There should be, and is, another way
for all clients, especially for pre and
postnatal women—and here is why…
When you tell your clients to ‘brace’
what do you do? If you think to yourself
‘Abs on’ what happens to your body?
When you ‘tense’ – what happens then?
Try it.
The majority of us will move into some
kind of breath holding, ab tightening,
pushing out, baring down, tensing,
bracing, hardening of the outer
abdominal muscles pattern.
Some women will
potentially need
to work with their
own pre-activation
techniques for the
rest of their lives.
For the most part, unless your clients
have been educated otherwise, an
activation pattern such as this does not
put you in a stronger position; it just puts
you into a more stiff position. And from
experience, over time, stiff things break.
When most people brace and tense
and tighten they are working only with
their top layers of abdominal muscles –
their rectus and their oblique’s. For the
postnatal population, along with those
in office jobs spent with tilted pelvis’,
rounded backs and hunched shoulders,
this is also an ineffective to build true
‘core’ strength from the inside out.
a Women’s Health Physiotherapist. You
then have the use of tools such as Real
Time Ultrasound to effectively teach and
assess these internal muscles working.
This will also offer you a full picture of
where your client is right now and how
to best work with her moving forward for
her pelvic floor and abdominal work.
We might also address what Antony
Lo, The Physio Detective, describes
as ‘tension to task’. Do you need to
‘prepare your body to pick up a 3kg
bag of shopping in the way you might
prepare it for a 40kg deadlift? When
asked like that we might say ‘of course
not,’ but by using bracing cues in the
gym are we getting it all wrong out of
the gym?
Many of the early pre and postnatal
women I work with will need to work with
a pre-activation before lifting in or out of
the gym. They do need to remind their
pelvic floor and TA to activate before
moving into specific movements or tasks
but they don’t need to brace or tense!
A well taught and cued pre-activation
can enable the body to ‘remember’
that it needs to engage through pelvic
floor and transversus abdominis (TA) as it
moves into a specific movement pattern
and can help to prevent bearing down,
leaking and other pelvic floor symptoms.
It can also help to maintain control
through the abdominal wall.
Some women will potentially need
to work with their own pre-activation
techniques for the rest of their lives;
depending on what their body has been
through pre-children, in pregnancy,
in birth and post-natal. Each case
And so I believe, as a whole, we need
to change the phrases we use to
activations and awareness and learn
how to properly engage our inner core
—pelvic floor and transversus abdominis
(to keep it simple)—especially when
working with pre and postnatal women.
To ensure they are working properly and
efficiently from the inside out, we need
to retrain ineffective bracing and tensing
patterns to ensure they are not bearing
down through their pelvic floor or
pushing out through a weak abdominal
wall.
The very best way to learn more for
yourself and assist with teaching your pre
and postnatal women about activating
from the inside out, is to work alongside
WHAT’S NEW IN FITNESS - SPRING 2017
is different. Through working with a
Women’s Health Physiotherapist you can
ensure each client is looked after to the
best of your combined ability.
And what about the BURN?
What about sit-ups?
Beginning w