Castle Personal Training
Castle Personal Training is a Corstorphine, Edinburgh based company who specialise in weightloss/toning and Pre and Post Natal exercise.
Blog 04-1-13 APT and Pregnancy; Does my bum look big in this? For men; A beer belly is not always a beer belly!
Hi guys,
A few Questions;
For the ladies; Have you noticed that whilst you were pregnant your bum seemed to grow as quickly as your belly did? And, once you had given birth, did you find it difficult to get your posture, and flat belly and pert bum, back?
For the guys; Have you noticed that even though you’re dieting, have given up alcohol and are working out regularly you still look like a small person could be growing inside you? Good news; You can stop doing crunches! (I refer you to this post explaining why you don’t need to do crunches anyways but I know old habits die hard and they do have some benefit)
To all; Does this look familiar to you; 
Bum sticking out to the back and belly poking out at the front? Do you regularly get lower back pain?
Well it could just be that you’re suffering from Excessive Anterior Pelvic Tilt. (APT)
I will go into this a bit here as it is quite common and something that is easily rectified by doing some exercises and stretching.
First of all; What causes (Excessive) APT?
There can be many reasons for this but the main one seems to be just sitting down all day watching telly or working.When you sit for most of the day odds are you slouch. Your posture is bound to be poor. I know of only a few people that have a job where they sit behind a desk 8 hours a day who actually have decent posture, you’re probably not one of them.
A second one that is quite common is; Pregnancy. Think about it; You carry that little baby with you for 9 months and he, or she, gets heavier and heavier. They just keep on growing and so does your baby bump. Getting in and out of a chair, the car even your bed is very difficult all of a sudden. When you’re unlucky enough to really grow in the last tri-mester you’ll know that you even stop walking normally.
There are some other causes (Incorrectly training Abdominal muscles and poor posture) but it all boils down to muscle misalignment. Some muscles are tense and strong from being used more than other muscles. Other muscles have just stopped being used and go a bit flabby. (Which is something women might have noticed with their bum during pregnancy)
What are the problems associated with Excessive ATP? Quite a few really, I mentioned some already but just to put everything in a row;
- dysfunction in the lower extremities (Your knees and ankles hurt and don’t work properly)
- low back pain
- incontinence (Not uncommon post-natal and when we get older)
- pelvic instability
- Abdominal distention (That “beer” belly)
- Nerve Impingement (If you get this then you know you’ll not be going to work anytime soon)
There are many other side effects of it but I won’t go into them all here as the interesting bit is coming up.
What can we do? As I said before there are various things we can do but the main things are;
Train the correct muscles to rectify it. Your glutes, hamstrings, abdominals and obliques will all need a bit of work. Exercises such as “Glute Bridges”, “Dynamic Planks” and “Hamstring curls” will do you the world of good.
When you have APT you do not do any Quadriceps work until you have solved your APT work! There is no point training the muscles that cause misalignment by being overtrained compared to the others!
Stretch the correct muscles; The quadriceps, psoas major, hip adductors, lumbar erectors (also called the erector spinea), and quadratus lumborum will all need regular stretching.
You know how to stretch the Quads (Stand up straight, bend the knee of one leg and pull your foot to your bum)
Psoas Major;
Hip Adductors (just step side ways, bend down slightly and feel the inside of your leg stretch)
Lumbar Erector
Quadratus lumborum
Massage is also a big help as it relaxes the correct muscles but you have to tell your massage therapist WHY you want the massage and which areas to target!
I mentioned to someone the other day that pregnant women should always work-out during the pregnancy and especially afterwards. If you’ve just given birth, or even if you’ve done that a while ago, you will know that having a life grow inside you causes quite a bit of damage to your body.
As far as I’m concerned Personal Training should come as part of your Private Healthcare package when you’re pregnant. It would save the insurance company a lot of money as you wouldn’t have as many back, hip, knee and ankle complaints later on in life and it is something that’s easily prevented.
Unfortunately it’s not so keep an eye out for it. A lot of ladies whom have just given birth go back to exercising because they want to lose the extra weight they have put on and forget about getting their posture back.
Start with your posture and your health, and the weight will follow.
Take care,
Your friend,
Peter
P.S. Guys, I know I said that sometimes it’s not a beer belly…don’t kid yourself, most of the time it is
Little disclaimer; Don’t diagnose yourself, I don’t want you doing incorrect stretches. Any Personal Trainer should be familiar with APT, if they are not you should find yourself a new one (You have my number)
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