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Get Moving: The Pregnant Athlete

I tend to categorize women, especially near the end of the pregnancy, as hyper mobile athletes, just like my gymnasts, just like my dancers, just like everyone else. That when we see these hyper mobile and remember, one thing that's happened is that your whole scheme of how you move in space and time has changed. So your appropriate deception is off. Your mechanics are a little bit different. It's, sort of the, you know, an alien has taken over your athletic body and so suddenly, maybe that's. Not the best time to be challenge yourself for heaviest loads. Does that seem fair? Reasonable. And when you say towards the end of the pregnancy you that we would be, uh, like you mean there is no blankets like all of our third trimester or last half of the third trimester, but I made that last six weeks and and or it's gonna vary from person to person. Can you clarify? Well, you know, here's, the deal is that, you know, we've had and from our clinical experience have watched women compete at a ...

lower intensity for them. There were these air national record holders, right? In state record holders but yet do things like burpees which is where you get up and down off the ground stomach what they did they got two sets of very tall gymnastic mats and they created a cutout for the belly and they got up and down with the belly through the cut out and they were breathing hard and you're telling me that getting up not down off the ground is a dangerous exercise no way that you're a human being so we uh what juliette squatted a lot especially the second pregnancy all the way to the end that squatting made her feel better and made her hips feel better it up pregnant her pelvic system and the whole system ends up working so we try not to make blanket statements if it feels sketch it's sketchy and you're always right I think this is one of the things that we have divorced ourselves from sort of in a body language knowledge that if you feel like you're out of position and something's gonna hurt you're right that's unreasonable remember thirty minutes ofthe modern intensity exercise and moving yourself as a human being is reasonable one of the things that the recommendations from ap for example american physical therapy association is hey go swim I'm like what and that's because oh there's no joint loading in your hypo mobile joints and no no no big deal but you're also not prepared to walk around or lift. Hold your kid or and gosh forbid that like you actually have access to a swimming pool and you can't you know? So I think that we've given people after exercise recommendations that are really, really korean villa it's a corner like a pregnancy quarantine and the when I when I was on bed rest and had to follow the guidelines of bed rest I mean they were atrocious I mean, it was you can shower and you can go to the bathroom um and no, please don't go up downstairs. It was it was uh it was a psychic crisis for me one of the things that when you were talking about the being pulled out of your social circle the let alone the trauma that my my body was dealing with but to be so completely removed also from all friends other than through phone calls or computer but there's a point where it's that depression builds on itself and you start to feel that lethargy well, how about this you and not be a human being unless you move unless you move unless you exercise in fact, we know that unless you actually make a little lactic acid and breathe hard, you actually don't express the genes correctly of your body you actually look like some kind of sub human you have to be uncomfortable if that means you go walk a hill great walk he'll tell you out of breath and do it ten more times, and in thirty minutes you're done. I mean, I think it's I think it's really, really simple, right? You know, the and I do want to address the bed rest, folks who are like, where am I in this conversation? But there are, like I said, you can use your bed, you can use your little lemme digits. Uh, your toes, your fingers um, play with the cloth in your bed, the the boredom of non movement is toxic, and so you've got to find ways to make yourself entertained in anyway, I read a recent study that was talking about ben rest and how that those guidelines are currently being under review because they're also finding that bed rest isn't necessarily preventing issues it's creating more other always fall advice your position, but know that not exercising makes you more likely to be what diabetic and what happens if you're diabetic? Well, it turns out we get all that kind of perry natal prenatal conditioning, where we start to see kids come out and their blood sugars are so managing this you have to move is a human being score for thirty minutes a day if you're already engaged in exercise activity, do it yoga's safe pallotti safe go find instructor get some movement and they're start thinking yourself as I have this amazing physical thing that's gonna happen to me at the end of this I want to be my fittest healthiest tissue self right and I think that's a nice idea well quick one of the nice things about the way that you're addressing all