Ep. #213: Everything You Need to Know About Anterior Pelvic Tilt

[00:00:00] Hey, this is Mike and welcome to another installment in my in five minutes or less series, where I answer one common question quickly and simply, because while long form content is great, sometimes it is also nice when someone just gets right to the point and tells you what to do and how to do it in five minutes or less.

And that’s what I do in these episodes. In this video slash podcast, we’re going to talk about anterior pelvic tilt, which is a condition where your hips are a little bit off kilter. As you can tell from the name anterior being front pelvic being having to do with deep pelvis and tilt being tilted. And this is a condition that many people have and mistakenly believe one is detrimental to their health and performance and two can be corrected with certain types of [00:01:00] exercises or stretches.

And the long story short here is one, there is very little reason to believe that anterior pelvic tilt is caused by weak or tight muscles to your individual level of pelvic tilt is mainly determined by your bone structure and somewhere around 80 percent of people studied have anterior pelvic tilt to one degree or another.

And three, you can use mobility exercises and strength training to improve your hip flexibility and strength, but not necessarily to quote unquote fix anterior pelvic tilt, which in many cases doesn’t require fixing. So let’s start at the top here. What is anterior pelvic tilt? If you stand like this, and not like this, then you have anterior pelvic tilt.

So for those of you who are listening and can’t see the images that just got put up on the video, anterior pelvic tilt is a [00:02:00] situation where your hips are leaning toward the front. toward the anterior side of your body. And if we want to get a little bit more technical here, there are two points on your pelvis, one on the front, which is called the anterior superior iliac spine or ACIS and one on the back, which is called the posterior superior iliac spine or PS.

Now we can draw a line between those two points. And if that line is straight, then we would say your hips are in a neutral position. If the line is tilted downward. So if the posterior superior iliac spine, the PSIS the point on the back of the hips, if that is higher than the point on the front of the hips, then you are in posterior pelvic tilt.

And if the front point, if the anterior point, the ASIS is higher. Then the posterior, the back point, then you are in anterior pelvic tilt. And if you want to see that Just pause the podcast and hit Google [00:03:00] and or actually just go to muscle for life and search for posterior pelvic tilt. And you can see an article that I wrote on this subject and you will see some simple images as well that will make it very clear.

And this has been a hot topic of discussion over the last year or so, at least is what I’ve seen on social media and so forth, because many people are saying that if you have anterior pelvic tilt to any degree, one, this is caused by, usually by weak and tight muscles. And two, that it is likely to lead to back pain injuries, especially injuries in weightlifting and on certain exercises like the squat and deadlift and other physical dysfunctions.

And the bottom line here is, as I just mentioned, when you review the basic physiology in play, as well as the research that is available on the matter, it quickly becomes clear that this really isn’t a Cause for concern and even if it is, ’cause in some cases it can be a bit extreme. It’s usually just bad [00:04:00] posture, which can be corrected.

Hey, quickly before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. If you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it.

It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say, Thank you. You can find me on Instagram at muscle for life fitness, Twitter at muscle for life and Facebook at muscle for life fitness. So let’s talk physiology first because many people will say that there are a number of powerful muscles that attach to the hips and influence the hips like the glutes, hamstrings, hip flexors, and core muscles.

And that if there are muscular [00:05:00] imbalances or muscular tightness, it can then really jack up the hips. And in the case of anterior pelvic tilt in particular, they’ll say that you can develop a very specific type of muscle imbalance known as lower crossed syndrome. And the problem with this theory is that it just runs afoul of basic physiology because anterior pelvic tilt is a very normal variation of human anatomy.

For example, in one study that was conducted by researchers at the University of Salford, which is in the UK, out of the 120 subjects analyzed, about 85 percent of the men and 75 percent of the women had some degree of anterior pelvic tilt yet had experienced no low back pain and no hip pain in the previous year.

And other studies have shown that most people have about 12 to 13 degrees of anterior pelvic tilt. Now you [00:06:00] could say that, okay, just because it seems to be normal multiple studies have shown that there is no link between the strength of the muscles around your hips and the big muscles that influence your hips and your actual pelvic position.

So then of course, That raises the question of how much can these muscles then affect the tilt of your hips, which it would be fair to assume not very much. It’s also very unlikely the anterior pelvic tilt is going to increase your risk of injury. And even when you’re weightlifting, which again, is a claim that I’ve made, Often made because your hips are changing positions frequently when you’re exercising, depending on what you’re doing.

