Transform Your Anterior Pelvic Tilt With This Simple Cue

Although anterior rotation of the pelvis has an important role in the positioning and organisation of the body in essential human movements like walking, it can unfortunately be demonised as something to be avoided at all costs.

The “functional twists” that I spoke about last time (blog here), requires the pelvis to simultaneously exist in an anterior and posterior tilt. This self twisting mechanism that the pelvis creates enables us to recoil through space a bit more efficiently due to the winding up of certain connective tissues that pass through the pelvic region.

However, for us to be able rotate the pelvis anteriorly and posteriorly smoothly and effortlessly, other areas of the body need to also move freely so all these transitions from front to back can happen. 

A pattern that tends to exist most of the time in the closed chain is pronation of the foot and anterior rotation of the pelvis. 

If you stand with your feet hip width on the floor, tilt your pelvis forward and back and notice how the arches of your feet will slightly drop during anterior (forward) rotation of the pelvis.

If you resist the arches of your feet from lowering during anterior rotation of the pelvis you’ll notice a slight restriction in the forward rolling of the pelvis.

The insight here is that you can improve your experience of rotating your pelvis forward over your femurs by allowing pronation of the foot to occur.

Foot pronation like anterior pelvic tilt is another movement (or series of movements) that also get a bad rap. 

Many teachers believe that we need to minimise or avoid foot pronation. The problem with this approach is that foot pronation is our body’s main mechanism to absorb force.

If you want to improve the function of the body we need to learn how to optimally absorb force and pronation of the foot is a non-negotiable aspect to basic force absorptions principles in the body.

This relationship between the foot (pronation) and the pelvis (anterior tilt) is fully realised and utilised in the gait cycle.

As the foot pronates in walking (during the weight acceptance phase) the pelvis on the same side of the foot will anteriorly tilt as the other foot which will be supinating and pelvis on that side will be posteriorly tiling (during the pre-swing phase) . 

So next time you’re in class teaching your clients how to anteriorly rotate the pelvis, why not try teaching it from the perspective of the feet.

“As you tilt your pelvis forward, relax your feet and allow them to spread out across the floor.”

You’ll be surprised how much easier it will be for your clients to get their pelvis moving more freely!

A reminder that the early bird discount where you’ll save over £150 for The Fit Floor Support For Life online pelvic health programme is ending soon!

Click here to find out more about this expert lead pelvic floor programme for movement professionals.

Movement is medicine

Tom