Are you tired of that pain?
You are sitting all day and when you finally stand up your lower back is in awful pain. Your hips feel weird and they are super tight.
You can’t lift heavy anymore and you can’t move. Your workouts suck because you are in constant pain and your progress is stalling because of countless injuries.
You can’t even do the best exercises like squats and deadlifts because your flexibility is near to nonexistent and your back pain is torturing you.
If you look at yourself from the side, you wonder why your belly sticks out as if you were pregnant even though you might actually be pretty skinny.
You look like Donald Duck or the girls who have to stick out their ass in every single photo.
Have to give it to the blonde though
You, my friend, have what is called anterior pelvic tilt.
But don’t worry, you are not alone. A whole generation of people is affected by this condition that ruins lives, leads to countless health problems and lack of sexual control.
Most people want to tell you that you can’t fix your anterior pelvic tilt. You are born this way, you will live this way and you will die this way. It’s part of your genetic body structure.
Boy, these people are so wrong. You definitely won’t die this way. I promise!
The people who spout this nonsense either don’t know better because they were educated by an outdated system or they commercialize on your pains and sorrows because they are greedy as hell.
You can fix your anterior pelvic tilt and I will tell you exactly how you can fix it.
It won’t be easy but if you stick to it, you will see results pretty fast and your life will change in tremendous ways.
What Is Anterior Pelvic Tilt?
Millions of people have what is considered an anterior pelvic tilt yet most of them don’t even know that they do.
An anterior pelvic tilt is characterized by an extreme curve in your lower back which is called lumbar hyperlordosis.
This curve in your lower back is accompanied by a protruding gut. Your hips are tilted forward which is why this imbalance is called anterior pelvic tilt or short APT.
The people who have anterior pelvic tilt always look as if they are sticking their ass out and they walk like a duck.
Contrary to popular belief, an anterior pelvic tilt is not caused by your genetic structure. It is caused by muscular imbalances that have developed over time through certain habits and a sedentary lifestyle.
Certain muscles are too tight while others are too weak. There is a muscular imbalance.
If you look at a person with anterior pelvic tilt you will see the following muscular imbalance:
The hip flexors and the muscles of the lower back are too tight and the glutes and abdominal muscles are way too weak.
The tight lower back muscles pull the hip upwards while the tight hip flexors amplify this by pulling down and tilting the hip forward.
Your abs and glutes are too weak to compensate. Strong glutes would push the hips forward in a neutral position and strong abs would pull in the protruding gut.
Instead, your whole core region is weak and loose and your gut sticks out. This gives the illusion of being fat.
There are countless skinny guys who wonder why they look like they have a fat belly when in reality it’s just their poor posture.
No diet will help correct this problem and trying to lose weight as a skinny guy would be disastrous in its own way. The only thing that will fix your protruding gut is correcting your muscular imbalances and fixing your anterior pelvic tilt.
If you look at the picture you will see how the muscles that lie opposite to each other are either too weak or too strong. This is why this muscular imbalance is also called the lower crossed syndrome.
This picture clearly shows the muscular imbalances of a lower crossed syndrome or anterior pelvic tilt:
So a quick recap before we move on:
Tight muscles: Lower back (erector spinae), hip flexors (psoas), quads (rectus femoris)
Weak muscles: Abs (transverse abdominis), glutes (gluteus maximus)
How To Fix Anterior Pelvic Tilt and Hyperlordosis
Now you know that your anterior pelvic tilt is caused by a muscular imbalance. Your hips and lower back are too tight while your abs and glutes are too weak.
In order to fix your anterior pelvic tilt, you have to address and correct that muscular imbalance.
That means you have to strengthen your abs and glutes and stretch your hip flexors and your lower back.
If you do that consistently and you follow the exercises I will lay out for you, you will quickly see results and your hips will slowly find their way back into their correct neutral position.
You will experience tons of positive effects and your life will improve many areas.
But here is the thing. You won’t just fix your anterior pelvic tilt with a couple of workouts per week. Hell, you can even further damage your posture if you don’t take certain considerations into your workout and if you aren’t extra careful with your form.
But even if you do everything right during your workouts your hips will ultimately revert back to their old position and the progress will be destroyed.
After all, it took you many years of sitting to get into this position. Now it will take more than just a couple of stretches and workouts to fix that damage.
You will have to put in some more work, have a special warm-up, specialize your workouts a little and even have dedicated little workouts and stretching sessions outside of your regular workout.
