How to Find Your Pubic Bone: A Step-by-Step Guide

Your pubic bone sits at the very front of your pelvis, centered just above your genitals and below the soft tissue of your lower abdomen. Most people can locate it in seconds by pressing gently inward and downward through the lower belly, but the exact technique depends on body composition and the reason you need to find it. Clinicians rely on this landmark for everything from prenatal measurements to pelvic-floor assessments, and knowing how to find it yourself is genuinely useful for guided exercises, bike fitting, and understanding your own anatomy.

Locating the Pubic Bone on Your Own Body

The pubic bone is not a single protruding knob but a paired structure: two bones that meet at a joint called the pubic symphysis right at the midline of your body. To find it, follow these steps.

Start standing or lying on your back. Either position works, but lying down with knees slightly bent relaxes the abdominal muscles and makes the bone easier to feel, especially if you carry more tissue around the midsection.
Place your fingertips on your navel. Use this as a starting reference point. Slide your fingers slowly downward along the midline of your abdomen, pressing gently inward as you go.
Feel for a firm, bony ridge. As your fingers travel past the soft tissue of your belly, you will reach a point where something hard stops your downward pressure. That hard structure is the upper edge of the pubic bone, specifically the pubic crest.
Trace the ridge sideways. Once you feel that firm edge, move your fingers a couple of centimeters to the left and right. You should feel a ridge running roughly horizontally. In the center, where the two sides meet, you may notice a slight groove or firmness; that is the pubic symphysis joint itself.
Confirm with a small bump on either side. If you slide outward from the center along the crest, you may feel a small bony bump on each side called the pubic tubercle. It is roughly in line with the crease of your groin.

If you find it difficult, try pressing a bit more firmly. The pubic bone sits behind a layer of fat and connective tissue that varies in thickness from person to person. People with more abdominal tissue sometimes find it easier to locate by pressing inward while sitting upright and leaning slightly forward. You are not looking for something that juts out dramatically; it is a broad, flat-topped ridge, not a sharp point.

What You Are Actually Feeling

The two pubic bones are part of the larger pelvic ring. Each one has a body (the flat front portion you can palpate) and two branches that angle upward and downward to connect with the rest of the pelvis. Where the two bones meet at the pubic symphysis, their surfaces are oval-shaped, slightly convex, and roughly 30 to 35 millimeters long by 10 to 12 millimeters wide. They are separated by a wedge-shaped disc of tough fibrocartilage that holds the joint together while still allowing a small degree of movement.

The pubic crest, which is the edge you feel with your fingers, serves as an anchor point for several muscles. The rectus abdominis (the “six-pack” muscle) attaches here, along with the pyramidalis, a small triangular muscle that sits right in front of the pubic bone. On the underside, the adductor longus and other inner-thigh muscles attach via tendons and shared sheets of connective tissue.

² This convergence of abdominal and thigh muscles at one small area of bone is part of the reason groin injuries are so common in sports that involve sprinting, kicking, and sudden direction changes.

Why You Might Need to Find It

Most people searching for this information have a specific practical reason. Here are the most common ones.

Prenatal and Obstetric Measurements

During pregnancy, midwives and obstetricians measure the distance from the top of the pubic symphysis to the top of the uterus. This symphysis-fundal height measurement tracks fetal growth and is done with a simple tape measure at routine visits.

⁴ The pubic bone is the bottom landmark. If the clinician is not measuring from a consistent point on the symphysis, the numbers become unreliable, which is why some prenatal guides encourage patients to become familiar with the landmark themselves.

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Pelvic Floor and Core Exercises

Physical therapists routinely ask patients to find their pubic bone as a reference during pelvic-floor rehabilitation. The levator ani, the main sling of muscle that supports pelvic organs and controls continence, attaches to the pubic bone at the superior ramus. Being able to locate the bone helps you understand where these muscles originate and how to engage them properly during exercises like Kegels.

