Is anterior pelvic tilt good or bad? (also referred to as anterior orientation)

Left picture: resting posture

Right picture above: anterior pelvic tilt

Anterior pelvic tilt occurs in the sagittal plane and is used a lot throughout walking running things that involve us moving forward, it really becomes an issue when you get stuck in ATP.

Example: you are resting in anterior pelvic tilt , if you then do an activity that involves more ATP this is when things can become a bit of an issue and could go wrong, especially if you are doing this under load.

This is going to lead to increased extension in the lower back putting more force into areas of the spine, we end up using more quadriceps and hip flexor muscles due to the inability to achieve posterior pelvic tilt (PPT). The sagittal plane makes up the majority of motion this is when we’re walking , running ect if we can’t achieve anterior posterior pelvic tilt then we’re likely to find some compensation throughout the body.

Is it bad?

It will typically increase lordotic and kyphotic curvature of the spine with forward head posture and rounded shoulders commonly accompanying it.

It will limit the use of your Glutes , hamstrings , abdominal muscles due to these muscles being unable to find proper leverage during movement. Then what happens is we are stuck using our quadriceps hip flexors and lower back for the majority of your movement tasks.

Although the human body is naturally biased towards an anterior pelvic tilt, your pelvis is in ATP 50% of the time and posterior pelvic tilt 20% of the time (lewis , c , et al. 2017) anterior pelvic tilt will change leveraged capabilities of hip extension/hyperextension , this actually makes us more efficient movers compared to our ape like relatives , far more efficient from an energy systems view.

You can’t simply fix or get rid of anterior pelvic tilt but we can do is put your body in a position to bias a posterior pelvic tilt and intelligently activate specific muscle to help give your nervous system a better experience while simultaneously strengthening.

So in conclusion anterior pelvic tilt is not a bad thing we can drive a lot of force and it’s a strong position to be in but if we go too far one way and can’t get out of an ATP then we will lose the capacity to move forwards, this will force us to use different joints and different muscle types to achieve our movement tasks.

I can help you feel and move better, to learn more check out tjpmobility.com where you will find details on my mobility and PT 1-1s and the practice of Kinstretch. Plus a load of free content on movements specific to you, alternatively you can drop me a line on Instagram @tjp_mobility.

I hope to see you soon

Trav (TJP) x