The Muscles Nobody Talks About — and Why They Might Be the Ones Causing Your Pain

There is a conversation happening in your body right now that most healthcare visits never address.

It’s not happening in your quads, your pecs, or your hamstrings. It’s not happening in any of the muscles you’ve deliberately trained at a gym or likely heard a fitness influencer mention. The conversation is happening in a network of smaller, deeper, largely invisible muscles — muscles whose names you’ve probably never heard — that are working harder than they should, or not working at all, and silently driving the tension, pain, and dysfunction you’ve been trying to fix with stretching, foam rolling, and sheer willpower.

When I work on these muscles — muscles clients didn’t even know existed — the response is almost always the same.

“I didn’t know that was tight.” Followed by: “I can’t believe how much better that feels.”

This post is about those muscles. Why they matter, what happens when they stop doing their job, and lastly – what you can do about it starting today.

This post is jam packed with information. I recommend, instead of trying to memorize every aspect of what it contains, take the time to read about the areas of the body that impact you the most. When you’re ready, return back for more empowerment. I’ll be revisiting, improving, and reuploading this post over time to perfect it. Part 4, your choices, is deliberately kept short to imply that it’s not about doing everything immediately that creates a better standard of living. Just start with a few basic concepts and see how it makes you feel. Don’t forget to celebrate!

Here’s how we’re going to approach it — the Fluent Human style:

What we know
What’s still uncertain
From the table — what this looks like in real life
Your choices — a four-step framework you can use right now

Section 1 — What We Know

Not All Muscles Are Built For the Same Job

The human muscular system is not a collection of equally sized machines all doing the same thing. It is a layered, hierarchical system with two distinct functional categories — and understanding the difference between them is one of the most clarifying things you can do for your understanding of what causes muscular pain and what limits movement.

Primary Movers — The Global System

These are the large, superficial muscles most people know by name. The quads. The hamstrings. The pecs. The lats. The glute max. These muscles are designed primarily for one thing: generating force and moving the body through space. They are powerful, fast-twitch dominant, and built for broad, dynamic ranges of motion. When you think of “working out,” you are almost certainly thinking of training these kinds of muscles.

Stabilizers — The Local System

Beneath and around the global muscles lives a different category entirely. Smaller, deeper, and largely involuntary, these muscles are not primarily designed to move bones through space. Their job is to control how joints move — providing fine-tuned movement, awareness, and stability that allows the global muscles to do their job safely and efficiently. Some examples include the multifidus, transverse abdominis, deep hip rotators, subscapularis, serratus anterior, deep cervical flexors, tibialis posterior, and the intrinsic muscles of the foot. If these examples have you raising your eyebrows and lost, not to worry — by the end of this article you’ll speak “Stabilizer Muscle” fluently.

Most gym programs never touch these muscles and most people have never intentionally trained them. And that gap — between the muscles we know and the muscles doing the quiet, essential work — is where a remarkable amount of chronic pain and movement limitations tend to originate.

The Anticipatory System — Stabilizers Fire First

Here is the concept that changes everything — and one of the most important things The Fluent Human wants you to understand about how your body actually works.

When you decide to move, your brain doesn’t simply send a signal to the muscle you intend to use. Before your larger prime mover fires a single muscle fiber, your nervous system activates the relevant stabilizing muscles first — in advance — to prepare the joint for the force that’s about to arrive.

This is called feedforward activation, or in research terms, an anticipatory postural adjustment (APA). Electromyographic studies confirm that deep stabilizing muscles like the transversus abdominis and multifidus activate approximately 30 to 50 milliseconds before prime movers like the deltoid during arm movement. The stabilizers arrive first. They set the table. Then the prime mover sits down to eat.

What Happens When the Stabilizers Go Quiet

This is where the clinical picture gets important.

Pain, injury, prolonged inactivity, and disuse cause stabilizing muscles to become inhibited — they stop firing with the timing and amplitude the nervous system expects. Research on the multifidus, for example, shows that this deep spinal stabilizer atrophies rapidly following low back injury — and critically, does not spontaneously recover even after pain resolves. The pain goes away. The muscle inhibition remains. And the person wonders why their back keeps “going out” despite feeling fine in between episodes.

