2026-04-01

Teaching my regular classes at the Ross Farnsworth - East Valley YMCA.

Let’s talk about pelvic tilt. In front stance, your pelvis should be aligned with your spine, but I see a lot of students align their pelvis with their rear leg, which results in an anterior pelvic tilt. It’s all well and good to point it out, but fixing it requires muscles capable of doing so. In this case, you’ll need to strengthen your abs and glutes while stretching your hip flexors and lower back muscles. It’s almost certainly not helped by sitting in an office chair all day long, and it takes real work to overcome it.

But in back stance what I see is lateral pelvic tilt. People will do back stance while facing a mirror and, just because their rear end isn’t sticking out, declare their back straight … but it isn’t. Oftentimes they introduce a lateral pelvic tilt in back stance, with one hip (often the front hip) higher than the other. This one is also muscle driven, but in this case it’s the QL, hip adductors, and obliques. It turns out there are a lot of factors contributing to lateral tilt, so this one is probably best solved by stepping forward and backwards in back stance while moving parallel to a mirror (instead of directly towards or away from it) so you can check yourself as you go.

Now … why do we care in the first place? Because it introduces imbalance. An anterior pelvic tilt in front stance moves your center of gravity forward, encourages you to lean forward, and inhibits power transfer from the glutes and abs, which is most evident when kicking. A lateral pelvic tilt in back stance causes largely the same problems. Yes, the tilt is offset at 90°, so is the direction of your movement.