Do you suffer from weak hips, a bad back, continence, weak abdominals, digestive problems or poor posture? Then your pelvic floor may need some work.
What is the Pelvic Floor?
The pelvic floor is a large hammock of muscles stretching from side to side across the floor of the pelvis in both men and women. It is an important muscle for pregnant women also and can help women during the birth process and afterwards. The pelvic floor supports inner organs (you wont feel like your organs are bouncing when you run) and if the muscle is weak it can cause weakness in your bladder, hips and abdominal muscles followed by poor spinal support and imbalanced pelvic alignment leading to poor posture, pain in the back, hips, knee, shoulders and neck.
Correcting Issues without Surgery!
Pelvic strength is an indication of hip strength. The chance of a pelvic floor disorder increases with age, as well as the amount of times a woman gives birth. Problem’s with weak hips from weak pelvic floor muscles is a commonly misdiagnosed problem. This means a doctor prescribes a wrong solution. Doctors recommend drugs and even surgery to correct simple problems. In actuality, training your pelvic floor muscles by prescribed exercises and soft tissue release the tight muscles that surround the hips on a daily basis can greatly improve pelvic strength, and decrease symptoms of pain and discomfort experienced as mentioned above. Rarely is medication or surgery ever needed.
How Do You Find Your Pelvic Floor Muscles!
Many people have problems isolating the pelvic floor muscles from the other muscles of the hips and pelvis. This is understandable, as the outer hip muscles are large and powerful. A key to success is to learn to recognize the feeling of just the pelvic floor muscles contracting, without the buttock muscles. To remove the buttock muscles from the movement you can practice pelvic floor contractions while standing with your legs wide apart and your heels out wider than your toes (a toed-in position of the feet).
What Exercises Can You Do!
My favourite image for getting the pelvic floor muscles in on an exercise is to think of bringing the sit bones together and up. Another good image for pelvic floor muscles is to think of drawing a fountain of energy up from the base of the pelvic bowl — up through the middle of the body, and out the top of the head. This image helps connect the in and up action of the pelvic floor muscles with the other core muscles, and an increased awareness of the mid-line of the body. Do not do this if it increases your back pain, however. Once you are confident that you can perform pelvic floor contractions without using your butt muscles, you can do them correctly in whatever position you wish.
As with any exercise program, starting your pelvic floor strengthening program too vigorously can be a potential source of injury, fatigue or frustration. Start from the strength level you possess now and build slowly but consistently. Keeping track of the number of reps and seconds held as you go will allow you to increment the level of challenge in a sane and results-oriented way over the long term.
Free yourself from pain and start to gain your Pelvic strength back again by seeing one of our trained team at ELITE MYOTHERAPY.
By Sandy Baraz – Elite Myotherapist