But if you commit to it you will fix your anterior pelvic tilt and correct your posture.
Exercises To Fix Anterior Pelvic Tilt
As I said, your normal workout probably won’t be enough to fix your anterior pelvic tilt. Even if you work out every day for an hour, you will always have 23 hours to reverse all the progress you have made.
That’s why you have to add extra exercises and stretches in your everyday routine and do those daily.
If you work on correcting these muscular imbalances daily, you will teach your body the correct position and it will slowly adapt to it. Your body will learn to use the correct muscles to fully support your posture.
Don’t worry. You won’t have to put in an extra hour every day to do these exercises but more is definitely better when it comes to fixing your anterior pelvic tilt.
All of these exercises will only take you a couple minutes total and they don’t require any extra preparation.
Trust me, you want to invest these couple minutes into yourself right now, so you can save yourself a lot of time and struggle later on. Injuries, pain and lack of progress in the gym just aren’t worth it.
Stretching the Hip Flexors To Fix APT
Tight hip flexors are the number one cause of your anterior pelvic tilt. The extended amount of sitting in our modern culture every day of our life causes our hip flexors to get super tight.
That means that you have to put a big focus on stretching and opening up your hip flexors. Every exercise that stretches and opens up your hips is your best friend.
This basic hip flexor stretch should be a staple in your routine:
Focus on really flexing your glutes and your abs. Don’t just tuck your butt under your lower back. That won’t do anything. You really have to put an effort into keeping your abs tight and your glutes flexed pushing your hips forward.
Don’t forget to breathe calmly and slowly and think about breathing into the stretch. This will further amplify it.
This stretch can be very uncomfortable in the beginning and you might struggle with pain. This is normal and depending on the severeness of your anterior pelvic tilt, the stretch can be super intense.
But if you stick with it, you will quickly find great relief in this hip flexor stretch. You can even intensify this stretch by elevating your back feet.
I recommend stretching each side of your hip flexors for 1 minute 3 times per day.
Strengthening the Glutes To Push Your Hips Forward
You have to strengthen your glutes in order to push your hips forward into their neutral position and to counteract the forces of your tight hip flexors.
Strengthening the glutes will also help you activate them better during complex compound movements and in your day to day life while walking and standing.
The glute bridge is one of the best exercises to strengthen and activate your gluteal muscles:
This exercises will teach you how to extend your hip correctly and use your gluteal muscles to push your hips forward.
Focus on pushing with your heels rather than your toes because this will ensure that your quads don’t take over the movement and your glutes are the primary movers.
Keep your lower back in a neutral position to begin with, so that your body learns to push from the right position. That means that you should keep a natural slight curvature in your spine.
Some people argue that you should keep your lower back completely flat against the floor. Try for yourself and see which version feels better for you.
Don’t forget to stretch first before attempting this exercise or else your dominant hip flexors might take over the movement and prevent you from using your glutes to their fullest advantage.
3 sets of 12 reps should be enough.
Mobilize Your Lower Back To Fix Hyperlordosis
Conventional stretches for your lower back are disastrous. They can do more harm than good and will probably further damage an already damaged spine.
Instead, you should focus on mobilizing your lumbar area with active stretching exercises.
The cat and camel stretch is one of the best exercises you can do. It is super effective in getting your lower back area to become a lot more mobile and it is a very natural movement (BTW I talk about the added benefit of becoming a sex god that comes with these exercises a bit later, so be patient).
Don’t force the stretch. Keep it very smooth and natural.
Another effective stretch for your lower back is the deep squat. Just squat as low as you can and stay there for some time.
Hold on to something in front of you like a door frame and squat down as low as you can while you keep your body weight centered over your heels.
As always, you should take slow and deep breaths into your belly.
The deep squat won’t only improve the mobility of your lower back, but its effects will carry over to your whole body. You’ll see just how much easier normal squats in the gym will feel.
Preferably you should start spending more time in the deep squat throughout your days.
Strengthening Your Deep Abdominal Muscles For That Flat Belly
Your core and abs have to be strong in order to pull in your protruding gut and stabilize your whole trunk.
But please don’t make the mistake of doing thousands of crunches now. This isn’t just ineffective because the stress on the muscles is not big enough, it will potentially harm your back and tighten your hip flexors even more.
Dead bugs are a much more effective way of training your abs safely and effectively.
