Anterior Pelvic Tilt: Why Strengthen Hip Flexors?

Why are exercises for Anterior Pelvic tilt working my hip flexors?

People wonder if you had APT shouldn't you be stretching and releasing the hip flexor because their tight. If you have APT you should still be training your hip flexors.

What are tight hip flexors?

Strength has nothing to do with the resting strength of the muscle. You can have a really strong muscle that short or a really weak muscle that short. Hip flexor strength does not coorrelate with APT.

If you have tight hip flexors that they are strong. If you have tightness it means they are not resting at their optimal length & you're not using those muscles as they should be used. What you need to do if you have APT is work on your Posterior Tilt because that's the range of motion that your body is having trouble with.

It's much easier to teach someone to posterior tilt their pelvis in a hip flexor building. Example, if I asked a new client to lie down and posterior tilt they would not be able to. But if they bring their knees up to chest and tighten those hip flexors, they will automatically be in posterior tilt. Then we gradually move the feet away and they gradually learn how to posterior tilt flat on their back.

The most important dealing with APT is being aware of what is going on in your hips & being in control of the way your hips move.
You need to posterior tilt in the hip flex position to know what posterior tilt feels like. Then you need to learn how to move everything in your hip around a more neutral posterior tilted hip. It's teaching you how to move your hip & use your hip flexors to actually do hip flexion & not pull you into extension.

The main thing that is probably going on with you is every time you go to sit down or squat, your spine is getting pulled towards your femur & we don't want that to happen. We want the spine to stay stable & for the femur to be pulled up towards the spine while keeping a stable spine. The best way to teach yourself is to work on the motor control over your anterior core, which includes abs & hip flexors. They work together. The anterior core start with the muscles from the front of your shoulders all the way down to your hip flexors.

Why should that movement be strong?

We want to train the body to be functionally strong in all directions. So if you are only hip extension, if your'e only doing dead lifts or glue bridges then we're only training the hip extension to be strong but we still have hip flexion which is another range of motion we have. We want hip abduction to be strong as well.

There's a balance that needs to happen with your body.
Example, you don't want really strong biceps & really weak triceps, as it will cause some issues at the elbow & shoulder. Then why are we only going to train hip extensions & not hip flexion.

So for those who still think you should not be training your hip flexors at all but constantly stretching them, foam rolling them, etc. What I say to you is that are you just going to stay out of the hip flex position forever? For example, if you have just been sitting for a while, does that mean if you have anterior pelvic tilt, you have to go foam roll for an hour after? No. You have to be able to flex your hips. You need to be strong in a hip flex position.

That's not to say foam rolling, stretching can't be a part of your anterior pelvic tilt issues, but they have to be only a component. There has to be some retraining of how your body works.

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