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Posture and Pelvic Tilt Assessment

If you have ever been told you have an anterior or posterior pelvic tilt, the pubic bone is one of the key landmarks used to evaluate it. Therapists look at whether the front of the pelvis (your pubic bone) sits forward or backward relative to your hip bones. Knowing where the pubic bone sits in space, relative to your anterior superior iliac spines (the bony points at the front of your hips), tells a clinician a lot about your posture and possible contributors to back or hip pain.

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Bicycle Saddle Fit

Cyclists, especially those who spend long hours in the saddle, need to understand where pressure falls on the pubic bone. In women particularly, a saddle that is too narrow concentrates pressure on the pubic bone rather than distributing it across the sit bones. Research on female cyclists found that widening the saddle significantly reduced pressure on the pubic bone and shifted weight back to the ischial tuberosities, improving comfort.

⁸ If you are adjusting your saddle and want to understand where the discomfort is coming from, being able to distinguish pubic-bone pressure from sit-bone pressure makes a real difference.

Male and Female Differences in the Pubic Region

The pelvis is one of the most sexually dimorphic parts of the human skeleton, and the pubic bone area reflects this. In women, the subpubic angle (the angle formed where the two pubic bones meet below the symphysis) is wider, the pelvic inlet is broader, and the overall shape is shallower. In men, the angle is narrower and the pubic bones tend to be more robust.

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From a practical standpoint, this means the pubic symphysis may feel slightly different depending on sex. In women, the crest can feel a bit less prominent and the angle below it more open when you press along the underside. In men, the ridge may feel a bit thicker and the space below more V-shaped. These are subtle differences, though, and either way the technique for finding the bone is the same: press down through the lower belly until you hit something hard.

These differences evolved because the female pelvis has to accommodate childbirth while still supporting efficient upright walking. The human pelvis represents a compromise between a birth canal large enough for a big-brained newborn and a structure narrow enough for energy-efficient bipedalism.

¹⁰ That evolutionary tension is the reason the human pelvis looks so different from that of other primates and why pelvic anatomy varies between the sexes more than most other bones do.

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How Pregnancy Changes the Pubic Symphysis

If you are pregnant and trying to locate your pubic bone, be aware that the joint at the center is literally widening. During pregnancy, a hormone called relaxin loosens the ligaments of the pelvis, and the pubic symphysis gradually separates to prepare for delivery. The width of the symphysis increases from the second trimester onward and peaks in the third trimester, averaging roughly 6.4 millimeters compared to a non-pregnant width of about 4.6 millimeters. It typically remains slightly wider even in the postpartum period.

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Relaxin levels are highest in the first trimester and again around delivery. That hormonal surge softens connective tissue throughout the pelvis but especially at the symphysis, and the combination of looser ligaments plus the weight of the baby pressing down can occasionally lead to excessive separation, a condition called symphysis pubis diastasis.

¹³ The natural widening at delivery is normal, but when it becomes painful or the gap becomes extreme, it requires clinical attention.

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For pregnant or postpartum individuals palpating the area, the symphysis may feel slightly softer or more mobile than usual, and tenderness is not uncommon. If pressing on the bone produces sharp or worsening pain, that warrants a conversation with your provider rather than continued self-examination.

When Tenderness at the Pubic Bone Signals a Problem

Finding the bone is one thing. Noticing that it hurts when you press on it is another, and that tenderness can point to several conditions worth knowing about.

Osteitis pubis is an inflammatory condition centered on the pubic symphysis. It involves focal pain and local tenderness right at the joint and is associated with pelvic instability, though researchers still debate which causes which.

¹⁵ It shows up in athletes, postpartum women, and people who have had pelvic surgery. In athletes, pubic bone stress is especially common in sports that involve repeated sprinting, kicking, and cutting movements.

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Athletic pubalgia, sometimes called a sports hernia, is a related source of groin pain that involves the soft tissues around the pubic bone rather than the bone itself. Despite the name, there is no actual hernia bulging through the abdominal wall.

¹⁷ The convergence of abdominal and adductor tendons at the pubic crest means that strain in any of these structures can produce pain that feels like it is coming from the bone even when the bone itself is fine.