of the soft tissue work we call this sliding surfaces work is that are all these tissues sliding and are they pliable? We know that tissues not normal fits painful we know it's not normal of its stiff and beef like jerky and what we do with our hyper mobile athletes is that we prioritize position right? Are they in mechanical stale positions? We don't do a lot of enduring stretching or pulling and we don't do a kind of a lot of neural muscular end range polling we don't pull in the joint so we don't pull on the tissues and range what we do is we focus on getting great positions through training and movement and then we do a lot of soft tissue rolling so when it's nice is that when I hear you of course I'm such a fan of all your work on but when we understand it in the scheme of how you address with hyper mobile athletes same piece so I thought now's a great time actually we should talk about some of the quick easy this is a piece that I think every human being should know and every woman who's pregnant should know and this is about sometimes you're going to step off the curb being a bad position and your pelvis is going to get twisted we call this a pelvis obilic witty and you don't have to be a physician on austria path a chiropractor a doctor physical therapy to say something is not right in my back I feel terrible and I'm going to try to fix it myself in a very gentle way sounds great that seem reasonable so we're going to be asking real quick a za quick demo and we in physio terms we have some very technical diagnostics that weaken d'oh not necessary if you feel like you're back your palace is out of whack guess what it's out of whack it's that simple you know something's wrong and this is an easy way so I'm gonna have he has been doing on her back but you certainly could be done on your side if you are uncomfortable does that make sense so you can on this on this hard floor let me put a mat down for her it's a little splintery and in full disclosure jasmine is a state champion speed skater and when one of our athletes for many years now is one of our instructors so she's on her back and hears we're going to do is that when we see that or someone's experience is what I call a public fault it's just an easy way of explaining something's wrong! I've stepped off on got twisted. This is the first and easy way to fix it. What we do is we bring both knees to chest about mid range. This is mid range hip, mid range for the quads mid range for the hamstrings and what we're gonna do is a very gentle system where she's going to use your hamstrings to try to pull her pelvis one direction and she's going to use her quads to try to pull a pelvis the other direction. We don't even have to know which direction we need to fix because we're going to do both sides that demystifies so what ends up happening is one hand is going to block a push, and the other hand is gonna block a pole, and now she takes a big breath and exhales as she doesn't have to hold our breath, and she builds a nice resistance for as long as she can exhale, and then she still it comes off tension, and then what she do? She reverses it, one hand pushes. One hand poles in the physical therapy terms. This is called rotation counter rotation and it's. Easy. Because it's, your own body repositioning your own body. No one is pulling on you. No one is pushing on you. This is very, very gentle. We do this three to five times. Push, pull, push, pull! This is very, very powerful. And we have a lot of our own athletes. Even some my soldiers in afghanistan who've had a pelvic tweak can reset their own pelvis. And guess what? Feel back. And I'm back in the game. Very, very gentle. Very easy. Now, three to five times. Could you do this on your side? Absolutely. And the rule to your other side. Right. So you mix it up. Once we've done a three to five of those three to five seconds. Three, two, five holes can remember that. Three to five. Thirty five. Then legs go down and all she does is squeeze and fire per ad. Doctor's trying to get her belly on stable. She can. And then she just squeezed their abductors and you could easily squeeze any of those pillows. And what I got out of jasmine was there was a little pop. Pop and guess what that little pappas her pelvis receding itself click and if you don't get a pop no big deal it's not what we're after we're after trying to use your own musculature to reset your pelvis we get this rotation set and then this squeezing resets that pubic synthesis which gets soft and out of control and guess what? We have assets who've had near sprung pelvis, which is where that pubic surfaces gets destroyed women are so loose at the end because they're not training, they're not moving, they're not very stable and they become very soft that they go out almost every single day multiple times a day and they cannot see a physician they cannot see an austere path they cannot see a chiropractor multiple times right much let's find someone who specialized but this is you can treat yourself and this is an easy way don't you have to wait for your public command line and this is gentle isometric motion piece of cake as safe and his low levels we can possibly get let me review so this simple system