What’s Your Pattern? Pelvic Alignment
By Coach Hannah
Welcome to What’s Your Pattern? – the game show where you find out how your body patterns and alignment are affecting your movement. Know your patterns and you will better understand your strengths and weaknesses. Today’s topic: pelvic alignment. I get a lot of complaints from athletes about low back and hip pain, sometimes movement based and sometimes just a result of walking around being a human. There are two things that really interest me when someone claims pain in those areas; pelvic alignment and glute activation (or lack thereof). These two elements are intricately linked, but let’s look at them one at a time. Today we will discuss the problem of poor pelvic alignment – and how it affects your overall performance.
Your pelvic position is an indicator of your flexibility, strength, and ability to carry load. There are two major dysfunctional patterns with pelvic alignment – anterior and posterior tilt (or what I call “duck butt” and “tuck butt”). It is important that your spine can move efficiently from an anterior to posterior tilt position and vice versa, but having a pelvic tilt in either direction while under load, or while just standing around is an indicator of bigger problems, and a potential opportunity for injury.
The Anterior Pelvic Tilt
This is the most common positional problem I see from athletes, and it is prevalent among both experienced athletes and newbies alike. The anterior pelvic tilt, or the duck butt, happens when you stick your hips back and break the chain along your abdomen (AKA disengage your core). The result of an anterior pelvic tilt is that you are disproportionately loading your lower back, and effectively turning off your glutes. No butt = no squat, so this is a major problem. The result of constantly tiling your pelvic this way when you enter the squat, dip, jump, etc. is that you back will take the brunt of the work and you will have pain all up over your posterior region. Ouch. Back pain, believe it or not, is connected to the way you move (say what?!?). When you stand up straight, try sticking your butt out and tilting your pelvic (pull your pubic bone back, keep your hip bones forward). Your core will relax, and you will feel a slight tightening in your low back. Now imagine lifting a 250 lb deadlift or a back squat with that kind of positioning.
There are a few reasons that people naturally drop into anterior pelvic tilt. Weakness in the abdominals, glutes or hamstrings, tight hip flexors and tight back extensors are all contributing factors. They are also all things that will get worse with continued poor pelvic positioning. Sometimes this motion is just a result of poor motor skills, or from standing with a sway back as a habit.
In the video below you can see that when Morgen squats with an anterior pelvic tilt, she tucks under at the bottom of the squat. This shows us that when you start a squat with an anterior pelvic tilt, you end up with a posterior tilt at the bottom of the position. That means your pelvis and spine change position throughout the course of the squat. When you load your spine under heavy weight, you do not want to change spinal position before you are through with the movement, or you will feel end up with pain in your spine (see: extremely painful lower back after a deadlift session). If you have a tendency to feel tightness in your low back, lots of soreness throughout your spine from squatting or deadlifting, or a consistent tightness in your mid-spine, you might be tilting your pelvis anteriorly when you move.
The Posterior Pelvic tilt
A lot of people tilt their pelvis anteriorly when they stand or squat, but just as many of you tilt your pelvic posteriorly throughout the day. In fact, you’re probably doing it right now while you sit in front of your computer reading this. Most people sit in a posterior tilt, with their pubic bone tucked forward of the hip bones. When you spend too much time in the posterior tilt position, you end up with tight, non-functional glutes and hamstrings, your knees and hips are hyper-extended and once again your low back is at risk for injury.
In the video above you can see that when Morgen enters the squat with a posterior tilt, she ends up disproportionately loading her quads and shoving her knees forward. If you end up with knee pain, consistent soreness above the knee and tight quads after you squat, you probably have a posterior pelvic tilt.
Once again we see with the posterior pelvic tilt that you have diminished glute function. No butt = no squat. You have to fix your pelvic alignment in order to fix your movement. It’s that simple! Well, not really. Here is how you can go from crappy pelvic alignment to a strong (aka neutral) pelvic alignment.
1. Figure out how you stand and squat RIGHT NOW
Take videos and picture (from the side) of you standing, squatting and touching your toes. What the heck is your pelvis up to when you move? Does it tilt anteriorly, posteriorly, or are you the perfect specimen of pelvic control? You need to see and feel yourself moving incorrectly if you ever stand the change of moving correctly.
2. Practice perfect bracing
You can set yourself up for success by knowing what it feels like to stand in a neutral position. Stand upright. Let your shoulders setting into your back pockets (don’t pull them back like a crazy person). Shorten the distance between your sternum and your belly button by squeezing your upper abdominals. Then, shorten the distance between your belly button and your pubic bone by squeezing your lower abdominals. Now, relax a bit (you can’t be at 100% tension all the time), and stand in this neutral position. You should not feel your lower back working, and it should not feel like your butt is tucked or squeezing. Your hip bones should be stacked directly over your pubic bone, and you should have a natural but not exaggerated curve in the bottom of your spine.
3. Bring your perfect bracing into movement
Now, practice sitting into a chair with that neutral spine position. Stand in front of a chair. Now, move your weight slightly back into your heels and sit straight down without compromising your pelvic position. You should end up sitting right on your sits bones, instead of way back into your butt. Yay! You sat!
Up you go, it’s time to try squatting. First, set your brace again and shift your weight back slightly into your heels. Keep your brace! With your weight back, drop your butt straight down to your heels. Did you do it? Now, you can try the same technique with a weighted bar, a kettebell, a jug of milk. The only difference is the amount of tension you maintain in your abdominals. More weight requires more tension in your brace.
4. If you can’t do it, troubleshoot
Here are a few things that can prevent you from being able to maintain a neutral spine under load: weak glutes and hamstrings, tight hip flexors and tight spinal extensors. You can tackle all of these with mobility exercises. Here is a little warm-up you can do to get your pelvis prepped for perfect positioning.
- 1 min cat-cow
- 1 min per side single knee to chest
- pull knee in tight and relax opposite leg, allow back muscles to relax and settle into the floor
- 1 min per side extended runners lunge
- low lunge, focus on squeezing your glutes and driving the hip forward and down to open up your hip flexors
- 2 x 10 glute bridges
- lay on back with feet planted, squeeze glutes and send hips into the air with control
- 2 x 10 (per side) clamshells
- Lay on your side with legs bent and knees stacked, keep feet together as you squeeze the top glute and lift top knee off the other like a clamshell
The likelihood that your pelvic alignment is off is pretty dang high. Most people walk into the gym with bad posture and a funky looking pelvis. Take a look at how your moving and determine how you move naturally, and what you can do to make it better. Fixing your pelvic position is a quick way to increase your strength, improve your motor patterns and decrease pain.
Next time on What’s Your Pattern? We will talk more about how your butt is definitely broken.