Are You a Butt Clencher?

If you’re a mum or dad, the expression “clenched butt” could possibly provide to brain a toddler gunning for the potty. For sex educators and havers, meanwhile, it is really an anal-perform nonstarter. But to pelvic-ground therapists, butt clenching is the name for a distinct pelvic-flooring position that can lead to a slew of issues — and this is the type of butt clenching we’re exploring these days.

In advance, we split down accurately what butt clenching is, why it takes place, and how to prevent accomplishing it.

Professionals Highlighted in This Post

Corey Hazama, DPT, a physical therapist and specialist with pelvic well being training platform Pelvic Health club.

Heather Jeffcoat, DPT, a Los Angeles-based mostly pelvic-flooring therapist who specializes in incontinence and dyspareunia.

What is Butt Clenching, Precisely?

There are two distinctive booty positions that pelvic-floor therapists may possibly refer to as butt clenching, claims physical therapist Corey Hazama, DPT, an qualified with Pelvic Gym, a pelvic health instruction system made by wearable-intimates brand Ohnut. One particular kind of butt clenching is “the real clench,” she claims.

According to Heather Jeffcoat, DPT, a Los Angeles-centered pelvic-flooring therapist who specializes in incontinence and dyspareunia, with the correct clench, people’s butt cheeks are pinched with each other for the reason that their glute (aka butt) muscle tissue are in an overly contracted point out. Some people clench their bums involuntarily as section of a pressure or trauma response, a great deal like how other men and women clench their jaws or draw up their shoulders, she explains. (This individual form of butt clenching is also recognised as butt gripping.)

At times pelvic-flooring therapists also refer to butt tucking as butt clenching, states Dr. Hazama. “Through the tuck-under butt clench, folks are passively tucking their pelvic floors below their overall body,” she claims. Also known as a posterior pelvic tilt, this type of butt clenching is a posture an specific normally takes on when they stand, wander, operate, and shift about.

The reason these two physical manifestations are both known as butt clenching is that they are frequently identified collectively, although their purchase of arrival differs. From time to time the butt gripping will come initially, according to Dr. Jeffcoat. Here, “the muscle activity from clenching your cheeks together frequently potential customers to posterior pelvic position,” she claims.

Alternatively, a person who has a posterior pelvic tilt can start to glute-grip simply because the glutes are getting named on to do the work that the midline would do in somebody who does not have this pelvic position. “Getting a pelvic tilt can lead to weak spot of deep main muscle tissue, producing other muscle groups like the glutes to overly have interaction to do the task,” Dr. Jeffcoat clarifies.

Wait around, Why Does Butt Clenching Occur?

For a handful of causes, in fact!

Most generally, men and women commence butt clenching as a end result of acquiring a position that puts them in a extended, static standing or sitting placement all working day, suggests Dr. Jeffcoat. Standing might seem straightforward-peasy, but performing so truly needs engaging lots of main and decrease-body muscle mass. “When the stander receives fatigued, they tend to let the pelvis shift forwards although the rib cage shifts back and from time to time tilts,” states Dr. Hazama. In other terms, they adapt a posterior tilt position, which involves considerably less main engagement. Above time, men and women can adapt this placement much more forever, which alterations not only how they stand, but how they walk, run, and normally transfer.

Similarly, sitting with seem variety calls for some midline toughness. As these types of, when an individual’s core gets fatigued, they can start out to sit with their again rolled again towards their tailbone, states Dr. Jeffcoat. (Betcha you just straightened up a minor in your chair . . . ) This is significantly popular with persons who appear like they are in a slumped-over placement, she suggests.

Butt clenching can also come about to athletes who have been taught to “engage their main” though they exercising, says Dr. Jeffcoat. Clenching your core muscle mass (which consists of your pelvic-flooring muscle groups!) is vital for protecting your backbone and inner organs through selected lifts. But just as you could not walk all over with your bicep contracted like Popeye all day, you shouldn’t walk close to with your main in a contracted position. Preserving your main clenched can result in trying to keep your butt clenched, Dr. Jeffcoat says, which can end result in the very same cascade of physical symptoms.

