Hello, i’m making some progress on getting my pelvis out of APT with exercises and stretching.
I’ve been doing glute,abs, work and stretching hip flexors, quads and adductors with some other exercises for rounded shoulders and forward head posture.
I feel better, ie looser in the hips and legs and it seems to be paying off and the APT is now minor.
I also have patella tendonitis with bony lumps below my knees from cycling. I’ve noticed that my hamstrings are very tight as i cannot get my leg to 70-80 degrees without bending the knee.
Will stretching the hamstrings help my patella tendon and also is it a bad idea to stretch them with APT? eg, will it make the APT worse?
is your inability to get your leg to 70-80 degrees without bending the knee the only reason you have for thinking that you need to stretch your hamstrings? are you trying to do that standing up or lying down? are you trying it with anterior pelvic tilt (space for your hand between your back and the floor) or with posterior pelvic tilt (back hard against the floor)?
sometimes people think that their hamstrings are tight but it turns out that they are on chronic stretch from the anterior pelvic tilt rather than the problem being that they actually are tight.
i’m not sure on the anatomy of this… perhaps someone else will have a better idea of what i’m trying to get at here… but sometimes there is something going on with the hip flexors rather than the hamstrings. people tend to confuse things and think their hamstrings are too tight but actually their hip flexors are too tight or (sometimes) they have finally started to mobilize them and they are long and weak. so people sometimes can’t lift their leg while standing because their hip flexors / abs can’t activate properly - they have been deactivated from all the stretching.
i would only stretch them if they feel too tight for your to be able to do movements (squat, deadlift etc) with good form.
but you should be able to raise your leg… i think you are right to worry about what might be going wrong with that…
oh… how do you go with a foam roller around just above your knee? to the inside (adductor) and also the outside (ITB)?
sometimes people discover painful tightness around the tendon / by the knee with the foam roller. easing that out can sometimes (but not always) be a magic cure for ‘tendonitis’. and sometimes it can help with a tight muscle perhaps pulling on the patella, too.
Cheers for the replys. Your comments go along with what i’ve read about it.
Over the last few days thinking about it i think my ATP is probably alot to do with my tight adductors. Even if i have my legs slightly apart my adductors feel like bullets could bounce off them. Like guitar strings. The reason i’ve started to think that is because my abdominal exercises seem to have no effect on my posture. ie if i suck my abs in i can see my pelvis lift up and my lower back straighten, whereas if i tense up my glutes (which i’ve also been heavilly targeting) theres hardly any movement of the pelvis. So i’ve now got it in my head that these exercises are not going to work untill i really free up my adductors and back first as they are far stronger than my abs. I’ve been stretching my hip flexors like a lunatic so thinking they are now not a prirority.
So i’m thinking that the pull of the adductors is pulling down on the pelvis and inhibiting the abs. I’ve only started stretching the adductors over the last couple of months. Even after all those ab exercises i still look like a fat skinny bastard side on so those ab exercises are not helping my APT which i want to get rid of to try and help my knees for jogging. So my goal is to free myself up for my joints.
I injured my lower back doing a squat years ago and i think that driving for a living combined with too much cycling hills and no stretching has shortened my hip flexors and adductors. I’m not so sure stretching is working on its own so maybe i need some massage more than anything. One strange thing i noticed is that before my piriformis muscle (the one that can inhibit the glutes) has suddenly seemed to release over the last few days. I’m trying to think why that is and the only thing i’ve been doing different was that my girlfreind has been massaging the knots in my lower back hard with her elbow OR/AND the adductor stretches ??
Anybody have any success with massaging releasing the adductor muscles ? My girlfreind quite enjoys stepping all over my legs and back whilst i whince so maybe that could help and give her some entertainment.
‘‘oh… how do you go with a foam roller around just above your knee? to the inside (adductor) and also the outside (ITB)?’’
I really tried alot of rolling with half a pool cue and theres no real knots or painful points around the knees. My knee caps click on the outside of my legs (part of the reason i’m working on this with the tendonitis)
I’ve done a load of ITB stretches. One thing i do know is that straight after i do a hip flexor stretch my knees dont click as much for a few minutes so this suggests to me that they need some sort of releasing as they always tighten up after ???
My groin muscles seem to really engage more than my hip flexors when i lift my leg. And the adductors seem twitchy with the slightest movement.