FitSugar

What's the Deal With: Diastasis

FitSugar — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 03:00:00 -0700

It should come as no surprise that pregnancy can pull quite a number on a woman’s body. The weight gain, the hormonal changes, the carrying a nine pound bowling ball in your belly – these things all add up and can change a few things anatomically. One very common after effect of pregnancy is diastasis when the top layer of abdominals, the rectus abdominis, separate by pulling away from the center line of the body known as the linea alba.

While that may sound painful, the muscles slowly stretch and separate over the course of the nine months so there really is no pain involved. The pain actually may occur sometime later, in the form of back pain since the spine relies on strong abdominals for support.

Diastasis is fairly common and the muscles will come together on their own about 6 months after labor. Post pregnancy, it is considered healed/normal when only 2 fingers fit in the gap between the abs. Working the deep abdominals, primarily the transversus abdominis, TVA, is your best bet for strengthening your abs and reducing the gap. The TVA pulls all 4 layers of abdominal muscles toward the spine and in essence fills in the gap created by the diastasis. By working the deep abs you can decrease the gap!

To see how to test for the condition read more

Test for Diastasis

Begin by lying on your back with your feet on floor and your knees bent. Your feet should be about 12" from your bum.
Put one hand on your belly with your finger tips parallel to the line of your waist (this is how your will measure the gap). Put your other hand hand behind your head for support.
Using your arm, lift your head and shoulders off the floor keeping your abs completely relaxed. You are putting your body in a position on an "upper ab curl" or a "crunch."
Use your fingertips to feel for a gap between the left and right sides of your rectus abdominis (the six pack abs). Feel above and below your belly button.
Keeping fingers cross wise, insert your finger tips and see how many fingers fit.

Fit's Tip: Once your TVA is strong you can start strengthening your upper abs, but do splint them by crossing your arms, placing the heel of your hands close to the diastasis and squeezing the palms of your hands together. If you just squeeze your abs without crossing your arms you run the risk of pushing the abs up instead of together. So crossing the arms is key.

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Finding Your Deep Abs!

FitSugar — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 09:30:00 -0700

Finding your deep abs is essential to training your core and for just about every Pilates exercise in the book. Accessing them, however, can be difficult. Here is the easiest path to discover your transverse abdominus (TVA for short), the deepest of all the abdominals.

Sit upright in a chair or cross-legged on the floor. Align your head over your pelvis while maintaining the natural curve and keeping the spine long. This is no time for slouching. You need to sit in front of a mirror so you can monitor the movement of your shoulders.
Place your hands on the sides of your waist with your thumbs pointed back and your index fingers forward.
Inhale into the back and sides of your ribs (imagine a balloon filling up with air), not just your chest, without letting your shoulders rise to your ears. This can take a few tries to master. If breathing this way makes you light headed, take smaller inhales - just don't let your shoulders rise.

Who knew finding something in your own body could have so many steps? For the rest of the steps read more

Exhale by pulling your abdominals toward your spine to force the diaphragm up into the lungs, creating the exhale. You should feel the diameter of your waist decreasing as you do this, since the TVA wraps around the waist and attaches in the back. It helps to make a soft "Haaaaa" sound while you exhale.
Keep inhaling and exhaling in this manner.
When exhaling you want to feel a sensation of the abdominals pulling up from the pubic bone to the belly button, kind of a zipping sensation. To help activate this sensation feel the pelvic floor pulling up, like doing a Kegel exercise.
Once this feels natural (or at least easier), try it lying on the floor with your knees bent and your feet flat on the floor.

This breathing is simple, easy and rather inconspicuous so you can practice at your desk! I have a friend that breathes this way at every stop light (she keeps her hands on the wheel though). Integrate using your TVA when you lift weights, so you're working your deep abs (and helping to stabilize your torso) as well.

The Skinny On: Neutral Spine

FitSugar — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 04:00:00 -0800

We all want to have some neutral shoes and neutral pants in our wardrobes. But what about a neutral spine? If you have heard an instructor use the term neutral spine in a fitness class, but didn't have a chance to clarify its meaning - I'm here to give you the skinny on it.