Folks can also start out butt clenching as a protective reaction to actual physical or psychological trauma, claims Dr. Jeffcoat. In truth, butt clenching is normally viewed amid survivors of abuse, as nicely as people who recently gave birth. Right here, people will bear down on the pelvic-flooring and glute muscle tissue in the same way to how someone preparing for a gut punch may, she describes.

Why Butt Clenching Is just not Good

Butt clenching may be one thing men and women do subconsciously, but that would not necessarily mean it is really with out aspect effects. However, butt clenching can have a domino impact on the body, foremost to a collection of musculature troubles that consequence in pelvic-flooring or comprehensive-physique symptoms.

When your glutes are in a constantly contracted place, it is really probably that the rest of the muscle groups in your pelvic flooring are also in a contracted posture, claims Dr. Jeffcoat. This, she clarifies, can direct to back again agony, anterior hip or groin suffering, as effectively as indications affiliated with an overactive pelvic flooring (also recognized as a hypertonic pelvic floor). To identify a handful of: elevated urinary urgency, urinary frequency, constipation, painful penetration, and lessen-back or pelvic agony.

In the meantime, “when your pelvis is tucked less than your overall body, it shortens your glutes muscle mass as well as the back aspect of your deep pelvic-flooring muscles,” claims Dr. Hazama. This can change your movement designs throughout all sorts of actions, these as sitting down, strolling, running, and hinging (like selecting matters up off the floor), she states.

How Do You Know If You happen to be Doing It?

Most individuals are not knowledgeable that they’re butt clenchers, claims Dr. Hazama. Equally butt gripping and butt tucking take place passively, devoid of us actively producing the selection to interact our glutes or reposition our tailbone. Nevertheless, there are a couple approaches you may be able to convey to if you are a butt clencher.

1st, appear in the mirror. Search at your posture from the aspect and choose stock of how your overall body seems to be and feels, indicates Dr. Jeffcoat. Is there a slight curve in your lessen back? Do your knees and hips truly feel locked? Do you see any squeezing in your glutes? Does your remaining glute sense the exact as your right? (Certainly, you can be a one-sided butt gripper, also!). If the answer to any of these questions is Y-E-S, you may well be a butt clencher, she states.

If you’re carrying non-exercise session gear, Dr. Hazama also suggests on the lookout at how your pants are fitting. “If you have a wrinkle or crease ideal down below your butt cheeks, you could be a clencher,” she suggests. If this is you, she suggests pulling your tailbone back and then tipping it up — if you’re a butt clencher, the crease will lower or go away completely, she claims.

Next, do a head-to-toe scan for any aches and pains in your human body. Once again, likely about your day with contracted glutes and a posterior-chain tilt can final result in a range of sexual, urinary, and excretory problems and soreness. Knee, ankle, hip, back again, and groin soreness are also frequent, in accordance to Dr. Jeffcoat, mainly because the total region is interconnected.

Particularly What to Do If You Butt Clench

Very good information: butt clenching is fixable! “The initial stage to prevent butt clenching is to enhance your consciousness of pressure in this area,” states Dr. Jeffcoat. “Even while it can be transpiring subconsciously, the moment you are designed conscious, you can make ways to change it to lower your pain and improve your daily and sexual function.”

1. Operate With a Pelvic-Floor Therapist

Sure, there are strategies you can make an educated guess all over no matter if or not you happen to be a butt clencher (as outlined over). But the greatest way to know for absolutely sure is to get the job done with a pelvic-flooring therapist.

After all, there are wellbeing problems that can have very similar muscular, sexual, urinary, and excretory signs or symptoms. A pelvic-ground therapist will be ready to assess your individual movement patterns, musculature, and established of indicators to come up with a procedure protocol customized-in shape to you.

