Download APT and How to Prevent It What is APT? Anatomically speaking, it

APT and How to Prevent It
What is APT?
Anatomically speaking, it stands for anterior pelvic tilt, and the name derives from when the pelvis is
rotated forward due to tightness of the hip flexors, namely the psoas and quadriceps, coupled with
weak and long hamstrings.
How does it occur?
As stated above, APT comes from the tightness of the hip flexors essentially pulling the hip down and
forward.
For a muscle to become short and tight, usually occurs for 2 different reasons:
1. The muscle is contracted under load and then isn’t stretched after recovery (weight lifting
and then not stretching), leaving the muscle tight and sore.
Not only this, but the brain is still registering the muscle as contracted and is still sending
signals to the muscle to contract, stretching essentially physically stretches the muscle but
also causes the brain to send a signal to the muscle to tell it to ‘stop contracting’, thus
loosening the muscle out on a more permanent basis.
2. The other way a muscle becomes tight is through lack of activation. Much like a lightbulb, if
the muscle is not turned on or activated for a long period of time, it turns off. This is because
muscle uses a lot of energy and the body will do it everything it needs to save energy, so if a
muscle isn’t being used, the body will automatically turn the muscle off to preserve energy.
Because the muscle is inactive, it has no ability to stretch, thus locking joints in place,
stretching tendons and ligaments.
Why does APT occur?
APT occurs, like most short term physical changes that take place outside of evolution, via
general human locomotion, or in this case, lack of.
We have become a world full of sedentary, lazy people.
We sit down more than we should an exercise less than we should.
Sitting down is probably the most common cause of APT, here’s why:
When we sit down, we essentially perform a half squat, with the knees at 90 degrees, (much
like a wall squat), however, because we are not relying on our muscles to keep us in the
position and they aren’t required to work, the body essentially turns them off to conserve
energy.
What happens here is that the muscles turn off and essentially shorten and tighten.
When we stand up, what we find is that our pelvis has rotated forward due to a shortening
of our quadriceps and hip flexors.
When we sit, we are essentially performing hip flexion (raising the knee to the lower
abdomen) which causes a shortening of the psoas and the quadriceps, however because we
are not actually using the muscle or contracting or activating it, it also turns off, so the
muscles required for hip flexion contract and shorten, and then become inactive, which is
bad news.
Once this sets in, it automatically shifts the pelvis forward and down, and because the
muscle is dormant, the joint is locked in place.
So once we stand up, we remain in the same position. Now usually once we stand, we
should be fully elongated, our pelvis should return to neutral position and everything should
be fine and dandy, however because of this sitting down thing, our pelvis has rotated
forward and we have essentially given ourselves APT.
Not only this, but because the position we sit in is placing our hip flexors in a contracted
position and our hamstrings and glutes in a more stretched position, our muscles will remain
like that even when we stand up.
How do we solve APT?
APT isn’t, unfortunately, a problem you can solve in a few minutes, depending on the reason
for the APT it either requires muscular activation at the glutes and hamstrings, stretching at
the hip flexors, or both. I will explain how to do both.
Hip Flexor Stretching
To stretch the hip flexors, there are about 3 essential stretches to be done, some you may
need more than others.
In order to first start stretching, however, the muscle needs to be warmed up so that I can
lengthen, otherwise it is restricted in how much it can lengthen.
Much like a rubber band, if it is cold, it is limited in how much it can extend, but if warmed
up, it can reach a greater length.
Here is my top warm up for the lower body
The warm up is very, simple, all we are trying to do here is get the muscles warm and active,
loosened up and ready to be stretched. A muscle needs blood flow to be warmed up
otherwise it can not stretch, so warming up is essential.
Knee Squat
This is my go to exercise to warm up the hips and general lower body.
Kneel down on the floor with your palms on the floor in front of you.
From here, bend at the knees and drop your butt to your calves.
Come back up to the start and repeat.
This will loosen up the hip flexors, the glutes, hamstrings and even add a bit of flexibility to
the lower back.
I do this for a good 5, slow reps, sometimes even sitting into the bottom position for a good
few seconds.
