What is a Inward Spiral®?

An Inward Spiral® is when your hip rotates internally within the hip socket into its neutral position after the pelvis has been suspended into neutral via a Pelvic Curl®. An Inward spiral® is necessary to restore symmetrical loading through the hips, knees and ankle.  An Inward Spiral® is the last of the 4 Principles of Neutral Spine Alignment within the Healthy Posture System™. The muscles that inward spiral the femur are the hip internal rotators. You know you are in an inward spiral when you have equal weightbearing through the big toe and little toe when standing.

Why is it Important?

An Inward Spiral® restores symmetrical loading through the hips, knees and ankles.  It supports your lower abdominals in their efforts to maintain a Pelvic Curl® by keeping the femur under the pelvis in a way that provides the maximum support. To gain a better understanding of the importance of an Inward Spiral® it is important to understand it’s opposing posture in the lower extremities, a lateral loading posture.

Consequences of Lateral Loading Posture:

If you have a collapsed pelvis driving a rotated pelvis posture; you are likely to have a lateral loading pattern on the hip on the side of your collapsed pelvis (the side opposite the rotation). The hip has to externally rotate to get out of the way of the pelvis collapsing on top of it. A lateral loading patterns through the hip overdevelops the lateral hip musculature and weakens the inner thigh muscles.  This throws off the tracking of your knee cap and supinates the ankle.

• Lumbar Spine(low back): A lateral loading patterns through one hip locks that pelvis into a collapsed position further strengthening the faulty loading pattern in the low back driving the collapsed pelvis. This places you at risk for a herniated disc, spinal stenosis and sciatica/piriformis syndrome. Collapsed pelvis posture eventually progresses into rotated pelvis posture. This is when you start loading one side of the low back more than the other and one pelvis collapses more anteriorly than the other. This causes a slight rotation of the pelvis to the side opposite the load bias. This is similar to how forward head posture eventually progresses into head tilt posture.
• Hips: A collapsed pelvis and rotated pelvis posture changes alignments of the hips, knees and angles. When a pelvis collapses forward more on one side than the other, the entire pelvis rotates that way. The pelvis houses the socket of the hips. So, the hip on the side opposite the collapse has a high risk of being put in a position of impingement. The hip on the side of the collapse has a tendency to become hypermobile into external rotation, causing a lateral loading pattern on that side.

Common Symptoms: hip flexor strain, tight IT band, tight hamstring, hip snapping, lateral hip pain.

Potential Diagnosis’s: IT band syndrome, hip bursitis, hip impingement (femoroacetabular impingement), hip labral tear, hip flexor strain, hamstring strain, hip osteoarthritis, trochanteric bursitis, gluteus medius tendinopathy.

• Knees: The lateral loading on the side of a collapsed pelvis throws off the patellar tracking of that knee due to excessive lateral pull from the IT band (tensor fascia lata). The knee on the side opposite the collapse is prone to excessive stress medially.

Common Symptoms: pain below the kneecap, chronically tight hamstrings, pain down the legs.

Potential Diagnosis’s: patellofemoral pain syndrome, meniscal tear, quadriceps strain, hamstring strain, knee osteoarthritis, IT band syndrome (runner’s knee).

Summary:

Your posture is a key aspect to longer term injury prevention and healthy aging.  A complete posture restoration program must pull your out of collapsed upper back and forward head posture and condition you to function from that posture throughout a majority of your day.  Any rehabilitation program for neck pain, shoulder pain or back pain that does not restore access to neutral spine alignment before prescribing strengthening exercises may reinforce the faulty loading patterns that are causing the joint misalignments that are causing your pain.

The Healthy Posture System™ is a system of neutral based functional fitness exercises that condition you to apply the 4 principles of neutral spine alignment in every daily activity, exercise, sport and recreational activity to reduce your risk of injury.  Proprietary joint clearing techniques are built into each workout to ensure you strengthen the right muscles every workout for long-term injury prevention.

“You cannot unload the neck and low back until you stack your upper back.”

Video Resources

The Science of an Inward Spiral°ǀ Why Lateral Loading Posture is Such a Problem

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