Help me understand what abdominal muscles are for

Hi Emmalu

Firstly, of course you can use your abdominal muscles in everyday life. That is what they are for. The problem is that most of us have been inculcated with the idea that we have to hold our tummy muscles in all the time, (and to tuck our bottom under all the time), to be beautiful and fit and attractive. Don't confuse *using* your tummy muscles with *pulling in* your tummy muscles. Your bladder and uterus naturally rest on your lower abdominal wall, supported underneath by your pubic symphisis, where there is a ligamentous join between the two halves of the pelvis. The pubic symphysis is the hard bone you can feel under your pubic hair. If you hold your tummy muscles in it pushes your uterus and bladder backwards, and gravity then acts straight downwards onto your pelvic floor instead of down onto the boney pelvis.

This might sound stupid but your abdominal muscles support all your abdominal and pelvic organs, and prevent them from falling out of the front of your body. They also help all the muscles around your spinal column to bear loads, and to prevent the top half of your body from wobbling around, by completing a kind of tubular brace, like one of those blowup leg splints.

Of course you can brace them when you lift loads. Otherwise you are asking your back muscles to do too much work. You can brace them so they are solid in any position. We suggest allowing them to find their own dimensions and brace them in that position. I have worked out that the 'fatter' the tube brace, the more effective it is. Engaging/bracing with your tummy held in is not as effective as letting your tummy out (not pushing it out!) That is simple high school physics; levers, turning moments and the like.

They are elastic because we breathe. When we breathe in the diaphragm contracts and moves downwards from being domed to being more or less flat. The abdominal muscles have to stretch outwards to allow the abdominal organs to move out of the way of the diaphragm. Otherwise all our pelvic and abdominal organs would come out through the pelvic floor every time we took a breath!! Or else they would all come out through the belly button Not a good look on either count. It also allows us to vary the amount of food in our abdomen without either collapsing in or blowing out through the pelvic floor.

They are also elastic so that we can bend over sideways, backwards and forwards, and to twist, by either contracting or allowing themselves to stretch out, or by holding themselves braced, in whatever position you are wanting to maintain.

The elasticity also means that they act like a trampoline instead of a movie screen, by absorbing, bouncing around and changing the direction of intraabdominal forces as we breathe and move, also when coughing, sneezing and the like.

Yes, you do use abdominal muscles when doing pushups, but make sure that your lumbar curve is intact, and that your uterus and bladder are allowed to have space to move forward(ie down) so that gravity is pulling them towards your navel, rather than pushing them back where they will have clear passage out through your vagina, ie don't tuck your butt and make it a straight line exit. Keep your lumbar curve intact so the right angle bend in your pelvic region is maintained.

If you tuck your butt under, it rotates the pelvis and makes the bottom end of the rectus abdominus muscles, which join on to the pelvis approximately behind your pubes, higher. If you carry your boobs low and slouch your shoulders over and allow your ribs to collapse downwards it lowers the upper attachments of the rectus abdominus muscles, which is the under side of the ribcage. This means that the resting length of the rectus abdominus muscles is too long for the distance between the top and bottom, and your tummy will sag out the front if you don't pull your tummy in by contracting your RA artificially. If you adopt WW posture your RA muscles are stretched out slightly in a gentle curve from pubis to ribs, with the front of your pelvis low and the bottom of your ribs high, and pulled well into the midline because it is the shortest distance between the two ends. Muscles get stronger by being contracted and stretching out. So, in WW posture, the simple act of standing and walking is giving your RA muscles a workout all day. You don't have to remember to pull them in all the time.

Hope this makes some sense. Christine explains it much more clearly and with beaut illustratioms in Saving the Whole Woman, edition 2.

Re Pilates, if your instructor tells you to pull your navel towards your spine or tuck your butt under, think carefully about how it is affecting your pelvic organs, and decide for yourself if it is a good idea. You can get away with it sometimes but under load you can often feel the change in the position of your pelvic organs, and it is not a nice sensation. Just listen to your body at all times.

Cheers

Louise

Hi Emmalu

There certainly is a lot to learn, and then to assimilate into your activities. It is, like any chronic condition of the body, an investment in your future. I do not do Pilates but from what I can understand there is Pilates and Pilates. That's why you need to understand what is happening in your body, whatever activity or exercise you are doing, and whoever is teaching you, *you know* when to pause and tailor it to your own body's requirements. That way, you can do almost anything you normally would do, just changing it slightly so it is POP-friendly. The path of saying, "Don't do this or that type of exercise or activity" is a path to limitation and confinement. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater!

I do bellydancing, which has some movements which feel absolutely dreadful for my POPs. However my teacher is sympathetic to my needs (I am the only one who doesn't 'zip and tuck', and she knows why, though I don't think she yet *understands* why). Bit by bit, as I learn to isolate different muscles, I am learning how to do moves that I thought would be impossible for me to do without discomfort. The plus of bellydancing is that I am developing a better sense of what my body is doing and learning to use my body in different ways. BTW, not all bellydance teachers believe that 'zip and tuck' is necessary for bellydance.

Cheers

Louise