Saturday I had the privilege to meet with Christina Christie, PT, who is the brains behind a new fitness gizmo called the PelviCore (www.pelvicsolutions.com ). She specializes in therapy to improve pelvic floor functions which positively impact basic stuff like incontinence and uterine prolapse. Functionally the pelvic floor is tied to the pelvic girdle rotator muscles below and core muscles above. Improving the function of everything tied into the pelvic floor improves the function of the pelvic floor itself. For middle-aged women (and some men) this is a great way to get a two-fer…core and functional strength training to help improve the nasty after effects of childbirth and pregnancy.
Anyway, the fitness gizmo is ball-based and is a simple way to get key functions of the hip working better which, in turn, improves the pelvic floor function. Looks a little silly but a group trying it out last week were reportedly rather sore in good places.
I've had people tell me that my functional core training resulted in improvements with incontinence and now I have a better understanding of why. All of those crazy squats, lunges, rotations and reaches really are good for something on the inside besides great legs and glutes.
Attended a workshop last summer to learn Muscle Activation Techniques as a way to get faster and better results for clients. I had noticed some clients just seemed 'stuck' and had a hard time moving to the next level of skill proficiency. The process was developed by Greg Roskopf (www.muscleactivation.com) for use with athletes. From there the concepts have been used to help many people with flexibility and pain from poor alignments and muscle imbalances. I have been applying the concepts with great success since and continue to be amazed at the results, both with children and adults.
I finally had the chance to let my colleague, Mark Tolle (Fit to Perform) balance out my mis-alignments. WOW!!! So many ways I've noticed change including the ease of movement, lessened knee stress, uncurled toes, posture improvements to name a few. The biggest change I've been documenting is my heart rate during training; lower at increased intensity. I guess all of the muscular efficiency reduces the strain on the cardiovascular system. Imagine that!
I've much more to write about what is resulting from integrating Muscle Activation into my practice so stay tuned.
Cara