The Top Lordosis Exercise
Lordosis refers to the inward curve of the spine, focusing on the neck and the lower back, which have natural “lordotic” curves. Most of the time, particularly in back pain sufferers, this curve becomes exaggerated, creating an excessive lordosis. Correcting this featured postural dysfunction can be challenging to even the best therapists, but if you have the right exercise, it can be a much simpler task.
One of the most important aspects of excessive lumbar lordosis is to remember where it is coming from. There are two major players here. The pelvis is frequently involved, which will be in excessive anterior pelvic tilt, or the neck, which will usually be doing the same thing as the lower back. Since anterior pelvic tilt is the primary cause, it is wise to start there.
Anterior pelvic tilt is caused by muscular imbalance between two main muscle groups. The muscles that create anterior tilt include the psoas, quads, adductors, and lumbar extensors. The muscles that create posterior pelvic tilt include the glutes, hamstrings, obliques, and rectus abdominus.
The ideal exercise will assist in lengthening the muscles that anteriorly tilt the pelvis, and strengthen the muscles that perform posterior pelvic tilt.
This exercise is found in the Supine Hip Extension.
The primary focus of this exercise is contraction of your butt muscles, along with a light contraction in the lower abdominal region, to assist in posterior pelvic tilt.
Here is a sample:
Supine Hip Extension
Lay on your back with your feet about 12 inches from your butt
Keep your feet flat on the floor and emphasize lifting through your heels
Squeeze your glutes and perform a SLIGHT posterior pelvic tilt (to lightly flatten your lower back)
As you continue to increase the tension in your glutes, lift your hips up toward the sky
ONLY go as high as you can get a full glute squeeze. Going too far up usually results in the movement “flowing into your lower back”
Hold for a count of 10 seconds, then return back to the starting position.
Repeat for 10 repetitions.
Getting good at this movement will go a LONG way towards reducing excessive lumbar lordosis!
–Sam Visnic
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