For me, I get short, sharp pains in my hips when I do this, which means my muscles are ready
to be stretched.
With this warm up, you may struggle to reach your bum to your calves to start, however
after a few reps you may hit a great ROM.
Stretches
Kneeling butt to calf reach
This stretch is my favourite for 1-2 days after a heavy
legs session, as your legs will be so tight they will lack
the ability of simple mobility.
Simple kneel on the floor and try to get your butt to
your calves.
If you feel you have found your ROM, simply stay in that
position until you stop feeling the stretch, and then
descend further.
Kneel and reach stretch
This is my go to stretch for a basic hip flexor stretch.
It stretches out the psoas major, minor and illiacus, which is occasionally known as a
collective, the Illiopsoas.
To perform the stretch, simply kneel on the floor and take the non stretching foot out in
front (proposal position), and have the other foot remained in position.
From here, keep the hips neutral and raise your hand as high as you can, also turn your body
in the opposite direction to maximise the stretch.
Don’t lean back as you will be extending too much at the lumbar spine and not stretching
maximally at the hip.
You should feel a sore,
aching and almost burning feeling on the side that is being stretched, around the hip area,
between the bottom of the hip and the top of the quadricep.
Once you have stretched this area out, you will then be able to stretch out the quadriceps.
Elevated Foot Kneel Stretch
This stretch is an advanced version of the previous stretch, and allows for a greater stretch
on the quadriceps rather than the iliopsoas group.
Find a soft chair or sofa to place the foot of the leg being stretched onto. Have your relaxed
foot on the floor in front.
Again, with this stretch, place the sole of the relaxed foot on the floor.
You don’t need to raise your arm for this one but it can help, just squeeze your glutes to
extend the hips and help stretch out the quad, it will feel the same, except this time on the
front of the thigh rather than the hip area.
The above are my top 3 stretches for become more flexible in the hip flexors and helping
to alleviate APT.
However, it can also be due to weak hamstrings and glutes.
When you are in ATP, it can also be due to long/weak hamstrings, which don’t help to rotate
the pelvis into neutral.
In order to shorten them to help posteriorly rotate the pelvis, we need to strengthen the
hamstrings and glutes.
When we address an imbalance in the body via muscular activation and strengthening the
muscle, one thing that must be taken into account is the movement pattern that we are also
addressing.
Even though we can strengthen a muscle to allow a better ROM in a particular part of the
body, we must be aware of what movement pattern we are specifically addressing.
With APT, we are aiming to address the movement pattern of APT to PPT using the exercises
specifiedTop 3 Exercises to strengthen the hamstrings
Stiff Leg Deadlift
Wide Stance Squats
Body Weight Hamstring Curl
I have chosen these exercises specifically because the ROM of these exercise goes from end
range lumbar extension, to beginning range lumbar flexion, which is what going from APT to
PPT is.
Stiff Leg Deadlift
To perform this exercise, place an empty barbell
on a rack about hip height.
With a double overhand grip, unrack the bar
and let it hang. From here, perform a hip hinge
and keep the bar close to your body, this will
emphasise the hamstrings.
The further away the bar the more your lower back will be emphasised.
Work up to a working set of 3 -5 reps for 8 sets, or 3 sets of 10-15 reps.
Wide Stance Squats
Squats are a pure hip flexion to hip extension exercise, utilising the hamstrings, glutes and
quadriceps in a single movement.
In this case, we want to use a wider based squat, which emphasises the glutes and
hamstrings to a much greater degree.
With a barbell on your back, have your feet just slightly wider than shoulder width and toes
pointed out, squat down as far as you feel comfortable, and stand back up again.
You may not achieve a huge ROM but you should be able to maximally recruit and contract
the entire posterior chain.
Body Weight Hamstring Curl
The body weight hamstring curl is simply where you lay face down with your feet under a
heavy object to pin them down. Place your hands on the floor in front of you like a push up.
Push off the ground as hard as possible to raise yourself up and as soon as your hands leave
the floor, squeeze and contract your hamstrings.