Pelvic tilt exercise · Low back pain · St. Louis · Regen.MD physiotherapy
Pelvic tilt exercise:
the first step for a sore low back
The pelvic tilt is a home exercise that trains your stomach muscles to brace your low back. Face up on the floor, knees bent and soles down, draw your navel in until the arch of your back flattens onto the floor. Five seconds per tilt, ten tilts.
Only the exercises your physician has ticked on your home plan are yours to do. Twice daily is the rhythm unless the written plan says something different.
Step by step: pelvic tilt exercise
- Starting position. Face up on a mat, knees bent, soles of the feet down.
- The motion. Pull your navel in toward your spine until the arch under your low back flattens against the mat.
- How much. Five seconds per tilt, ten tilts.
What the pelvic tilt does for tissue repair
A low back heals better when the muscles around it share the work. The tilt switches on the deep abdominal wall without loading the spine, which makes it a common starting point. After a spine procedure, your physician tells you when it begins.
Fresh from an injection? Read this first
After a PRP or other orthobiologic injection in your low back, the treated tissue needs a protected stretch of days before it is asked to work. Your physician tells you when this exercise comes back. When it does, start with fewer repetitions and build to the full dose over the following visits. Loading in steps like this is how the repair signal from the injection turns into stronger tissue.
More on that: why load is the treatment an injection cannot supply.
Form errors we correct most often
- Driving through the heels until the hips leave the mat.
- Holding your air in. Exhale as the arch flattens.
- Clenching so hard it becomes painful.
Signs that mean stop and phone us
Feeling the muscle work, a gentle pull, or some next-day stiffness is normal. Call us at (314) 295-3000 if you notice:
- Pain that turns sharp or stabbing
- A pain score that climbs 2 or more points and stays up longer than an hour
- New numbness, tingling or loss of strength
- Feeling dizzy, or your eyesight changing
Call 911, not the clinic, for chest pain, a hard time breathing or passing out.
Tracking what changes
Keep a short log: a check mark for each session and one pain score per day. Hand it over at each appointment; your technician tallies the sessions and has you perform one repetition so your form can be corrected. At each re-check you also repeat the same function questionnaire, and if your physician orders it, a Kinetisense 3D motion scan, so the change is measured instead of guessed.
What to remember
- Navel in, arch flat.
- Exhale on the flatten.
- Firm, not fierce.
Show us you have it: Before you go, lie down and do one tilt while we check that your hips stay on the floor. If a point is fuzzy, say so and we walk through it again with you.
The rest of the low back series
- Knee to chest: low back and seat stretch
- Cat and cow: spine motion
- Bridge: hip strength
Related reading: PRP for degenerative disc and facet pain, hip-spine syndrome.
Where this fits: the Regen.MD physiotherapy program, physician-directed rehab paired with our regenerative care. A physician must be in the building and reachable within moments before any treatment begins.