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Comparison of pelvic tilt before and after hip flexor stretching in healthy adults

Preece, SJ; Tan, YF; Alghamdi, TDA; Arnall, FA

Comparison of pelvic tilt before and after hip flexor stretching in healthy adults Thumbnail


Authors

YF Tan

TDA Alghamdi

FA Arnall



Abstract

Objectives: An increase in anterior pelvic tilt is often assumed to result from short hip flexor muscles. Such altered postural alignment may increase the stress on the lumbar spine and has been shown to be a characteristic of specific low back pain populations. However, there has been minimal research investigating the link between hip flexor muscle length and pelvic inclination/lumbar lordosis in relaxed standing. Therefore, this study sought to understand whether hip flexor stretching would reduce pelvic tilt and/or lumbar lordosis.
Methods: We quantified pelvic tilt and lumbar lordosis before and after a single session of passive hip flexor stretching in a sample of 23 male subjects. Changes in hip flexor length were also characterised, using a Thomas test protocol to measure passive hip extension in supine lying. We investigated both the mean effect of the stretching protocol and potential correlations between changes in passive hip extension and changes in pelvic tilt/lumbar lordosis.
Results: Following the stretching protocol, there was a mean increase of 2.6° (p<0.001) in passive hip extension and corresponding mean reduction of 1.2° (p<0.001) in anterior pelvic tilt. However, there was no change in lumbar lordosis nor were there any meaningful correlations between the change in passive hip extension and change in pelvic tilt/lumbar lordosis.
Conclusions: The results suggest that hip muscle stretching may lead to immediate reductions in pelvic tilt during relaxed standing. Such stretching programmes could play an important role in interventions designed to improve standing postural alignment.

Citation

Preece, S., Tan, Y., Alghamdi, T., & Arnall, F. (2021). Comparison of pelvic tilt before and after hip flexor stretching in healthy adults. Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics, 44(4), 289-294. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmpt.2020.09.006

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Sep 10, 2020
Online Publication Date Jun 3, 2021
Publication Date Jun 3, 2021
Deposit Date Jun 4, 2021
Publicly Available Date Jun 3, 2022
Journal Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics
Print ISSN 0161-4754
Publisher Elsevier
Volume 44
Issue 4
Pages 289-294
DOI https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmpt.2020.09.006
Publisher URL https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmpt.2020.09.006
Related Public URLs http://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-manipulative-and-physiological-therapeutics/

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