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The practical takeaway: mild tenderness when you press firmly on the pubic bone is normal, because you are pushing on bone through soft tissue and that can be uncomfortable. But sharp, localized, or worsening pain, especially after exercise or during pregnancy, deserves a clinical evaluation.

How the Pubic Bone Behaves Under Load

The pubic symphysis is not a rigid, immovable joint. It flexes slightly during everyday activities. When you stand on both legs, the symphyseal gap widens evenly across its length. When you stand on one leg, the gap narrows, particularly at the bottom, and the unsupported side of the pelvis shifts slightly downward.

¹⁹ This tiny rocking motion is normal and is part of how the pelvis absorbs force during walking and running. It also explains why you might feel different sensations at the pubic bone depending on whether you are standing still, walking, or shifting your weight from foot to foot.

This mechanical behavior matters for understanding injuries. Repetitive shearing at the joint, where one side shifts up while the other goes down, is thought to contribute to osteitis pubis in athletes and to symphysis pain during pregnancy when the ligaments are softened by relaxin. If you are assessing your own discomfort, pay attention to whether the pain changes with single-leg activities like climbing stairs or standing on one foot. That pattern often points to the symphysis rather than to the muscles around it.

How Doctors Image the Pubic Bone

If a clinician suspects a problem at the pubic symphysis, several imaging tools are available. Standard X-rays have traditionally been considered the reference for diagnosing symphysis separation because they show the gap width clearly. However, X-rays involve radiation, which limits their use during pregnancy, and they cannot reveal soft-tissue complications like ligament damage or bone-marrow swelling.

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Ultrasound is radiation-free and increasingly used for prenatal symphysis evaluation and in emergency settings. In trauma, a focused ultrasound protocol can detect significant symphysis widening with high accuracy and shows strong agreement with CT findings.

²¹ MRI provides the most detailed picture and is the tool of choice when clinicians need to evaluate the cartilage, ligaments, and adjacent tendons all at once, which is why it is commonly used for groin pain in athletes.

When Surgical Repair Is Needed

Traumatic disruption of the pubic symphysis, usually from high-energy injuries like car crashes or falls, can destabilize the entire pelvic ring. When the gap is wide enough to compromise stability, surgery is required to hold the bones together while healing occurs. The traditional method is open reduction and plate fixation, where a steel plate is screwed across the front of the symphysis. This approach has been the standard for decades, but screw loosening and plate breakage remain ongoing problems.

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More recently, percutaneous screw fixation has emerged as a less invasive alternative that avoids a large incision. A systematic review comparing the two techniques found that implant failure occurred in roughly 10 percent of percutaneous cases and about 14 percent of traditional open-plate cases, though the difference was not statistically significant.

²³ Both approaches remain in use, and newer devices such as cable-clamp systems are under development to address the persistent issue of hardware failure.

The Pubic Bone as a Forensic Clock

One of the more unexpected uses of the pubic bone has nothing to do with living people at all. Forensic anthropologists have used the pubic symphysis to estimate age at death for decades. The surface of the symphysis changes in predictable ways over a lifetime: in young adults, it has a rough, ridged texture; by the mid-thirties, those ridges smooth out; and later in life, the edges become porous and irregular as the joint degenerates.

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Traditional methods have relied on trained observers visually scoring these surface features against reference phases, a process that is somewhat subjective. Newer approaches use 3D scanning and computational analysis of surface complexity to make the assessment more objective. One such method predicted chronological age with performance comparable to, and in some respects better than, the traditional phase-based systems.

²⁵ More recent work has applied statistical shape modeling to map the direction and extent of age-related changes across populations, aiming to identify exactly which surface features matter most for distinguishing between age groups.

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The forensic angle is a reminder that the pubic bone is not static. It changes throughout life in ways that reflect your age, your activity level, your hormonal history, and whether you have given birth. The bone you feel today is not quite the same bone you would feel a decade from now, even at the same spot on your body.