Health issues

[Ben Nagy]

Hey Coach,

What's your opinion about training L-sit/V-sit with anterior pelvic tilt syndrome? Since one of it's cause is tight hip flexors, I wonder what effect would training a hip flexor dominant execise like this, have on my body. Would it make my condition worse? See, I was told to strengthen my core and glutes to overcome this problem of mine but how can I train my core without engaging my hip flexor, like in an L-sit? I'm realy confused now...

[Alessandro Mainente]

Hey Ben , if the leg lift is approached correctly with the correct timing between ABS and hips flexor they will produce a strong improvement of abs strength primarily rather than hips flexor. BUT the hip flexor it is still engaged, I would not worry too much since your condition can be aggravated by training hip flexor without properly balanced work on posterior pelvic tilt and stretch on the hip flexor. Bad conditions are the results of bad training, especially on pre-existing bad posture.

[George Launchbury]

Hi Ben,

Adding to that - improving your Glute activation/strength will help your hip flexors relax via reciprocal inhibition (which helps prevent opposing muscle groups from working against each other, like engaging your quads to relax/stretch your hamstrings, and squeezing your glute to stretch your hip flexor). Tight hip flexors will inhibit glute activation, weak glutes will encourage tight hip flexors.

It is not a mutually exclusive situation - You can have strong hip flexors without them being too tight, and the issue is usually that they're too tight, not too strong, and that the relationship with opposing muscles is good. It's all about balance.

In my past experience and training as a therapist, tight hips and weak glute activation is invariably caused by spending a lot of time sitting, which is why it is an issue for so many people. Working on maintaining posterior pelvic tilt (PPT) in exercises (where required, like planks, pushups - squeeze those glutes, tuck your tail under) and especially daily movement like walking/standing, will further retrain your body to maintain a better position.

Your body will remodel over time to become more efficient at being in the positions it spends a lot of time in, unless you let it know that it needs to retain a full range of motion/strength.

To sum up, keep training, work on maintaining PPT, stretch your hip flexors daily, and put in some glute activation exercises as part of your warm up.

Cheers, George.

[Ben Nagy]

Thank You all for the reply!