Here’s a simple test to see if your pelvis is rotated.
Stand up.
Close your eyes and march in place for 10 steps.
Now open your eyes - are both feet in line and pointed in the same direction?
Do it again.
Is the answer the same, or different?
Do it again.
Is the answer the same or different?
If every time both feet landed in line with each other and pointed directly straight, this shows that there is bilateral function on both sides and no rotation is present.
If you noticed the same foot was in front of the other, or one foot was pointed out more than the other - it’s a strong indication that consistent rotation is present.
If noticed your foot position was different every time - it suggests rotation is present and without order - meaning random variable outcomes each time. This could indicate why pain/discomfort change and jump around a lot.
Our joints can flex, extend, and rotate, with the help of our muscles.
Each joint has a certain amount of “room” to give us the ability to move in those ways.
When a joint is already rotated before it even moves, there is less space for it to move and the muscles have to work harder to move it.
For example, an externally rotated hip at rest has to work to just move to a neutral position.
If it takes work just to move to neutral, imagine how much work it takes to actually internally rotate the hip.
Taking an externally rotated hip and rotating internally is significantly more taxing on the body than asking a neutral hip to rotate inwards.
In a local view, excessive force and tension are now placed on surrounding soft tissue for what should be a basic simple movement.
On a global view, this means you’ll have to get help from somewhere else if you want to keep moving.
For most its rotating and lowering one shoulder to elevate and rotate your pelvis to help offset that hips inability to move well.
Throwing the body into rotation because a single joint can’t do it anymore comes with a cost.
Rotated joints dictate how you’ll move before you even move.
All of the exercises in Phase 2: Restore, found within our Online Movement Program, aim to unwind rotation so you can move better with less tension.
Link in bio!
20 - 0
“For 10 years I put a block between my mind and my body. I literally hated to look my back.
There were days I was crying so hard. Because I couldn’t find any way except surgery. I couldn’t look at my photos when I took the imbalance tests. During this journey it was really up and down as you mentioned it in your book. I am sooo impatient person which made everything harder. And it was not easy to continue without seeing any change but this time I promised myself I am not going to give up no matter what. When I get unmotivated and emotional I ran to instagram to read your posts and look improvements of other people. I was wondering, one day will I be like them???? After 10 years, is it possible? Well Vinny, you made me believe everything is possible in this life including to begin love myself again, hope for having good posture again and calm mind.
Now I am able to approach my body with confidence, love and hope. I gained courage to look at my before/after photos after a while.
You didn’t only give me a hope but also made me love myself. It was not easy to be open with myself and my body. And I know I still have a long way. But I am not afraid anymore, I am not going to give up and I will always trust my body.”
@alaneva_2018 says her primary language isn’t English, yet she speaks so clearly to what this journey of healing really is for so many of us.
Your victory begins, as all victories begin, in the dark.
There is no way knowing in the middle of the night what day it is - 10:00pm looks exactly the same as 2:00am.
When the clock strikes 12:00am, a new day has begun even though you might not be able to see that anything has changed.
Even though darkness surrounds you, a new day has begun.
The sun is on its way.
Each time you find a way to show up for yourself in whatever capacity you have, moves you a little closer to dawn.
With enough time, patience, faith, and hope, the sun will rise and you will feel it’s warmth all around you.
Aliye, we are so proud of you.
All of those victories you’ve won in the dark have helped you shine for everyone else to see.
20 - 0
Sherrington’s Law of Reciprocal Inhibition explains how a muscle will relax when its opposite muscle is activated.
Think of this happening every time you round your shoulders - your chest muscles shorten while the opposing muscle groups in your mid-back relax and lengthen.
Every muscle we have, has an opposite muscle to balance it out as well as groups of surrounding muscles to support their function.
When function is disrupted by muscles adapting to short positions, or adapting to long positions, this reciprocal relationship is deeply affected. [1]
Once the length-tension relationship has been altered, other muscles in the body that are not normally associated with a particular movement become more active and start picking up the responsibility.
For example, a tight hip flexor not being able to lengthen is going to directly and immediately impact the glute’s (opposite muscle) ability to function and extend the hip.
Because the primary flexors and extensors of the hip are now compromised, the surrounding muscles have to pick up the slack if you are going to keep moving.
The QL (quadratus lumborum) will hijack the function of the hip flexor to hike the pelvis in an attempt to help the hip “flex”, the hamstrings and adductor magnus (secondary hip extensors) will now become the primary muscles trying to extend the hips as the glutes and the hip flexors do less and less work.