Keep your lower back flat on the floor for the whole duration of the exercise. I recommend doing 3 sets of 8 to 12 repetitions.
The rectus abdominis, or the muscles that appear to us as the visible six-pack aren’t of great interest to us anyway.
What does interest us is the deep core muscle called the transverse abdominis. This muscles runs sideways across your core and acts as a natural stabilizer of your spine.
It is natures own weight belt that will stabilize your core during all movements and when it’s strong, it even works as a corset, pulling in your protruding gut and flattening your belly.
This muscle is activated when you pull your belly button towards your spine and the best exercise to train it is the stomach vacuum.
The plank is another effective exercise because it will train your whole core in a very functional way by keeping good posture like a neutral pelvis and tight abs throughout the whole movement.
The Anterior Pelvic Tilt Killer Workout
Here is a quick recap of all the exercises that I recommend and how you can use them daily as a small workout to destroy your anterior pelvic tilt.
- Stretching the hip flexors: 3 times per day, one minute per side
- Strengthening your glutes: 3 sets à 12 reps
- cat-camel stretch and deep squat, multiple times per day, aim for at least one minute
- dead bugs, 3 sets à 12 reps
- plank, use perfect form and slowly build up to one minute without breaking form
Make sure to stretch your hip flexors before doing any exercises to ensure all the right muscles are activated and your hip flexors don’t take over.
On top of all these stretches, you should go and get yourself a foam roller.
These self-massage rollers are really a blessing from heaven. You can massage yourself pretty intensely with a foam roller and release trigger points that contribute to your bad posture.
This so-called myofascial release reliefs some of the tightness in your imbalanced muscles, helps with the regeneration after workouts and just feels great and relaxing in general.
Warming Up Before Your Workouts
Before you attempt your actual workouts, you should always make sure to warm up thoroughly in a similar fashion.
That means keeping your muscular imbalances in mind and working on activating the muscles you want to strengthen, and stretching the muscles you don’t want to tighten any further.
This will ingrain the correct movement patterns into your body and prepare it for heavy workouts.
When you have warmed up this way, your main workouts will further function as a way to improve your anterior pelvic tilt and fix your hyperlordosis.
Your posture and your performance in the gym will get progressively better. You won’t feel like shit after your workouts anymore and there won’t be any aches and pains.
Your warm-ups should consist of some foam rolling to mobilize your back and keep your legs flexible and the exercises outlined above. Again, the focus should be on stretching the hip flexors and activating your glutes to fire properly during your workouts.
Additionally, you should continue your normal warm-ups depending on the muscles you train, like warming up your shoulders before you bench press and doing a couple sets with just the bar to get into the groove.
What Causes Anterior Pelvic Tilt?
Now that you know that anterior pelvic tilt is caused by muscular imbalances, you probably wonder how these muscular imbalances come up in the first place.
If you look around, you will see tons of people with bad posture, hunched backs, swayed hips and anterior pelvic tilt.
But why do so many people have muscular imbalances?
The reason for the bad posture of our generation is our modern sedentary lifestyle.
Most people spend hours upon hours sitting at work or at school every day without breaks and then when they come home, they sit down in front of the TV.
We humans weren’t originally made to sit for extended periods of time. We are natural movers and our bodies are accustomed to moving.
But when we sit for long periods of time, our hip flexors get super tight and our butts get weak.
This causes gluteal amnesia and it’s a real problem. Most people don’t know how to activate their glutes and thus rely on other muscles to walk and lift.
The glutes don’t get activated at all and as a result, they get weaker and weaker while the hip flexors get tighter every time you sit.
On top of that, most people slouch over their desk. This causes your back to round. Your lower back and your chest tighten while your upper back and abs weaken.
And as we do it for so long, we build the habit of sitting with poor posture and habits aren’t easy to break once they are established.
Sitting is disastrous for us humans in the long run and causes a multitude of muscular imbalances that lead to posture problems and many other health issues.
But sitting is part of our lifestyle and just like PCs, smartphones and other technical gadgets, there is no way we can live without it.
That’s totally fine. But that doesn’t mean you should let it destroy your life.
Lifestyle Changes To Fix Anterior Pelvic Tilt
The first and easiest step to minimizing the damage of sitting to your posture is to take multiple breaks. Every 20 minutes or so, you should stand up and move a little.
Take a walk, do some light stretches, hang from a bar, squat to the floor, whatever. But move and do it regularly. It’s natural and nobody should take the right to move from you.
