How To Not Get Stuck With A Pelvic Tuck!

How The Pelvic Tuck
Causes Disc Compression

There are many verbal instructions from teachers, instructors, coaches, and so on leading to compression, and eventual degeneration, of the Lumbo / Sacral Joint. They include “tuck the pelvis,” or “scoop the sacrum,” or “drop the tailbone,” or “lengthen the spine,” or “flatten the lower back,” or “draw the pubic bone toward the sternum,” and so on.

Do this often enough, with enough intensity, you will soon get stuck with a pelvic tuck.

What Muscles Are Involved In
Getting Stuck With a Pelvic Tuck?

LEFT-Neutral Pelvis — RIGHT-Posterior Tilt

What the Pelvic Tuck actually is, is a slight to moderate posterior (rearward) tilting of the pelvis, based on the very common Myth-Conception that too many people have excess lordosis and anterior tilt of the pelvis. For some people, after many repetitions over many years, that “slight to moderate” posterior tilt becomes a VERY posterior tilted pelvis.

Many disciplines are doing this pelvic tuck action with the FLAWED idea that it “protects the spine” or “stabilizes the core” or whatever: yoga, tai chi, Pilates, ballet, fitness, and so on are prescribing this action to their students and clients as “essential.”

The Muscles engaging to produce Posterior Tilt of the Pelvis are:

1. The Abdominal Wall:
   • Rectus Abdominus
   • Internal Obliques
   • External Obliques
2. Hamstrings
   • Rectus Femoris
   • Semitendinosus
   • Membranosus
   
3. Gluteals & Deep Rotators
   • Gluteus Maximus
   • Gluteus Medius
   • Gluteus Minimus
   • Piriformis
   • Gemellus, Superior & Inferior
   • Obturator Internus & Externus
   • Quadratus Femoris 

ALL of those muscles are exerting compressive forces on the hip joints. Once the habit of holding the pelvis this way develops — via chronically contracted muscles — those compressive forces are compressing the hips ALL of the time.

And if you include the action of psoas muscle described in the video up above, then the lumbar spinal discs get chronically compressed as well.

It’s also a good way to mess up the Pelvic Floor. That’s because people who are engaging all the above muscles are usually pulling up on the pelvic floor, as well. (That’s the same action as Kegel Exercises.)

I go into all of this more extensively in other articles and courses, but I call this one of the Health Care Tragedies of the 20th Century.

Please Read More Articles on Yoga Injury Prevention HERE

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Thank You Very Much for Reading,
David Scott Lynn (DSL*)
* DSL: Your Hi-Touch Up-Link to the Inner-Net
Inner-Net: Your Psycho-Neuro-Musculo-Fascial System

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David Scott Lynn (DSL)

DSL the Yogi at Whole Life Perspectives

Beginning at 13 years of age, DSL's been involved with alternative philosophies & practices most of his life. Becoming a yoga teacher in 1976, then a hands-on bodyworker in 1981, he developed a unique & highly effective form of Yoga / Bodywork / Whole Health Fitness & Therapeutics. … David wrote the chapters on a wholistic philosophy & physiology of bodywork & stretching for the textbook Structural Balancing, published by McGraw-Hill, Inc. in 2010. … He is the author of the e-Book Simple Steps to Let-Go Yoga, available at: www.letgoyoga.com/simple-steps/ and several other upcoming e-books.

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Latest posts by David Scott Lynn (DSL) (see all)

• Only YOU Can Prevent Yoga Injuries! - February 6, 2015
• Does Psoas Cause Lordosis? - June 11, 2014
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