The hamstrings, adductor magnus, and literally dozens of other muscles are now going to become over-active and tighten up due to over use and stress. This is why stretching tight muscles doesn’t get to the underlying cause of why they are tight in the first place.
If muscle imbalances are not addressed, the body will be forced into compensatory positions, which increases the stress placed on the musculoskeletal system. This eventually leads to excessively stressing soft tissue causing a breakdown of cellular function which leads to faulty movement, injury, and pain. [2]
Sources [1] and [2] are cited in comments.
[1] Janda, V. 1983. Muscle Function and Testing.
[2] Janda, V. 1996. “Evaluation of Muscular Imbalance” Rehabilitation of the Spine: A Practitioner’s Manual, 1st ed, Baltimore, MD: Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins, 97-112.
20 - 0
This problem goes by many names.
Hip hike, anterior/posterior tilt, hip disparity, or leg length discrepancy just to name a few.
Take away any diagnostic names for a moment, what we are really talking about here is imbalance, compensation, and dysfunction.
As human beings, our structure is symmetrical. Even if you differ a few millimeters here or there, we undeniably use bilateral movement to navigate the world around us by standing, walking, running, and moving primarily on two legs.
When there’s a difference in how the ankles, knees, hips, or shoulders move on the right side in comparison to the left, the pelvis will naturally rotate clockwise or counterclockwise, elevate on one side, tilt forward or tilt backward.
Our body does this because it’s brilliant at compensating. We can morph our body posture and shift work around to help us accommodate for prior injuries, current injuries, and lifestyle.
Because of this incredible ability, we’ve gotten really good at moving through anything - but therein lies the problem.
We get to a point of compensating so much that we are unable to move with bilateral symmetry anymore. We start asking one side to bear more weight and work harder as we slowly give up full range of motion and function of our muscular system.
When have chronic imbalance, we no longer receive proper stimulation, blood, oxygen, or nutrients to keep the tissue healthy. Decay sets in and the muscles become stiff, tight, and weaken.
When we reach this threshold of compensation, pain tends to enter the picture as these 3 problems continue to fuel one another.
1. The original underlying problem of imbalance.
2. How the entire body has to compensate from the imbalance.
3. Dysfunctional tissue occurring due to lack of use, further fueling imbalance and compensation.
When pain and movement related problems are present, these 3 factors always show up in some way shape or form and won’t change unless the entire body is worked on.
Every one of our Rebalancing Movement Sequences precisely aims to relax any compensation patterns, restore function to the dysfunctional tissue, and rebalance how the entire right and left side of the body work together.
11 - 0
Stand on your right leg and raise your left knee to about hip height.
Hold that position for 2 min - what do you feel?
You should start to feel the muscles on the side of your right hip as well as your arch muscles in your right foot start to work.
What you’re really feeling is one of many key features that place humans in an entirely different class of movers in the animal kingdom - the class of habitual bipeds.
Our pelvis is short, bowl-shaped, and faces sideways, whereas in our closest relatives that share 98% - 99% of our genetic code the gorilla and chimpanzee, their pelvis is flatter, longer, and faces back.
If you watch a gorilla or a chimpanzee walk, they widen their legs for greater stability, point their feet outward because their long toes don’t bend like ours do, and they lack an arch to push off the ground with. Their upper body sways from side to side to help counter balance each step and to use momentum to help lift their leg off the ground to step forward.
This side-shuffling gait has a high cost of energy, which is why they prefer to walk on all limbs.
But for us, it’s a different story.
Our short sideways-facing pelvis places our butt muscles at our sides instead of purely behind us. This feature stabilizes our upper body and reduces any swaying side to side when walking or running...when the pelvic muscles function properly that is.
Our lateral stabilizing muscles significantly reduce any side to side swaying and nearly all of our energy is spent moving in just a forward direction.
However, in a culture where most of us have successfully engineered movement out of our lives, key features like our lateral stabilizers, are underwhelmed on a daily basis.
This post is just scratching the surface as to the reasoning and importance of why The Single Leg Stand is in our Assessment Toolkit.
Looking at how your body stabilizes when standing on your right and left leg, helps to put the pieces together as to why motion can trigger discomfort, symptoms, and/or pain.
We need all of our key features (which I’ll break down more in another post) to add up if we are to continue moving about this world comfortably on just two feet.
13 - 0
Find our videos helpful? Start building your custom movement program
Linktr.ee/painacademy
Joined 22 January 2017