Finally, a decent video of someone using the Muscle Energy Technique for the SI joint!

I couldn’t believe I stumbled upon this video tonight… apparently it was posted in 2012.

This is only useful video of someone using the Muscle Energy Technique (MET) for the SI joint I’ve seen so far.  It’s from Jon Schumacher.

Compared to all the others I’ve sifted through over the years, this video actually illustrates the principles that I use (thank you Jon!).

As I explained in my post about how MET works for the SI joint, the imbalance you’re trying to correct is when one hip bone, or ilium, has rotated forward, and the other has rotated backward.

In this video, Jon is using his hands to hold his legs in place so that when he contracts his muscles, they pull on the hip bones, instead of moving the legs.

We are assuming that Jon’s left hip bone (or ilium) is rotated backwards and his right hip bone is rotated forward.

So the on the left side, he’s contracting the muscles in the front of the hip (the hip flexors) to pull the hip bone forward.

On the right side, he’s contracting the muscles in the back of the hip (the hip extensors) to pull the hip bone backward.

There are actually a few additional techniques you can use after this to reset the pubic symphysis as well, but most of the time, these moves to rotate the ilium are all I need.

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The reason I’m sharing this video with you is mostly so you have an idea of what I’m talking about, when I mention the Muscle Energy Technique.

However, I don’t expect you to be able to fix all your own problems just from watching this video, because unfortunately, the trickiest part of this can be knowing which way your hip bones are rotated.

They can go either way– left hip back, right hip forward, and vice versa.  Throughout my battle with SI joint dysfunction, they would switch.

So this is why you will need the right physical therapist (or the right chiropractor, if you absolutely cannot find a PT) to help you figure it out.

When my PT Paula taught me the MET, my hips were rotated the same way when I came in across several weeks of visits, so she gave me the go-ahead to assume my hips were rotated that same way when I performed MET.  And over time, I learned to tell which way my hips were rotating my own.

But if you use MET to correct the wrong imbalance, you can potentially make things worse, so it’s really important to know what you’re doing.

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As I myself learned the hard way, not only is it hard to learn the right techniques to help yourself… sometimes it’s hard enough just to get into the right positions to do them!

If you have trouble getting up and down from the floor (it wreaked havoc on my SIJ’s every time) I definitely recommend this stretching table.

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If this is the first post you’ve landed on on my blog, I do have a whole section on the Muscle Energy Technique, which you might want to check out.

As always, any comments or questions, please let me know!