be linked to lateral subsystem, so make sure you get in there with a foam roller. And then as you say, you gotta release it all and then activate, activate, not just the opposite side.
Activate both sides because the reason, the, the muscles might be, they might be tight and weak, they might not be doing anything in the first place. So, so you, you know, you gotta get in there and, um. Start doing some sidestepping, step ups, lunges, clamshells, stuff like that. Get the, uh, get the old glutes.
Yeah, glutes going.
James Breese: And that's, I think that's, I think that's a key point. Well, what activation exercise do you do Now, I'm a big fan of, of banded bird dogs. That means getting a band and using the opposite, opposite legs of bird, obviously literally opposite leg, opposite arm. Going back like this, but having a band to do it.
Mm-hmm. So it integrates the core. At the same time, I'm a big fan of doing ba um, band around, around above the knees, glute bridges with single leg it to activate, uh, the glutes as best as you can, I think except [00:13:00] clamshells. Yeah. Particularly with like head, they've
Josh Kennedy: got gls burning, banded clamshell.
James Breese: Yeah. So you do that as part of the activation work on, particularly on the opposite side.
We're starting work. And if you wanna go crazy, you can do Copenhagen Planks later wrong to get the adductors. But simple things like squeezing a ball, like a, like a basketball, something with your feet to activate the adductors, um, because they don't get turned on. They're tight and they're weak for a reason.
Josh Kennedy: Yeah, exactly. There we go. That is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe. If you would like our free training plan, then go to cricket matters.com/train. And remember, our goal is to make you a better cricketer.