When stabilizers go quiet, the body doesn’t simply stop working. It compensates. The global muscles — the prime movers — take on the stabilization job in addition to their movement job. A pec major (chest muscle) cannot do the work of a subscapularis (muscle inside shoulder-blade between ribcage). A quad muscle (front of thigh) cannot replace a deep hip rotator (deep within glutes). But the body will try anyway. And the result is chronic overload of the global muscles — manifesting as the tension, tightness, and nagging pain that never quite goes away no matter how much you stretch.

This is the core insight behind regional interdependence — a clinical model well established in rehabilitation research which proposes that the site of pain is rarely the site of the problem. Research demonstrates correlations between cervical pain and reduced serratus anterior activity, between hip range of motion asymmetry and low back pain, and between Achilles tendinopathy and altered gluteal activity. The body truly works as an integrated system. Dysfunction and discomfort travels.

The Forgotten Muscles — From One Region to Another

Here is a tour of the stabilizing muscles that almost never get addressed — and what happens when they stop participating.

Head & Neck

Deep Cervical Flexors (Longus Colli & Longus Capitis) — These small muscles run along the front of the cervical spine and are the primary stabilizers of the neck. When they become inhibited — as they almost universally do in people with forward head posture and prolonged screen time — the superficial muscles of the neck take over: the scalenes, the sternocleidomastoid (STM), and the suboccipitals. These muscles were designed to assist movement, not hold the head up all day. The result is chronic neck tension, headaches, jaw tightness, and the relentless upper trap tightness that no amount of massage seems to permanently resolve.

Suboccipitals — A group of four tiny muscles at the base of the skull. When chronically overloaded from forward head posture, they compress the upper cervical joints and contribute to tension headaches and eye strain. They are almost never addressed in standard care.

Shoulder & Upper Back

Subscapularis — The only rotator cuff muscle located on the front surface of the shoulder blade, the subscapularis is the most commonly overlooked muscle in shoulder care. In a body that spends most of its time sitting, typing, and reaching forward, this muscle becomes chronically shortened and underactive simultaneously — contributing to internal rotation dominance, shoulder impingement, and rotator cuff dysfunction. (Did you know the rotator cuff consists of 4 different muscles, not just one?)

Serratus Anterior — This muscle’s job is to hold the shoulder blade flat against the rib cage during arm movement. Research found serratus anterior weakness present in 41% of study participants with shoulder-related complaints — making it one of the most common and most overlooked contributors to shoulder dysfunction. When it weakens, the shoulder blade wings away from the rib cage and the entire shoulder mechanism becomes inefficient and vulnerable.

Lower Trapezius — Almost universally underactive in desk workers, the lower trapezius is responsible for depressing and stabilizing the shoulder blade during overhead movement. When it stops participating, the upper trapezius dominates — and the chronic shoulder elevation and neck tension that so many people live with becomes the predictable result.

Core & Spine

Multifidus — Arguably the single most clinically important forgotten muscle in the human body. These deep, segmental spinal stabilizers run alongside the spine and provide the fine-tuned control that keeps individual vertebrae stable during movement. They are the first muscles to atrophy after back injury — and research consistently shows they do not spontaneously rehabilitate even after pain resolves. Chronic low back pain and the multifidus are almost inseparable in the research literature.

Transverse Abdominis — The body’s natural internal weight belt. In a healthy nervous system, this muscle fires before limb movement — part of that anticipatory stabilization system described above. In people with chronic pain or poor movement patterns, the normal timing and sequence for muscle contraction is disrupted, and the transverse abdominis becomes a passive bystander in movements it should be leading.

Quadratus Lumborum — Buried beneath the erector spinae on either side of the lumbar spine, the QL is a frequent hidden source of low back and hip pain that is routinely missed because it cannot be easily palpated from the surface. Asymmetrical tightness in the QL — from leg length discrepancies, habitual postures, or uneven loading — creates lateral pelvic shifts that ripple up and down the entire chain potentially causing all sorts of discomfort.

Hip & Pelvis

Deep Hip Rotators (Obturator Internus & Externus, Gemelli, Piriformis, Quadratus Femoris) — Also referred to as “The Deep 6”, this hops muscles are the rotator cuff of the hip. These six muscles are responsible for the fine joint control of the femoral head within the hip socket. When they become inhibited — as they frequently do in people who sit for extended periods — the IT band, TFL, and piriformis become chronically overloaded as compensation. The result is lateral hip pain, sciatic-like symptoms, and knee tracking problems that seem unrelated to the hip until you address the hip and watch the knee symptoms improve.