if you're on your side or on your back whatever feels comfortable for you one hand pushes one hand poles big breath in exhale as long as you can exhale, we know we're not violent end of our rules she builds nice pressure slowly comes off tension and then switches positions do both sides three to five times which is about three to five seconds of ex elation there's that four to six second window we know we have then ah few squeezes how long do we squeeze three to five seconds you could do it with feet up you could do with feed down it doesn't matter put a pillow between you could have your loved one hold it doesn't matter the idea is resetting this pelvis and this khun save just thousands and thousands of visits and its gentle and you have the right to be able to do this it's ridiculous that you don't it's like I'm going to get a doctor's note to put a ball in my butt is that okay ridiculous are your mirror neurons going crazy could you feel that resetting of her pal super simple well guess what since we're here let's talk for just a second and guess what's going ty in all of the systems what we actually did earlier today where we said hey stand with your feet straight squeeze your bum take a big breath in your belly exhale right to try to disassociate that weird breathing pattern that happens up in the neck trying to make sure that I have diaphragm excursion right this is the same basis for resetting our abs so this could be done with legs up it could be looked down with legs down largely based on the work of shirley solomon on early early physical therapist but also turns out this is the way that we set up for pulling or squatting or anything this is the same tactic and strategy we used any time we're having anyone pick up anything does that make sense like that's how simple this is? And so we ended on global legs down for me real quick now what I love about on room my father's a physician and so is my grandfather my grandfather was a world doctor in washington and one of the things that we tell women is we're like don't worry we didn't cut through the abs we just cut through the tendon of the abs, right? No big deal and trust me, caesarion is a little miracle I'm I'm all like come time where babies come back out that's fine, right? But what we see is that any abdominal surgery, any position of poor mechanics is going to lead to gross inhibition and desensitization in this area. In fact, even today, jill has will scar here and she's like don't touch my scar right she's very sensitized and then there's a lot of emotional trauma around this scar on her belly, and so one of the things that we try to do at home is rule on the corgis ball yeah, we're watching the tv just a desensitized juliet is one this woman who has a little six pack and what happened? Your little stomach bellybutton thing? Hernia. So instead of a diocese wrecked, I she had a little spat hernia, so she had him belka and a little split too. And that's because jay star used to be this girl, right? Her little six pack abs before she got the before she got the religion. So what we'll do here, we're working on rebuilding, and this is you should be doing this on your back because you're no longer pregnant, is it? The first thing we do is we squeeze about, turn your butt off for me, and we're just gonna reset, and yasmin is a pretty good balance, but you'll see that the first thing we do is squeeze the but this has done in this state because it's, very easy and there's not a lot of additional noise from standing there's, no additional noise and sitting people define this position because you're sitting there, right, and just kind of hanging on the meat it's difficult to sit and maintain these positions. So first thing as this is, squeezes her bum, I didn't even talk about tilting, right, and what we know from the pelvic floor therapist, this is step number one for getting your pelvic floor tone back on or even getting into a place where you can start to work on it, then we just say, breathing the belly, we don't do anything else, because what you'll see is that many athletes are still breathing, taking up chest brought for me, there's still breathing in the chest, even though they've set the public position, and what we want to make sure is that they have diaphragm excursion and you'll see is that some of my best athletes, this is what we have to run them through because we're seeing back pain and that when you're in a defunct of breathing pattern affects your vo two max, it affects your ability to down, regulate and access your paris unlike nervous system that affects your ability to stabilize your spine. So now I just carried a baby for ten months. I'm trying to get back to my exercise, my abs don't turn on and in a bad position, and I don't know how to breathe. This is a disaster, so if you start with this and you could do this day one after pushing the babe out hand on your belly and just working on basic die from adam don't know everything yet symbols and get anything you would add to this point is it's it's really simple, but I can see that I could see the body challenge. For a lot of people is it because everything she gloms together you don't realize it oh I can actually have this amount of