Another effective way is to alternate between sitting and standing periods. Most of your work can be done standing up. You should definitely look into a standing desk.
Make sure to sit right in the first place. This will save you so much trouble and pain in the long run, and it will double as an effective exercise to get into the habit of good posture.
This video explains good sitting technique:
Whenever you walk around, stand or sit somewhere, be mindful of your body posture. Visualize a string that is attached to the crown of your head that is pulling you up in a straight line and watch the magic happen.
Focus on your hip position when you are standing. Consciously flex your butt a little and move your pelvis in the neutral position.
Try to use your glutes when you are walking with every step. Your steps should be initialized by your back leg pushing off with your gluteal muscles.
Combine these conscious lifestyle changes with the exercises above and you should be on your way to a healthy neutral pelvis in no time.
Yes, it will take time. Yes, it is hard and it takes some effort to consciously think about these things and do the work.
But it will pay off. Otherwise, you will never get into the bliss that good posture gives you.
How Your Diet Can Destroy Your Posture
Even your diet can destroy your posture. Yes, you read that right.
The foods that you put in your mouth can directly influence your posture and cause anterior pelvic tilt.
Most of today’s food is processed garbage, full of additives, chemicals and all sorts of crap you definitely don’t want in your body. And most people eat like garbage too.
They eat food that they are intolerant and allergic to. Most people don’t do well with gluten and lactose. Add in all the processed crap and you set yourself up for digestive issues.
When your gut isn’t working right, it shuts down the surrounding muscles like the muscles of the deep abdominal wall for example.
This process is called visceral somatic inhibition.
If your transverse abdominis is shut down because of that, you won’t be able to target and train it properly, let alone use it in day to day activities.
The muscles just shut down and become weak and loose causing anterior pelvic tilt.
That means that you have to get your nutrition and diet in order if you want to fix your posture and ultimately your health.
Gluten is a big problem for many people, even if they test negative. Lactose is a big one, too.
Experiment by cutting out certain foods in your diet that you might not tolerate well. Leave them out for at least 2 weeks and see how you feel. See how you feel if you reintroduce them in your diet, too.
Giving up on certain foods is hard and painful. It will be well worth it in the long run though.
Your gut is connected to so many things in your body and can cause so many health problems. Who would’ve thought that something as simple as the foods that you eat, can negatively impact your digestion, which causes the surrounding muscles to shut down ultimately resulting in anterior pelvic tilt.
That is the mistake that a lot of doctors make. They try to isolate the problem when they should look at the body as a whole.
The body is a unit. Everything is connected. A problem that manifests itself at the far top of your body can originate in your feet.
But doctors don’t look at the origin. They say “Oh you have back pain, so you have to train your back!”
After reading this article, you should know how fatal it would be to train your lower back because this would only strengthen the muscular imbalance.
That’s why everybody tells you, you can’t fix your hyperlordosis. That’s why everybody tells you, you can’t change anything.
You got to take your health into your own hands!
How Anterior Pelvic Tilt Can Destroy Your Life
Believe it or not but an anterior pelvic tilt can literally ruin your life. Not only an anterior pelvic tilt but every kind of muscular imbalance.
And I am not necessarily talking about the pain that is associated with it, although that is a big point.
How can you live in peace when there is always that nagging pain in the background stabbing you in the back from behind? That’s not a life I want to live.
How do you want to live a normal life when it only takes one wrong abrupt movement or one wrong lift and you injure yourself?
How do you want to make any real progress in the gym if your posture and your health is always the limiting factor?
How do you want to lift heavy and perform? How do you want to achieve the great body of a Greek God that belongs to you if you are walking around like Donald Duck who shat his pants?
Anterior Pelvic Tilt Makes You A Pussy In Bed
But there is more to it than the physical pain, your anterior pelvic tilt can influence your whole body and your emotional state.
As I said, your body is a unit. Everything is connected. Your anterior pelvic tilt will even affect your sexuality.
The misalignment and tightness in your hips cause a multitude of sexual problems like premature ejaculation, lack of control and trouble getting and maintaining an erection.
Your muscular imbalances probably messed up your pelvic floor as well and a healthy pelvic floor is an important part of proper sexual function.
I have been studying people like Wilhelm Reich, Alexander Lowen, Paul Chek and Elliott Hulse. All these people talk about how emotional trauma can manifest itself in your body posture.