Psoas — Straddling the line between mover and stabilizer, the psoas is the only muscle that connects the lumbar spine directly to the femur. It passes through the abdominal cavity in close proximity to the digestive organs, the kidneys, and the diaphragm. Chronically shortened in people who sit too often — which is almost everyone — a tight psoas pulls the lumbar spine into excessive extension, tilts the pelvis forward, and has even been implicated in digestive discomfort through its close relation to the gut.

Lower Leg & Foot

Fibularis (Peroneus) Longus & Brevis — The primary lateral ankle stabilizers. When chronically weak or poorly coordinated, these muscles fail to protect the ankle from inversion and allow the arch to progressively collapse. Their inhibition is a significant but underappreciated contributor to foot pain, knee valgus (knock knee), and hip dysfunction — yet they are almost never specifically addressed in standard rehabilitation.

Tibialis Posterior — The primary architect of the medial arch of the foot. When this muscle weakens, the arch collapses inward and a chain reaction begins — the knee drifts inward, the hip internally rotates, and the entire lower extremity loses its structural integrity from the ground up. Flat feet and tibialis posterior dysfunction are frequently the same story told from different chapters.

Intrinsic Foot Muscles — The small muscles inside the foot itself — the lumbricals, interossei, and abductor hallucis — are almost universally dormant in anyone who has worn supportive footwear their entire life. Their inhibition is one of the most underappreciated contributors to plantar fasciitis, bunions, and chronic foot pain. When they are reactivated — even through simple exercises — the results can be immediate and dramatic.

References: Hodges & Richardson (1997), Spine — transversus abdominis feedforward timing. MDPI Journal of Clinical Medicine (2025) — feedforward activation and spinal alignment. Brookbush Institute — Regional Interdependence model. Chiou et al. (2024), Experimental Physiology — anticipatory postural adjustments. ResearchGate (2025) — serratus anterior prevalence in shoulder complaints.

Section 2 — What’s Still Uncertain

The science of stabilizer function is robust in many areas — but gaps certainly exist.

We don’t yet have clear universal protocols for retraining inhibited stabilizers. Research confirms that muscles like the multifidus fail to spontaneously recover after injury, but the optimal exercise dosage, load, and timing for restoring their function remains an active area of investigation. What works well in a controlled research setting doesn’t always translate cleanly to individual clinical practice. Afterall, everyone’s body is unique.

The cause-and-effect relationship is not always clear. Does stabilizer inhibition cause pain — or does pain cause stabilizer inhibition? The honest answer, supported by current evidence, is that it runs in both directions simultaneously, creating a cycle that must be interrupted at multiple points. Treating only the pain without addressing the inhibited muscle leaves the cycle intact.

Individual variability is high. Two people with identical clinical presentations — same posture, same pain location, same history — may have completely different patterns of stabilizer inhibition. This is why assessment matters so much, and why cookie-cutter rehabilitation programs or videos trying to be helpful on social media frequently underdeliver.

The relationship between conscious stabilizer training and automatic feedforward timing is still being studied. We know that training the transverse abdominis consciously improves its function. We are less certain about how reliably that conscious training transfers to the automatic, anticipatory firing that the nervous system needs during real-world movement. The bridge between “I can activate this muscle when I think about it” and “this muscle fires automatically before every movement I make” is real — but the best ways to build that bridge are still being refined.

Section 3 — From the Table

What follows is drawn from direct clinical experience. Details have been changed to protect client privacy.

One of the most consistently surprising moments in my practice happens when I work on a muscle the client has never heard of — and watch the relief register on their face in real time.

I’ll be working on someone who has been dealing with chronic neck tension for years. They’ve had massages. They’ve done stretching. They’ve tried heat packs and pain relievers. The upper traps have been worked on dozens of times and never seem to permanently release. And then I address the deep cervical flexors — the longus colli — at the front of the cervical spine. Muscles they didn’t know existed. And something changes. The neck moves differently. The tension that seemed structural, permanent, simply shifts.

Or I’ll be working on someone with stubborn hip pain. We’ve addressed the glutes, the piriformis, the TFL. And then I find the obturator internus — deep inside the pelvis, accessible only from a very specific angle — and the client says something like “I didn’t even know I could feel something there.”

What I’ve learned over years of practice is this: the muscles nobody is addressing are frequently the muscles doing the most work — silently, invisibly, with no recognition and no relief.