tone in my buttocks but also have relax ation response here and this is tom if I ng to the entire nervous system which has taken a true beating your entire body has just gone through the war I mean it's I mean that's a bad analogy because it's so amazing but we haven't prepared women I am prepared women for saying you know that hey look this is a very physical thing this may be the most visible thing you've ever done it before in your life and I think it's okay to say now we've done this you're going to do it whether you like it or not how do we get back? How do I start to reclaim my nervous system and my breathing or the anxiety about having birth and having a newborn but sets position first then just this diaphragmatic breathing then once I feel comfortable with this what I'll do so my next judy as is that on her next exhale big breath in is that we'll just squeeze and pull tight on the xl she's going to squeeze in on the next exhale then release it and what I don't need to have her do is try to get tight I want her to feel what it's like to take a breath and then shrink wrap on the exhale and the queue here is that we're not pulling. We're not sucking, we're not doing a specific exercise. We're trying to stiffen the spine again, right? So what will we do did on the corgis ball when I had you all your goop goop lay over on the ball, but I had you inhale and then attempt to tighten. Everything would have called the tubular corps is to have all of the layers at one seitz like that's going to stiffen and harden. So it wasn't that you were trying to change the shape of the spine. This is this is really, really, uh, needs to be really clear that she's not trying to do some modified crunch she's trying to honor the shape of her spine the way form of the spine, but trying to utilize that the circum french all relationship of the tissues around the spine with each contraction and then each relaxation. Watch this of shin extent if she squeezes her bum, take a big breath in the belly exhales just get stiff for me. Get stiff as you can. This is her dead lifting position, right? This is where she's maximum effort going toe pick my kid up out of the crib in a bad position stiff, all right? But I can't run around like that, and so I need to be able to scale this up and down. And so the next phase for us is to be able to breathe in and then practice scaling this go stiff if you count the exhale, don't even worry about trying to hold it and breathe, but but now I just do a little bit less on the next one. And can I sort of cycle into middle stiffness, peak stiffness and back again? So I start to be really being able to regulate that tone. Is that having on and off? Initially we have all our athletes exaggerate on the over stiff side, especially because your back is a little bit unstable. Your public floor's just been through a significant work out let's, have you error on the stiffness side when we have women with sprung pelvis or really like they were having a hard time rolling in bed, one of the little flags that we throw up is it? Hey, let's, go ahead and get stiff as you can and then roll let's, get a stiff is you can then stand up. That first time where juliet stood up out of bed after her second c section, she was not stoked. And what do we work on before we worked on this? And then I had to be a stable if she could, she stood back up, and the good news is that we should be able to scale this up from our lowest level. I've just had abdominal surgery, abdominal trauma or comma had birth it's a beautiful thing not gonna get my abs back on, and we just don't work in a society where people are sort of honoring we having this conversation if she captor, but here got his tie, she could and put your arms over your head. Beautiful streamline, this's just a swimming position she's in does that seem less foreign and point your toes now? Nash is in this beautiful, you know, swimming shape, and so you can see what we're trying to do is set the pelvic position, just like we talked about here and then trying to have a system where we're getting comfortable with that abdominal breath and then using that breath is a cue to start to fire up the abs again, great to you, put your own hands on your abs and feel that excursion as jill has talked about a lot of the way. Work she does with her balls and the yoga tuna balls are about bringing pro pri exception and awareness back to tissues that have been stretched out and blown out. I don't even know where I am in space. How are you expecting me, tio contract this and you may not be able to. The intention is what matters most, and even if you're not perfect, at least now you have a plan to come back. And guess what? This would be the first thing I would say you do before he started jogging before you squatted to the toilet thiss is the basis and so this conversation we have time and time again. So again, I'm going to go and take everyone through right, and you can imagine what the daily hundreds suddenly looks like curling up with the pallotti's mean this basis concept of being ableto ultimately squeeze the butt, take a breath in the belly, exhale and then maintain that stiffness and still have diaphragm which will take a big breath for