Neutral spine means maintaining the natural curves of your spine. If you are lying on your back, the lowest 5 vertebrae should NOT be smashed into the ground but making a slight curve away from the floor. Your rib cage does rest on the floor. The neck mirrors your lower back and pulls away from the floor, while your skull rests heavily on the ground.

When lying on your back, a simple way to check if you are indeed in neutral is to make sure your ASIS (that's what folks commonly call their "hip bone") is in the same line as your pubic bone. Place the bottom of your palms on the ASIS and your middle fingers on your pubic bone. They should make a plane parallel to the floor. To see a spine way past neutral read more

This spine is way past neutral - the ribs are away from the ground and more than the 5 lower back vertebrae are off the floor.

Why we like it: Working in neutral spine is the best way to work your core since the back muscles are working in tandem with your abs.

The Skinny On: Deep Abs

FitSugar — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 11:30:00 -0800

Did you know that the Transversus Abdominis (don’t be intimidated by the religious sounding Latin) is the most important muscle for stabilizing when lifting, walking, or just being you? Unfortunately, it also tends to be super weak. So if you rarely exercise, sit for prolonged periods of time, have poor posture, have low back pain or all of the above, you need to strengthen your deep abs. If you want the skinny on your deep abs, read more

The Transversus Abdominis, or the TVA as I like to abbreviate it, is the deepest of your four abdominal muscles and it sits right on top of your viscera, your guts. Essentially, it fills in the space between your lowest rib (the 12th) and your pelvis, connecting your pubic bone to your 6th rib. It has lateral fibers that wrap around your waist – hence the term transversus.

The TVA shares fibers with the diaphragm. So when you force breath out of your lungs and pull your low belly toward your spine, you’re activating your TVA. When engaged, the TVA decreases the diameter of your waist (always a bonus!), flattens your belly (double bonus!!) and creates a bit more space between the vertebrae in your low back. It’s kind of like a muscular corset.

The TVA tends to be lazy, so you have to remind it to work. The act of pulling your navel to your spine as you exhale will activate your transversus. While exhaling, also create the sensation of "zipping" up your abs, from your pubic bone up to your belly button. This should give you the sensation that your lower abs are smiling. So don’t just pull your abs to your spine, smile them to your spine.

Fit's Tip: While working out, take advantage of every exhale to work your TVA.

Source

Core Concepts: Running

FitSugar — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 10:00:00 -0800

Whether running for fun, fitness, or to be fast, efficiency is key. Having a strong core plays an important part in translating the power of the legs to propelling the entire body forward through space. The deep abs, made up of the transversus abdominis (TVA) and internal obliques, are the keystone for core stabilization. Unfortunately, running bio-mechanics expert Michael Fredericson, Ph.D, found that about 90 percent of runners have weak abs leading to faulty running patterns. Having weak abs can easily translate into "running funny" with too long or too short of steps, or a pelvis that swings from side to side.

The deep abs stabilize the pelvis by keeping it in a neutral position, so that the back of the legs can push your entire body forward, rather than just wasting power just stretching the low abs. A strong core can help make your running more efficient as well as faster. When the weak low abs work in tandem with the spinal muscles these muscles support the torso and give you more endurance too.

Due to our modern and sedentary lifestyle, many folks have weak deep abs because sitting all day leads to slouching, which deactivates the deeps abs. To learn how to reactivate your TVA right now read more.

Sit up straight (since I just said we all slouch too much you had to know that one was coming). Put your hands on your low ribs and inhale, feeling them expand (flare out to the sides). Don't raise your shoulders though (it might take a few times for you to get the hang of this).
Try to keep your low ribs wide as you exhale by pulling your navel to your spine while keeping your spine still. Think of pushing the air out of your lungs with the action of pulling the deeps abs toward the spine. Repeat for a while until it starts to feel "normal."
Keep practicing this action and not only will you start to strengthen your deep abs, you will increase your ability to breathe deeply by opening up the space between your side and back ribs.

