THE PELVIC FLOOR
Did you know the pelvic floor is an important muscle involved in breathing? Which is why it’s called the pelvic diaphragm!
It’s part of a group of muscles known as the intrinsic core and its role is to help build and maintain intra-abdominal pressure.
Did you also know the muscles of the pelvic floor fascially attach to the Obturator Internus, which laterally rotates the femur/hip.
In the exercise pictured, which is known as Quadruped Pelvic Rocking, I’m in quadruped because it’s a good way to help the brain figure out how to re-coordinate the pelvic floor with the other respiratory muscles (ie Diaphragm, Transverse Abdominis, Internal Abdominal Oblique, etc). My legs and arms are externally rotated to help dial into the pelvic floor to encourage it to recruit.
This is a great way of working all of the above without gravity and the constant downward pressure that the pelvic floor needs to buttress in standing. It’s also how we work our way up into squatting so that our intrinsic system can functional well in a squat position.
This is a very small summary of what’s going on and why we’d work in quadruped, a few other assessments would happen before this point!
For more information on the above, please get in touch.
info@jkpilates.com