Healing Sore QL Muscles

I never had low back pain but was feeling quite sore after I cleaned out several rooms of my mother's house.  I didn't hurt immediately but was very sore and stiff when I woke up the next morning.  The first time I had the problem, it was relieved by a physical therapist who used ultrasound (deep heat).

Another visit to clean out the rest of my childhood home left my low back sore and stiff again. Several visits to the physical therapist didn't take care of the problem the second time and I tried a few sessions of massage with some luck.  Then we had to move.

"Here we go again," I thought.

My massage therapist explained that my QL (Quadratus Laboreum) was the culprit. "It's the moving mucscle," she said. "It's the muscle that lifts your leg."  She also went on to say that the muscle can be strained if you bend and twist at the same time or bend at certain angles repetitively.  In my case, I kept bending my upper torso at a 45-degree angle to sort through piles of paper and tupperware.

Two rounds of Swedish Massage helped but the muscle still stiffened when I sat for longer than an hour. Another massage therapist recommended using a technique called myofascial release to gently and adequately stretch the muscle.  As she stretched the muscle with both hands, I felt the individual muscle fibers separate and release.

I'm feeling better but the jury is still out on whether or not my latest massage will produce lasting results. I'll keep moving and swimming to keep my muscles more limber in the meantime.