Now every time you do any abdominal exercise you want to focus on the deep abs being active. Warm up your abs before you run, jog, walk, use the stair stepper or elliptical. Exercise mindfully and focus on your pelvic stability and keep checking in with your form. The payoff for paying attention? Stabilizing the pelvis during running and other physical activities will help you stay injury free.

Abdominal Bracing vs. Pulling Abs in Pilates Style

FitSugar — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 07:30:00 -0800

I need to talk a bit about the contradictory opinions about how to use your abs when doing an exercise that is not ab specific, like crunches. Some fitness trainers promote abdominal bracing to work your core and protect your back when doing things like lifting weights. Bracing is explained how you would hold your abs if you were "bracing" for a punch to your gut. Now as a Pilates instructor, there is no way I can sound impartial about this and I don’t like “bracing.” Here's why: In a worse case scenario it makes people push their abs out (not good for stabilizing the spine), as well as bear down on their pelvic floor (not good for your core), and at best it simply works the abs isometrically (doesn’t change their length) and does nothing to correct faulty posture.

I think it is much more beneficial and more supportive to work the abs by pulling the abs toward the spine in a kind of in and up fashion. This also helps to engage the pelvic floor, which believe it or not is part of the core. Often engaging the deep abs (aka the transverse abdominis or TVA) helps to correctly faulty posture and alignment as well as create a lift in the torso so essentially the torso is supporting itself decreasing the pressure on the joints in your lower body.

So you want to find your deep abs? Check out: The Skinny On: The Deep Abs.

Source

Deep Abs and Running: Gotta Get to Your Core

FitSugar — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 11:53:59 -0700

We all want to be efficient, right? Especially when we exercise. Well, according to Michael Fredericson, Ph.D., a running bio-mechanics expert at Stanford University, 90 percent of runners waste energy with stride errors and faulty gait. That basically just means running "funny" - length of steps being too short or long and/or pelvis swinging too much from side to side. Fredericson concluded that these stride issues were caused by weak abs. Runners were not using their deeps abs - the transversus abdominis (TVA) as well as the internal obliques.

The deep abs stabilize the pelvis by keeping it in a neutral position, not tilted too far forward, so that the back of the legs can push your entire body forward. If the pelvis tilts too far forward some of the power is simply wasted stretching the low, deep abs. Here's an analogy that might help you:

Imagine you're trying to push a heavy trunk forward on a tile floor. The trouble is that you're standing on a small rug that starts to slide backward every time you try to push the trunk forward. Removing the rug allows your feet to get a more stable grip on the floor, so that more of your muscle energy is transferred to the trunk....the slipping rug is like deep abs that are not properly activated. Removing the rug is like tightening your deep abs so that your pelvis is stable, allowing more of your muscle work to translate into forward movement.

Many folks have weak deep abs because we sit all day and inevitably slouch, which deactivates those muscles and they become weak. So try to find your TVA right now.

Sit up straight (since I just said we all slouch too much you had to know that one was coming). Put your hands on your low ribs and inhale, feeling them expand (flare out to the sides). Don't raise your shoulders though (it might take a few times for you to get the hang of this).
Try to keep your low ribs wide as you exhale by pulling your navel to your spine (don't move your spine though). Think of pushing the air out of your lungs with the action of pulling the deeps abs toward the spine. Repeat for a while until it starts to feel "normal."
Keep practicing this action and not only will you start to strengthen your deep abs, you will increase your ability to breathe deeply by opening up the space between your side and back ribs.

Now every time you do any abdominal exercise you want to focus on the deep abs being active. So warm up your abs before you run, jog, walk, or use the Stair Stepper or Elliptical. Exercise mindfully and focus on your pelvic stability and keep checking in with your form. Bonus: Stabilizing the pelvis during running and running like activities will help you stay injury free.