me. Nancy, stay tight. Well, of course that's difficult she's breathing into a steel tank. That's. Why it's so difficult to exercise and breathe so there's, so many ways to scale this up and scale this down big set. Pelvis is set in the first position practicing restoring that breathing and then capturing the exhale to try to turn on the abs piece of cake this alone I think is worth the price of admission I would add this is smart breathing a smart breathing practice right now why you're pregnant great like there's no reason why your stretched pregnant abdominals can't be doing this give the baby a hug utilized that inner baby carriage and guess what for next level ready for this but sets positions are set same thing we do take breath your belly and then this time make your sphincter meet your belly button pull on your pumps oh well pelvic floor just turned on and she got even stronger here because it's a system why can't integrate this practice is just saying I'm gonna know just a dude we are getting close to the end of the day and there's so much great info it's just like we don't want to miss a thing um but I thought we'd get a couple of questions and we don't have time for all of them but maybe get a couple to you guys and jesse both jesse and shandra body works had asked for you to tell them more about how to absorb water and they asked what is this mineral salts water it was being mentioned so if you go to any running store they're these little uh all day dehydrate all dehydration tablets drop into your water they sell them at whole foods there just some essential minerals and you can get them any running store any whole foods any anyplace like that in just a half tab in your water something absorbing water drink it's really simple. Great great. All right, um grichin when you were when when you were practicing lying she was on the back squeezing her goal is to set a pelvis and then she did the diaphragmatic breath are the goods staying held or is it a one time squeeze to set the pelvis? I want the glutes on because I want to start to map function with the position and what we'll see is that goods turn off people default and drop into a bad position so we're gonna over exaggerate the position first untie that that new function together so that that setting that pelvic position is going to help toe orient ear what I call the periscope to the funnel right? So those things are reflecting the dire fram from the diaphragm contracts and it pushes down there's a reflexive response in the pelvic floor. So if I'm just, uh, letting the but relax and hang out and I start to default because I had baby mass growing and I go into that mild over extended position that my dire fram instead of angling its way down into the pelvic floor, it's angling out and one of my favorite pts in l a dr sean hampton he was saying to me that that that tending to the dire fram, that strong tendon, that as it moves down and up, if it's moving off access that pressure twenty thousand times a day is pressing against that dia stis that dioceses that central tendon, and that off axis pressure of the dye from twenty thousand times a day doing this is one of the pre sets for predisposing you to those abdominal tears. You got so stiff to the mid back when we die from attaching the whole things. And now all this men back stiffness you're saying that's your fault so that's, why this this repetition of the position right there? I said at the beginning of the thing you were once an egg and that egg split and the hemispheres of the egg they still optimally need to stare at each other. Not that the rib cage is looking this way or the pelvis is looking that way, but they're staring at each other and they're reflects ing with each other soft tissues within these bony, these bony structures and here's what's great, you don't have to be perfect. I have to practice, right? And if you from we look at this from zero to one hundred hundreds optimal, if you're somewhere between forty and sixty, you're probably gonna be in there even twenty two fifty of, like, bad practice is better than being in zero, so I mean, the body has so much tolerance, and if you just give it a little bit of karen feeding, you're going to rock it wonderful. Wonderful. Well, we gotta thank you guys again and we'd love to get juliette up on the stage with you if possible. Justa e I mean, everything we've covered today, we've run the gamut and we still have another day to go, which is amazing, lots of very valuable information. But before we start to wrap up, I would like to say thank you to everybody out there online in the chat rooms. We really value your participation and your why we get to be here. So thank you again for joining us today. We hope you come back tomorrow. Thank you to our lovely ladies in studio. We love that you're here and it's great to have you involved, and also we'd like to thank our crew here it creative live and our final thank you's go to our wonderful guests, both katie bowman earlier today and kelly and juliet stir starrett it's been so great to have these guest speakers here on the show today, and our last, but not least, a big, huge. Thank you to our instructor, jill beller. She's been wonderful meeting here.