2. Fix Your Posture

If standing most of the day is contributing to your signs and symptoms, Dr. Hazama suggests operating with a physical therapist who understands postural alignment. “It truly is more advanced than just standing up straight and not slouching,” she suggests.

To improve their standing posture, most people today require to raise overall body awareness, as properly as boost hamstring mobility and overall flexibility, Dr. Hazama suggests. “You have to have to know what it indicates to shift your hips ahead and backwards, as nicely as have awareness of when you are shifting your hips with or devoid of your pelvis and backbone next,” she points out. You also require good hamstring and glute adaptability, she says, which can be reached by means of a wide range of modalities, this kind of as stretching, yoga, and foam rolling.

3. Warm Up Ahead of Training

Dislike to break it to you, but you should not right away go from sitting down all working day to powering via your work out.

“Your hamstrings and glutes could have been set into a shortened situation from all that sitting,” points out Dr. Hazama. If you start out to run or squat whilst these muscle tissues are in a shortened placement, your lessen-system muscle tissue will not be able to lengthen thoroughly, which can mess with your motion styles.

Your shift: strike a good dynamic warmup that can help activate and stretch your glutes, hamstrings, and hips.

4. Give Yoga a Consider

Yoga can be a terrific way to undo the problems accomplished by butt clenching — so extended as you are remaining led by an seasoned, attuned instructor.

“When most people go to a yoga or stretching class, they extend into the positions they are by now going into and then compensate in the positions they are tight in,” claims Dr. Hazama. For occasion, another person who is a butt clencher and has a pelvic tilt may well mega-tuck their pelvis when in kid’s pose, mainly because they are applied to tucking their pelvis, she suggests.

In the meantime, they may possibly set their physique into a suboptimal place when hoping anything like an Upward Dog. “When your hip flexors are limited — as they can be in people who butt clench — the hips elevate off the floor, which effects in about-arching of the higher lumbar spine,” Dr. Hazama says. In order to get started to program-proper against butt clenching, an personal could scale the motion to Cobra Pose, elevate their hands on yoga blocks, or only extend as much as they can with no compensation.

“Performing with a yoga experienced who has an eye for overcompensation and encourages you to only go as significantly as your overall body can go securely is important,” says Dr. Hazama. This suggests that for butt clenchers, at-property yoga exercise sessions are not optimal.

5. Bring Awareness to Your Butt

At the time it can be been verified that you might be a butt clencher, Dr. Jeffcoat suggests serving to oneself unlearn the clench by continuously bringing your awareness to it.

A single solution is to set an alarm on your cell phone, then every time it goes off, doing a minor correction exercise. “Attempt consciously squeezing your glutes as tricky as you easily can and then tucking your tailbone underneath your physique. Launch, tuck, launch, and repeat 5 moments,” she claims. Working with a mirror can help assure you’ve got obtained the correct form search at your posture from the facet. It ought to look and truly feel distinctive (browse: a lot less tucked) following you do the exercising.

Another choice is to squeeze your buttocks as difficult as you comfortably can and maintain for 5 seconds, states Dr. Jeffcoat. “As you launch, really feel the softening of individuals muscle groups as you visualize them opening up like the petals blooming on a flower,” she suggests. If the rigidity you truly feel is a lot more centered around your anus or vagina (if you have just one), choose the visible of a flower gently opening to that space alternatively of the bigger glute, she claims.

You can attempt this next physical exercise in numerous positions, she states, this sort of as standing, seated, lying down flat, lying down with knees bent and ft flat on the ground, on your stomach, and on your hands and knees.

Gabrielle Kassel (she/her) is a sexual intercourse and wellness journalist who writes at the intersection of queerness, sexual health, and satisfaction. In addition to PS, her operate has appeared in Shape, Cosmopolitan, Very well+Good, Women’s Wellness, Wellness, Self, Men’s Health and fitness, Greatist, and additional!