The most fascinating part isn’t just that these muscles are tight. It’s what happens when I simply ask a client to intentionally engage a muscle they haven’t consciously used in years. A foot exercise that recruits the intrinsic muscles. A gentle chin tuck that wakes up the deep cervical flexors. A breathing cue that reactivates the transverse abdominis. The response is often immediate — a sense of stability, ease, or relief in an area that has been quietly struggling for a long time.

The body remembers. It just sometimes needs to be reminded that certain muscles exist.

Section 4 — Your Choices

Understanding that these muscles exist is the first step — Pillar 1, Understanding the Why. Now here is a simple, four-step framework you can apply to begin waking them up.

The Assess — Release — Hold — Move Framework

This is the approach I use personally and with clients to systematically address inhibited stabilizers. Each step serves a specific purpose, and the sequence matters. This system is incredibly flexible and works in more applications than just corrective work. I encourage using it before weight training, when self-soothing discomfort, or even processing heavy emotions. Remember that pain can exist in more ways than physical so it’s worth acknowledging the mental component.

Step 1 — Assess

Before you do anything, find out what’s actually happening. This doesn’t require special equipment — just honest attention.

Stand in front of a mirror and observe: does one shoulder sit higher than the other? Does your head drift forward when you’re observing yourself while standing sideways? Does one hip appear higher or more forward? Stand on one foot — does your knee drift inward, or does your arch collapse? These observations are the beginning of your assessment. They’re not a place for harsh judgment, but instead, a place for excitement at your newly found awareness.

Before exercising you can briefly stretch, shake, twist, and turn various aspects of your body while noting any restrictions or sudden pings of discomfort.

You can also use your breath as an assessment tool. Take a full diaphragmatic breath and notice: does your rib cage expand equally on both sides? Does your belly move freely, or does it feel like something is bracing against the movement? Asymmetries in breathing often reveal asymmetries in the associated stabilizing muscles.

The goal of the assessment is not to diagnose yourself. It’s to become curious — to start noticing patterns that have been invisible simply because nobody ever pointed them out to you.

Step 2 — Release

Before you can strengthen an inhibited muscle, you often need to address what is compensating for it. Tight, overworked global muscles — the upper traps holding the head up because the deep cervical flexors aren’t doing it, the TFL and glute medius guarding the hip because the deep rotators have gone quiet — need to be released before the nervous system will allow the stabilizers to reactivate.

Release can take many forms: gentle sustained pressure on the overworked tissue, targeted stretching of the compensating muscle, or simply breathing slowly and directing your awareness to the area of tension. The goal is not to force anything to let go. The goal is to create the conditions in which letting go becomes possible.

This is where manual therapy — when available — can provide remarkable results in a short amount of time. But self-release through mindful pressure, gentle movement, and breath is genuinely effective and available to anyone.

I HIGHLY recommend learning to perform “active stretching” combined with gentle compression. This can technically also fit into step 3 – Hold, but I find that it belongs more in the release category. An example of this technique would be sitting on a foam roller with your legs extended out fully in front of you. Be sure to tilt slightly to one side of your glute to not accidentally push into your tail-bone (ouch!). You can place your hands on the ground behind you to control the intensity of the foam roller that will now be compressing your glute muscles. With the foam roller properly seated on a spot in your glute that feels a little spicy, attempt to dig the heel of the same side (the ipsilateral leg) into the ground causing the glute contract. While digging your heel into the ground also take a nice deep breath in. Continue to hold the contraction until you fully finish your inhale. Then, gently release the heel digging into the ground while taking a long exhale. Be careful not to release the contraction all at once or you may have a sudden sharp press of the foam roller into your now fully relaxed glute muscles!

Step 3 — Hold

Once the compensating tissue has been released, it’s time to gently reactivate the stabilizer(s). This is not about strength training in the traditional sense. It’s about neuromuscular re-education — teaching the nervous system that this muscle exists and is available.

The key here is isometric engagement: find the muscle, contract it gently, and hold that contraction for 10 to 30 seconds while breathing normally. Examples:

A gentle chin tuck held for 10 seconds to reactivate the deep cervical flexors
A slow heel raise with attention to the outer ankle to engage the fibularis group
Spreading the toes wide and lifting only the big toe to recruit the intrinsic foot muscles
Drawing the lower belly inward gently while breathing to reconnect with the transverse abdominis

The contraction should feel like an effort of about 30 to 40 percent of your maximum — not a strain, not a grip, but a quiet, sustained awareness. You are reminding the nervous system that this muscle is available. That is the entire goal of this step.

