Yes, it’s true, and sometimes it’s awkward during our fitness assessment when we ask our clients to do a pelvic tilt.
“You want me to do what?”
Yes, I want you to stand up and try to tilt your pelvis back and forth.
What usually follows is a lot of awkward hip, knee and upper body gyrations that generally provoke a little laughter and confusion. This week there was a little more of that than usual.
Many people have lost the ability to control their pelvic range of motion, and once that control is gone, you’ve effectively lost your ability to get your low back and spine into a good, neutral position.
At Saratoga Health & Wellness, we’re very interested in how people move their bodies. We know that if there is difficulty getting into good position doing specific strengthening or mobility exercises at the gym, then there’s a huge probability that you’re not going to be in a good safe position when you try to lift something heavy, either from the ground or up over your head, during typical activities of daily living.
Let’s take, for example, the act of lifting a 40-pound bag of salt (perhaps some of you lifted one or two of those this winter?) Many people fail to activate their gluteal and abdominal muscles during the lift, effectively rounding the upper and lower back and losing that nice ‘neutral posture.’ This loss of posture is a recipe for back pain disaster.
On the other side of the coin, let’s think about lifting something heavy over your head. We often have a tendency to arch the low back in order to compensate for a lack of core stability. In this case, by arching your lower back, you over-rely on the bony parts of your lumbar spine rather than your strong stabilizing muscles, for support. You’re creating a bit of shear force when you do this, and again you’re asking for trouble
Your spine, pelvis and associated muscle tissue is capable of managing a tremendous amount of force, especially if you can maintain healthy posture. Mobilizing your pelvis effectively can help. Connected by a crisscrossing array of muscles, tendons, ligaments and fascia (think super strong spider web), your spine and ribs (upper torso) connect to your pelvis. Whenever you’re asked to lift something, it is essential that you can place your spine in the correct supportive position. If you can’t coordinate movement in your pelvis, there’s a really good possibility that you also can’t get your spine into proper neutral alignment, unless you get lucky.
But we don’t like to rely on luck when it comes to potentially hurting yourself—it’s a risk we’d rather not take.
A few articles ago I wrote about the simple act of trying to touch your toes. In that article I mentioned something called the lower crossed syndrome that we as human beings are often predisposed to because of the postures that we assume. These poor postures are exacerbated by excessive sitting and lack of physical activity.
Over time you hunch forward, your neck falls forward, your hip flexors get short, your hamstrings have increased tension and your glutes and abdominals become weakened. Furthermore, your pelvis may tilt forward or more appropriately, may be pulled forward, causing excessive curvature of your low back known as hyperlordosis.
This forward-tilting places your back in a compromised position, thus increasing the potential for low back pain and chronic problems. Additionally this condition may chronically stimulate your hamstrings to be ‘turned on’ or stuck in a state of excessive tension, further reducing pelvic range of motion.
You should try some exercises to increase your ability to pelvic tilt. If our clients can’t pelvic tilt, we try to teach them how to coordinate the movement. If that doesn’t work, it’s often a matter of strengthening and stretching opposing muscles so that we can increase range of motion, which just may be lacking because of weakness or tightness.
Once adequate motion is present, we’ll do exercises to reinforce this newfound motor control.
Lastly, we’ll teach people how to find a neutral posture, which usually requires alternating arching and flattening the back. After pelvic tilting back and forth a few times, you should find a point about halfway in between and think about the tension created in your abdominals, low back and glutes.
It’s this important combination of muscles that creates tension that keeps human beings in neutral posture. You should think about this every time you exert force, whether you are lifting heavy weights from the ground, pulling something towards you or pressing something overhead.
Learning and mastering this important skill is equally important for the young athlete or the 80-year-old grandmother, and should be a part of your program for making sure you minimize your risk of future pain and dysfunction.
Thanks for reading, and as always we’re available for free consults on any topics you read in this column.
Happy Spring.
Michael Lapolla is certified by the American College of Sports Medicine as an Exercise Specialist and co-owns Saratoga Health & Wellness (Locals choice award winner, Best fitness facility, 2012) with Nicholas Galuardi. Michael and his college degreed staff design custom exercise programs for a wide range of clients. You may contact the team at SH&W at (518) 306-6987 or on the web at www.saratogahealthandwellness.com
