Have you ever woken up or gone about your day, and then felt an unusual pain in your legs? It can be a frustrating problem to deal with, particularly if you’re not sure what the cause is. Leg pain can range from a mild (but annoying) stiffness, all the way to near-debilitating pain that makes it hard to walk. No matter how mild your pain is, though, it’s wise to figure out what might be causing it in order to prevent it from becoming a bigger problem later on.
In this guide, we’ll go over a few of the less-obvious, hidden causes of leg pain—shedding some light on your concerns and giving you the next steps to recover.
This may sound like a silly cause for leg pain, however you’d be surprised at how many people it affects. If you run on a track or on the side of a road (with a slant for drainage), it’s very important that you don’t always run in the same direction.
If you run track for 45 minutes, three times a week, and only take left turns as you do it, you’re actually putting an imbalanced strain on the left side of your body. This means more impact to your left knee, ankle, and foot, more strain on your left-side hip muscles, and uneven wear on your running shoes. All of these can create painful issues over time. To avoid this, simply alternate which way you run around the track, ensuring you turn right roughly as many times as left.
Even if you’re not a runner, you might find yourself experiencing pain in your legs, seemingly from out of the blue. One common cause for this is poor posture, which can create tension and irritation in the lower back and pelvis. If this is left unchecked, the pain can grow in intensity, which gradually radiates into the legs.
One very common type of leg pain is sciatica. This condition occurs when muscle inflammation compresses the sciatic nerve, which runs from the lower back all the way down each leg. This can cause intense, shooting pain as far down as the toes. Though there are a few causes of sciatic nerve pain, the most common is an issue with the intervertebral discs in the lower back or with the muscles in the glutes. Working to improve your posture to prevent slumping can reduce the risk of this painful issue.
It can be easy to think of each so-called muscle group as an independent part of the body. But in reality, these seemingly separate areas are deeply interconnected. That’s why instability or weakness in the core can lead to severe pain in the legs over time.
For instance, a weak core can give you less control over your pelvic tilt, forcing it to sit outside of an ideal alignment. Over time, the muscles in your hips, lower back, core, and legs have to work harder to accommodate this shift, creating soreness, stiffness, and pain. We suggest doing regular exercises that engage the core, hip flexors and glutes to avoid related leg pain.
As we mentioned before, everyone has a unique gait. But for some, the mechanics of our feet can actually create painful issues in the legs. For example, some people walk with excessive pronation, which means the arch of the foot flattens too much with each step. If left uncorrected (usually through training and orthotics), this can create repetitive tension on the muscles and tendons of your foot and lower leg, creating problems and pain with walking.
If you’re dealing with pain in the lower body, understanding the cause behind it is only the first step. The next thing to figure out is which treatments you need to start recovering and moving freely again. Here at ProActive Pilates, there are three treatments we commonly use to address leg pain at the source:
When we talk about the core, we’re talking about so much more than the abdominal muscles (or ‘abs’). In fact, your core is a vital muscle group that supports both the spine and the pelvis, two of the most important structures in the body. As we mentioned, a weakened core can’t properly support the pelvis. Over time, this can lead to your pelvis sitting in a less than ideal alignment, causing severe pain in the hips, glutes, and other parts of the legs over time.
Through core activation work, we can strengthen and activate the many muscles that support your pelvis, helping to get it back into a better alignment with the rest of your body. With time, this allows all the surrounding muscles in the back and legs to relax, greatly reducing pain, improving mobility, and helping you move freely again.
Fascia is an interconnected sling of tissue that spans the entire body, covering muscles, organs, and more. Healthy fascia is able to glide smoothly across the surface of these tissues, supporting them and allowing you to move freely. But when fascia isn’t frequently mobilized, it can lose its natural lubrication, causing it to become dry, sticky, and restrictive. This can lead to a feeling of stiffness in the legs, particularly around the hips and glutes.
Fascial release therapy uses techniques aided by specially designed fascial release balls. This modality gently stimulates and releases fascia, encouraging it to become more relaxed and help key parts of the body move more freely.
Clinical Pilates is a system of exercise rehabilitation that helps to strengthen and activate the body as a whole. As you build strength and stability, you’ll find that you deal with far less ongoing pain, especially in common problem areas like the pelvis and hips. This treatment uses resistance training, reformer work, mat-based exercises, as well as core activation and stabilization, offering a holistic approach to pain management that truly gets to the source of the issues you’re facing.
Of course, the best way to treat leg pain is to prevent it from occurring in the first place. In addition to maintaining an active lifestyle and regularly strengthening your core, back, and lower body, there are a few key things to keep in mind to prevent leg pain from cropping up and holding you back in day-to-day life:
Remember that not all leg pain in the posterior (back) region of the legs is due to your hamstrings! Sometimes, the true culprit is inflammation of the sciatic nerve—meaning that stretching your ‘hamstrings’ could actually be irritating the sciatic nerve even further, worsening your leg pain in the process.
Posterior leg pain can sometimes be referred from the spine or the pelvis, meaning the source of the problem isn’t in the legs at all. Pelvic misalignment can cause changes in your gait, foot mechanics, and muscle activation patterns, leading to pain in the legs.
Multi-planar movements refer to any motion that works across a variety of planes of motion. So rather than limiting yourself to motions like sitting, running, and cycling, which all work in a singular plane, try to incorporate a variety of sideways, backward, rotational, and diagonal movements in order to strengthen all of the areas around your joints, particularly in the hips and back. For example, try clockwork lunges as a way to activate your hips in multiple planes to ensure a more complete range of planar motion.
Leg pain can be extremely frustrating to deal with—especially if you’re not sure what you need to change to get rid of it. While these tips can help a wide variety of painful leg issues, they’re no replacement for the knowledge and experience from a skilled physiotherapist.
Here at ProActive Pilates, over 28 years of experience and a keen awareness of body mechanics is applied when addressing leg pain at the source. Together, we can find ways to adapt your routine, help you recover, and move and feel better again. To book your initial consultation, get in touch today.
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