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The Wizards are still doing without point guard Ish Smith who has injured his quad, a very common muscle to injure in most people. The unexpected place where everyday people and professional athletes intersect is the quadriceps muscle.

Quads are the front of your thigh. They are a double joint muscle meaning that they extend the knee and flex the hip which both assist in walking. While everyday people of average activity level may find themselves injuring this muscle from sitting down too long at work, causing tightness in the muscle which can lead to back and knee pain, most athletes will find that their quad injury will come from dysfunction in their bigger hip flexor muscle, the psoas. Your psoas is your biggest hip flexor, it brings your knees to your chest and your waist to your knees, think forward fold.

Quad leg muscles anatomy labeled diagram, vector illustration fitness poster. Sports physiotherapy educational information. Healthy muscular structure and bones. Vastus femoris, lateralis and medialis

Dysfunction in your psoas, either from weakness due to exhaustion, or tightness from lack of stretching, can cause overactivity in your quad. This can lead to the quad being too tight which can cause further dysfunction to the rest of the body and possibly lead to further injury. To this point, Washington Wizards’ point guard Ish Smith who, as mentioned earlier, will sit out a few more weeks with a strain to his quad, may be having this exact problem with his psoas that lead to the quad strain. This injury could have been avoided simply getting regular body work done by a qualified therapist, and stretching more. Wendell Carter Jr. of the Chicago Bulls has also sat out for the past 2 weeks with an injury to his quad, although his was classified as a severe contusion. Painful though it may be, it’s nothing a few massages couldn’t fix, at this point Ish Smith should be so lucky.