all right everybody today we get to talk about the essential link in the kinetic chain and that of course would be the pelvis so we're gonna use a lot of metaphors but the ones I like the most are that this the pelvis is the centerpiece and it's the fulcrum that connects the lower extremity to the upper extremity so a fulcrum I looked up the definition it's that center point on which levers rest or are supported so if you think about the pelvis that's the center point on which the levers of the upper extremity that are exerting all kinds of force and the other levers of the lower extremity they all rest or they converge right there so tremendous ground reaction forces coming up through the ground right into the pelvis and then tremendous top-down forces from the body weight of the upper extremity all converging at the pelvis and where would you say all of that happens right here at the SI joint right right where the Ilia on both sides of the - Illya both iliac bones meet on the spine at the sacrum the SI joint that's where all the force converges and some of you probably just thought yes of course no wonder people have so much SI joint pain when they can't control forces that go through the upper and the lower kinetic chain so the pelvis is an anchor point it actually transmits forces up and down like a relay station there's another metaphor but it's really the fulcrum ok so we're gonna talk about the pelvis and the lumbar spine and movement interventions as we move forward I want to talk to you a little bit about gait and so I want to tell you what each muscle quickly is doing as we move in gait as it influences the pelvis by the way there are 29 muscles that attach onto the pelvis twenty-nine that attach onto the pelvis so of course those are considered the core but there are also the leg muscles so just for example you probably know how how I'm going to teach this I'm gonna move from sagittal plane to frontal to transverse so in the sagittal plane we've got that anterior side in the posterior side on the anterior side during swing phase of gait our hip flexors which attach onto the lumbar spine and the pelvis are hugely active in driving swing phase of gait right so they're flexing the hip and they're extending the knee that swing phase but then as we go into mid stance they decelerate the opposite motion so we said they flex the knee and extend that I'm sorry flex the hip and extend the knee but when we bear weight and on in mid stance and are driving forward the hip flexors are eccentric ly contracting to slow down hip extension so tight hip flexors don't allow us to get into enough extension think about that just for the overhead athlete but hitter who can't get extension the high jumper who can't get extension okay on the back side so that's anterior side on the back side we've got our friends the glute Max and medius and the hamstrings right what are they doing in swing phase they're decelerating what the anterior muscles are accelerating right so the glute max of need and the hamstrings are brakes for hip flexion and knee extension they slow that down and then in the midst and space they're driving hip extensions so glute max and meet and minimus or driving hip extension as is the proximal aspect of the hamstring and then also driving knee flexion right and the hamstrings rotate in the transverse plane what are the adductors doing so now we're frontal plane the adductor you guys need to think about the adductors as struts Gary gray talks about you know on your tables at home the down legs sometimes have cross braces right if if a leg on a table that's supporting the table is like this and the table sits on it sometimes there's a cross brace that goes in between what does that strut do provides huge stability so think of your adductors as providing this huge stability in the frontal plane during gait so right here the abductors are contracting to a duct the femur and to not let this happen right and the glute meet and the tensor fasciae latae are doing the opposite they're contracting to produce a deduction but really they're stabilizing so that our pelvis doesn't do this when you see people walking and as they bear weight their pelvis shifts laterally an asymmetric shift that's a weak glute medius and a tight dominant adductor now you know how to fix the problem stretch here strengthen here okay let's get even crazier so in this mid stance so that we don't shift this way to the left we actually have one glute medius firing at the same time we're having our abductors fire to pull us neutral so that we don't do this so in the frontal plane we have this lateral sling or lateral subsystem of the glute medius and the abductors acting together to keep us upright in function so that we don't do this or on the opposite side so that we don't do this so huge stability through the abductors and they're always contracting by always I mean throughout full phase of gait or running okay and their stress that stabilized oh we haven't named abs yet so the adductors and the abs form this deep anterior anatomy train that's stabilizing in the frontal plane okay so we've got sagittal and frontal plane dynamics in the slides we'll get to transverse plane dynamics which are a little trickier but I wanted you to appreciate a few things the pelvis is a link from the bottom up in the top down it's a force transmitter funneling forces through and it's a fulcrum on which levers exert their influence and are stabilized hopefully that gets your brain thinking about the critical nature of the lumbo-pelvic hip complex where the lumbar spine meets the pelvis and the hips as the core of the kinetic chain