“The foot bone’s connected to the ankle bone, the ankle bone’s connected to the…”🎶
You can argue an approach looking at the body from the top down (head and neck first), bottom up (feet first), starting with the diaphragm and rib cage, or the pelvis as king. For better or worse, our entire body is connected and is very good at adapting. Adaptation allows us to continue functioning, but sometimes results in muscles being unable to work as efficiently as they were meant to.
Our bodies are unique in how they respond to positions and limitations in movement. The longer we’ve been in an adapted position, the more layers we’ll have to work through, and some areas might need to be addressed individually. It’s important to realize that if you feel you’ve hit a roadblock in your progress, it may be time to look instead at potential drivers of the condition.
When it comes to forward head posture and the pelvis, the body may possibly have responded to a pelvis that is shifted forward over the feet by shifting the rib cage back and gripping in the upper abs or chest.
If the pelvis is forward from an anterior tilt, you’d address this by finding the proximal hamstrings in isolation. This pulls the pelvis back, restores a full range of motion in the sagittal plane, and achieves a more centered position over your feet to then further address compensations in the upper body. The trick with finding hamstrings is making sure you don’t use your glutes or hip flexors to do this. Also make sure you’re not overly rounding through the mid back and dropping your chest.
If the forward pelvic position is from shoving your hips forward due to glute gripping (or if you’ve added a layer of glute gripping to an APT), then you might need to work on unsticking the sacrum first.
Are you having a hard time finding your proximal hamstrings without glutes or without dropping your chest? This can further highlight the need to unstick the individual parts so they can move independently from one another. This allows for more movement options and variability instead of an all-or-nothing approach.
Did you know I teach online:
Online Continuing Education for Fitness and Health Professionals
PCES - Pregnancy & Postpartum Corrective Exercise Specialist
www.coreexercisesolutions.com/postpartum-corrective-exercise-specialist/
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