From a weight lifting perspective, it’s encouraged to do isometric holds prior to standard reps and sets. This acts as an incredible method of pre-exhausting muscles while also serving as an additional assessment tool. This can prevent injury by helping identify discomfort well before noticing it during working sets. Examples:

A shoulder press held for 30 seconds with dumbbells at moderate weight
A squat held for 30 seconds at a comfortable depth with body weight
Leaning against a wall and raising the toes upward towards the knees for 30 seconds
Holding yourself halfway through a push up for 30 seconds

Step 4 — Move

The final step is the most important one — because isolated stabilizer activation means nothing if it doesn’t transfer into actual movement.

After holding the stabilizer engagement, introduce a gentle, functional movement that challenges the muscle in its real role. This doesn’t need to be complex. Walk while maintaining awareness of your foot’s contact with the ground. Raise your arm overhead while keeping the shoulder blade anchored against the rib cage. Squat slowly while consciously tracking your knee over your second toe.

The movement is the test. It tells you whether the neuromuscular connection is starting to transfer from conscious effort to something more automatic. Over time — with consistency — these movements become less effortful. The stabilizers begin to fire again without being asked. The compensating global muscles begin to let go of the extra work they’ve been doing.

And that is when people start saying: “I don’t know what you did, but I feel completely different.”

From a weight lifting perspective, simply begin your normal reps and sets. I recommend performing the movements while maintaining the idea that you’re testing your system. It’s not just about building muscle, it’s about building muscular control. This shift in thinking will provide you with longevity dividends for your future self.

Where to Start — The Three Easiest Entry Points

If all of this feels overwhelming, here are three small places to begin — one for each region of the body most commonly affected by modern sedentary life — performed three times a day. If you’ve already read the article: “The Most Underrated Health Tool You Already Own — Your Breath”, this structure will already be very familiar to you.

In the morning for the neck and head: When you wake up and are still feeling a little groggy, practice a gentle chin tuck exercise while laying face up in bed — (if laying on your back isn’t an option you can do this sitting up against a wall), draw the chin straight back (not down) to create a gentle double chin while making an effort to push the back of your head into the bed (or wall). Hold for 10 seconds. This reactivates the deep cervical flexors and lightly engages the extensors which immediately reduces the load on the upper traps and suboccipitals. These are the pesky muscles that can cause you so much trouble! Ten repetitions takes less than two minutes.

Mid day for the core and low back: When you’re at a peak level of stress trying to problem solve at work – In any comfortable position, pause work for a moment and gently draw your lower belly away from your waistband — not a suck-in, but a gentle hollowing — and hold for 10 breaths while breathing normally. This is transverse abdominis reactivation in its simplest form. Close your eyes and think of your hips, ribs, and head as three wooden cubes evenly stacked on top of each other while performing this exercise.

End of day for the foot and ankle: When you’re home after a long day of work, just taking off your shoes, sit barefoot with your feet flat on the floor. Without curling your toes, try to create an arch by sliding the ball of your foot toward your heel — the movement is subtle and happens mostly inside the foot. Hold for 10 seconds. This recruits the tibialis posterior, the intrinsic foot muscles, and begins to restore the arch’s active support system.

None of these exercises is flashy. All of them work.

For those of you that are able, try the “Assess — Release — Hold — Move Framework” at the start of your next gym session, long distance run, or hiking adventure. You may become shocked at how many areas you may have left unaddressed in the past and unknowingly pushed through.

The Bottom Line

Your body is not just the muscles you can see and name. Beneath the surface of every movement you make is a network of smaller, deeper muscles working in anticipation — preparing joints, stabilizing spines, and protecting tissues before the visible effort even begins.

When those muscles go quiet — through pain, disuse, injury, or simply years of never being addressed — the body compensates. The compensation creates tension. The tension creates pain. And the pain gets treated in the same place it’s felt, over and over, while the actual source goes unaddressed.

Learning that these muscles exist — and understanding the role they play — is a genuine form of body literacy. It changes what you look for, what you ask about, and what you do when something hurts.

This makes you Fluent in Human.

The Fluent Human is a body literacy education platform based in Las Vegas, Nevada. We exist to provide insight, practical tools, and open dialogue on topics the modern healthcare system doesn’t always have time to address.

Learn to speak your body’s language.