Your body produces muscular armor by tightening certain muscles in order to protect yourself.
Anterior pelvic tilt can be caused by these things as well or be amplified by it. On the reverse, it can also cause certain emotional and neurotic behavior.
Anterior pelvic tilt makes it nearly impossible to breathe properly and live in your body. You will be trapped inside your head.
It also signalizes that you are not confident in your own sexuality and will also lead to a very frustrated emotional state.
I mean think about it. It looks like you are literally pulling your dick back.
Today it is widely known that your posture influences your emotional state and the hormones running through your body.
Your posture influences the level of stress you have, how happy you feel and how much testosterone runs through your veins.
Fix your anterior pelvic tilt and your life will change on every level. Your confidence will skyrocket, you will get enhanced performance in the gym, in bed and in your career.
Do it now, before it is too late!
Fix Your Anterior Pelvic Tilt and Change Your Life!
Now you finally know how you can fix your anterior pelvic tilt.
You have to stretch your tight hips and mobilize your lower back while you have to strengthen your glutes and the deep stabilizer muscles of your core.
You have to figure out your food allergies and improve your diet and you have to get active and change your bad habits.
There is no more time to sit on your ass all day. You have to take matters into your own hands.
There is a lot of work awaiting you. You don’t want to do it but you’ll have to push through and do it anyway.
You have to consciously take control of your body and improve your posture bit, by bit, by bit.
Now it’s time to show what you are made out of. It’s time to show a little strength of character, some determination and discipline.
You can’t half-ass this progress. You will have to give it your all and stick with it, even if it gets tough.
But if you do, man, if you do, then your life will change on so many levels you can’t even imagine.
And you will have done the impossible. You will have done something, that the whole world says is not possible. You will have fixed your anterior pelvic tilt, “the incurable disease”.
This sets the groundwork for success in other areas of your life.
If you can do that, then you can achieve all your dreams and goals.
Until then,
your man
Dan!
The Real Solution To Fixing Your Posture
Wait a second. The article isn’t over yet. There is one more thing I have to tell you.
Even though these exercises and methods will help you fix your anterior pelvic tilt, there is one thing that is far more powerful than all the methods in this article.
Nobody has ever talked about this. It’s still completely new and I am currently working on this groundbreaking thing.
You have to change your body structure.
Yes, you read that right. And I’m not talking about your body fat composition. No, I am talking about bone structure!
I know it sounds unbelievable and completely delusional. Common says and science says you can not change your bone structure.
Everybody says, your bone structure is genetic.
But everybody else also said that your anterior pelvic tilt was genetic and you have just learned that that’s not true at all.
These exercises work and they can probably fix your posture up to 75%. But you will have to religiously continue to do these exercises or else your posture will revert back to its old way.
Doing these exercises is still worth it though. But the new method we are working on is so much more powerful and will bring permanent results.
Do you know these people who seem to do everything like you, but they still have perfect posture. The reason is their bone structure.
And you will get your god given heavenly bone structure as well.
But this is something for another day. I will talk a lot about this in the future but it’s still a while before I can write about it.
Until then, you’ll have to be patient and continue doing your exercises!
What is about to come is going change everything we know about our bodies!
Excellent article, Dan.
It’s good to see more and more people talking about the influences our emotional states have upon our bodies (and vice-versa); something Western medicine seems to all-too-quick to turn a blind eye to.
I’ve found that active stretches like the L-Sit and Bridge have really helped me loosen up (both physically and emotionally), especially in the pelvic region.
Have you read “Deskbound,” by any chance? Both you and the author of that book have a very similar scientific approach to this topic.
Thank you Steeveau!
The body-mind connection is fascinating and once you actively work on releasing and loosening up, you will see tremendous results very fast!
So far I have only heard good results with L-Sits and Bridges! I’ll have to try them out more.
I haven’t read the book but I guess now I have to get my hands on it!
What does bone structure have to do with pelvic tilt?
Actually it can be genetic (your article said not) though I’d hazard to say for most people it’s not. My husband inherited from his mother. Three of my children inherited it (1 10yo, a 2yo, and 6mo and you can physically see the tilt on the 2 youngest when I lay them down diaperless. Their butt fat smushes up toward their lower back and they get a crease in the outside of their hip bones.) I’m trying to find out if there is a way to resolve it because it’s affecting my 10yo posture and abdominals.