Hey again.
So last week, did a post about how Carey Price looks so smooth. And we talked about neutral pelvis. In that video I showed you how to find neutral pelvis, and then how to progress into learning to train with it and learning to move with neutral pelvis.
So one of the guys from the Goalie Training Lab said, “Hey, I tried that, and then I even thought about it when I was just working on some movement stuff.” And he said, “You know what? I felt like I had more mobility.”
A hundred percent you’ll have more mobility or more flexibility in your hips. Because just like I said in the video last week, when you are in this anterior pelvic tilt, like your butt’s out behind, and you think, “Oh, I’ve got a big skater’s butt.” But you don’t, you really just have a big lumbar extension. So basically what you’re doing is, here’s neutral pelvis right there, you’re sitting here with your pelvis dumped forward.
Warning: This post relies heavily on the video for visuals.
If you can’t see it you can also view it here: https://youtu.be/Ono-czwhwkU
So then if you can see this (video above), there is your acetabulum. It’s where your femur comes in and it articulates. So the ball of your femur fits into this socket. And so this is when I talk about everybody doesn’t have a ball and socket that are an exact match. Some of you have a ball that isn’t made to fit this specific socket and vice versa. So that’s why some of you are prone to impingement, and there’s really not much you can do about that other than try and minimize the impact.
But if I’m here and my femur’s in there, you know, I can kind of swing forward. But if I’m dumped forward, well then I don’t have that much room. But if you’re on this front edge, your thigh bone is gonna smash into that front edge. And that’s where a lot of you get trouble in your impingement.
So when I’m neutral, there’s a lot more room in there to swing. When I’m dumped forward there’s a lot less room. And then you’re gonna feel like you have less range of motion. And over time that can lead to a callus. You know a callus on our skin, that’s okay. A callus on our bone, that will be increased bone growth. And so we don’t like that.
Really you might have a very nice acetabulum. But because you go into your pelvic tilt, now you’re giving yourself sort of an artificial impingement, and you don’t really have to do that.
We talked about neutral pelvis. If you missed it, go to the Goalie Training Lab. It’s probably over on Goalie Training Pro Facebook group as well.
So then somebody came on and was like, “Yeah, my left hamstring’s tight all of a sudden, what should I do to stretch it out?” It’s like, okay, as soon as you have one side that is tight, not the other side, it’s one of those things that makes you go, “Hmm”. And especially if it’s all of a sudden. If it’s like, I’ve kinda always had a tight hamstring on that side, well still. It’s like, well why?
‘Cause really there isn’t a reason you should. Your body doesn’t just make one side tighter. Just be like, “You know, I think I’m gonna screw with his guy today. I’m gonna make his right hamstring feel tight.” It doesn’t really do that.
So he’s like, “What stretches should I do?” The answer is really none. Because there’s a reason that hamstring got tight all of sudden. My thinking is, and you’re gonna hear me say this over and over. It’s gonna sound like a broken record. But here it goes. You heard it here first…
I think every single goalie, unless you are a pure standup goalie, and probably then still, has their pelvis out of alignment. So you can see here and here (video above), they’re joints. It’s not one piece of bone, they’re joints. And there is some movement in those.
There is your sacroiliac joint. This part of the bottom of your spine, this is your sacrum, and there are your coccyx. It’s your vestigial tail when we used to have tails. But now that’s as long as our tail is. So that’s the sacrum. And there is also your ilium.
So there is movement. And then even here we talked about this in that Carrie Price video about the symphysis pubis. It has movement too. Even in my model, you can see how I’m moving it.
So when we move, say we’re fixed on this side and we kick that leg out, or when we’re in the reverse V8, and we’re torqueing on our pelvis, our pelvis can get twisted and kinda stuck in that position. And it’s amazing, if you’ve ever had physio for a back issue that’s maybe coming from your pelvis, the physio might use a technique called muscle energy.
This is where they put you in a position, because you’re crooked. And then they’re like, “Don’t let me push your legs down” or whatever. It’s not pushing as hard as I can, but it’s quite light pressure. And they’re using the energy from your muscles to put a specific force on your pelvis to kinda pull it back around. And then you get off the table and you’re like, “Oh yeah, that got it. It feels much better.”
Your body again, doesn’t know like, “Oh, but that’s physio, so now we’ll … ” It just know somebody’s torquing on my pelvis, and I can either get torqued out of position or properly torqued back into position.
Is this making sense so far? Okay, here I go.
When that pelvis gets torqued out of alignment, think of all the muscles that are attached to your pelvis. (Now I’m gonna go full on geek pal, ’cause it’s amazing). For starters, you have your hamstrings attach right up in there. If your pelvis gets torques this way, so this ilium gets rotated forward. This spot on your bum is gonna get moved up, or this spot. All these parts are gonna get moved up like that on one side. The other side is still sitting pretty.
So your hamstrings attach right up in there, right up in there. So if that gets torqued, now all of a sudden … so let’s say this side gets torqued forward. Boom, it goes forward. So that attachment is up higher. So now this hamstring feels really tight. So I’m like, “Oh, I better stretch it.” So then I stretch it to make it longer, but that’s really not the problem, The reason it’s tight is ’cause you torqued your pelvis. So what you need to do is get that pelvis corrected so that it’s not putting that chronic tension on that hamstring.
Cool. And it could even make the other hip flexor feel relatively tight, because it’s sort of makes this long in the back, but this tight in the other side.
And then if you think of your hip flexor that also crosses your knee, it attaches here. So again, if this side gets tilted forward it’s gonna feel looser on this side, relatively tighter on this side. You have your iliopsoas, which attaches to the ilium, and attaches to the lumbar vertebrae.
So again, if that’s twisted it’s gonna change the tension on that, which then has an impact on your spine. You’ve got all the muscle, like your erector spinae, your adductors, your groin muscles. So you can see how that’s a problem if this pelvis is torqued.
And the thing is too, you’re probably not gonna come off the ice and be like, “Oh, I feel as though I’ve torqued my pelvis, and I think my right ilium is rotated forward.” You know it’s gonna feel like, “No, no, I didn’t do anything. I feel fine. I don’t have an injury, it’s just that my hamstring’s really tight.” So that’s why we need to stay on top of it.
Honestly I think you guys should probably just see a physio once a month for maintenance. Because it’s pretty hard to put this back the way it should be without knowing exactly how it’s out, and then the right position to get into to do muscle energy to get it back.
It’s like, “Oh, I don’t want to go to physio every month.” But that is the kind of thing that prevents some of these like, more wear and tear on your hip, some of these longterm chronic injuries in your back, your adductors, your hip flexors, all that stuff. So, there’s your pelvis gets out of alignment.
So if you feel like all of a sudden, “Oh, my one hip flexor’s tight, or my one hamstring’s tight, that is immediately what I’d be suspicious of.
So that’s what I have for you today gang. Thanks for tuning in.
Cheers,
M