Your hips are in a very different position when you are squatting than when you are deadlifting than when you are cycling. So even if when you are standing upright, your hips are slightly inclined toward the front. They’re not necessarily in that position when you are doing various types of exercises.

And based on my research, based on my reading the most likely [00:07:00] reason for the natural variations in pelvic tilt that we see is just the natural variations of the shapes of our hip bones. One study that I think is good evidence of that was conducted by scientists at the University of Manchester. And what they did is they analyzed 30 cadavers and they found that the shapes of people’s hip bones did indeed vary.

Widely. Most people just based on their bone structure had about 13 degrees of anterior pelvic tilt while others had as much as 23 degrees and others still had absolutely none. And what that means then is those people would have stood differently. They would have squatted differently. They would have deadlifted differently and based purely on their bone structure, not weak or tight or imbalanced muscles.

So in the end, if you have good posture, which is something I actually need to write and record about. So [00:08:00] I’m going to make a note, but if you have good posture and that happens to include some degree of anterior pelvic tilt, you really don’t have anything to worry about. Slight variations in hip orientation, Is not going to increase your risk of injury or increase your risk of developing muscle imbalances or overtraining certain muscles in your hips or just in your lower body and under training others and so forth.

It’s just not true. That said, what you don’t want to do is make the common form mistake, the common technique mistake on, especially on certain exercises like the squat, the deadlift, the overhead press and the hip thrust. And that is to hyper extend your lower back and essentially put yourself in anterior pelvic tilt while doing those exercises.

So for example, you will see this when people squat, especially at the bottom of squat, where they will overarch the lower back, the hyper extended lower back really, orienting their hips [00:09:00] forward. You’ll see it at the top of a deadlift where people at the lockout, they hyper extend their lower back and try to lean back really far and put a lot of curvature.

It, in their spine. You also see the same thing at the top of an overhead press again where they’re really sticking their butt out as opposed to keeping the hips in a more neutral position with your butt cheeks really clenched, which is what you want to be doing at the top of the OHP. And last but not least, you have the hip thrust again.

At the top of the hip thrust, where people are exaggerating the finish and again, really putting a lot of extension in the lower part of their spines. So doing those things is bad, forcing anterior pelvic tilt, bad. You want your hips to be in their most natural position when you are doing those lifts. So throughout the squat, throughout the deadlift, throughout the hip thrust, and throughout the OHP, you want your hips to be closer to neutral.

Again, whatever is your most natural position for [00:10:00] me, I do have a little bit of anterior pelvic tilt. So the most natural position for me is with a slight lean toward the front, but others have very neutral hips and for them, they want their hips to remain more or less in that neutral position throughout the entirety of those lifts.

Now, one little thing worth mentioning here is if you have trouble maintaining your hips natural position, mainly you find it in the squat and the deadlift because you have to get some depth. So you have, as you descend in the squat or if you when you are bending down to the bar, if you find that.

Your hips start tilting to the front unnaturally, then that may be due to a lack of flexibility and mobility in the right muscles, particularly the hip flexors and also some other lower body muscles. And if that’s happening to you, then head over to Muscle Life. And search for two articles. First one is called why your hip flexors are so tight and what to do about it.

So you can find it by just searching hip flexor F L E X O R. And the other is called [00:11:00] how to improve flexibility and mobility for squatting. And for that search flexor. Mobility for squatting and it should come up, check those articles out and they give you some simple exercises you can do that will help.

So that’s it. If you have some degree of anterior pelvic tilt, it’s probably nothing to worry about and especially if it’s not causing any pain or discomfort. And if you want to keep your hips as healthy and mobile as possible for as long as possible, which you should. You really just need to focus on a few things.

One, you want to make sure that you are not over arching your lower back when you’re lifting weights. Two, you want to make sure that you are training your posterior chain, which are the muscles on the back side of your body, like your glutes, your hamstrings, and your back as well as your core. Want to make sure that both your core and your posterior chain are strong.

And three, I definitely recommend that you regularly do some mobility exercise to help open up your hips and keep them moving. Freely. Yoga is very good for this, by the way, that is my whole [00:12:00] body mobility routine of choice. Hey there. It is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful.

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