Hulk Up The Core With Your Breath
As promised, here is a summary and reference list related to that age-old cue: “Engage your core”.
Yoga teachers do so with the intention to keep you safe from injury. But, there seems to be a misconception about needing to consciously engage for the entirety of your 60-90 minute class (or an entire day, depending on who you talk to). Is it really necessary, efficient, and practical?
Whilst we can utilise conscious engagement of the muscles around our organs, many find this unsustainable for long periods of time. For example, perhaps in a Pilates class, with constant cueing, muscle recruitment is increased. But as soon as that person is with his/her children, washing dishes, or playing a sport; the amount of cognitive capacity left for “core engagement”, is then drastically diminished (Key, 2008).
This is where breathing can be so helpful. Our main muscle of respiration is the diaphragm, forming the roof of the “core”. The pelvic floor is the bottom, with TVA and the paraspinal muscles forming the front and sides, and back.
Breathing utilises the coordination of these muscles (and several others that insert into the chest and ribcage) to change the shape of the body altering the thoracic pressure which then either draws air in or pushes it out.
Deformable vs Compressible
Now let’s look at the ribs, lungs, and abdominal organs to understand why rigidity of the core is unrealistic. The ribs and lungs share the ability to compress and are somewhat deformable. But the abdominal organs can only be DEFORMED, THEY CANNOT BE COMPRESSED. (Yes that’s me shouting) (Stokes, 2010).
That is why holding a rigid core disrupts the natural coordinated movement of the diaphragm, pelvic floor, and TVA (Park, 2015). These muscles wrap around the abdominal organs like gift wrapping. If the TVA is forced into a single shape, the organs then sit in a compressed position, pressing against the pelvic floor, whilst the diaphragm no longer has the space to move as intended (Kitani, 2012).
Paradoxical Breathing
This is often where we see the ribs flaring and your chest expanding on inhalation, known as paradoxical breathing. This breathing is inefficient as the coordination between your ribcage, diaphragm, and pelvic floor is lost and your breath stays stuck in the chest (Chapman, 2016) In these cases the lungs suffer from the inability to expand as much, and respiratory volumes are disrupted (Key, 2013).
People who utilise this style of breathing also tend to have overused accessory breathing muscles, and this over time causes adaptive changes to their rib cage and shoulder girdle.
Pelvic Floor Disruption
A repetitive and sustained shortening or contraction of the pelvic floor can lead to less blood flow and more lactic acid accumulation. It may cause structural changes in the muscle fiber, preventing muscle relaxation and lengthening. Stress incontinence is one possible outcome, while more serious adaptations in women are conditions such as vaginismus (Baessler et al, 2008).
The other end of the spectrum is vaginal or uterine prolapse, where the abdominal organs collapse “fall” outside of the body (Key, 2008).
Balance is important. In the words of Goldilocks, your intra-abdominal pressure should neither be too low nor too high, but JUST RIGHT (Key, 2012).
Most of had actually need to downregulate the pelvic floor and allow our breathing to promote optimal co-activation of the diaphragm and pelvic floor for better timing and coordination of respiratory muscle recruitment (Baessler et al, 2008).
Imagine your body is a tube of toothpaste, if you squeeze it in the middle toothpaste will be pushed to the lip and the bottom of the tube. This is essentially what’s happening as we tighten the core; we limit the natural movement of the diaphragm and pelvic floor (Key, 2012).
What we ultimately want is the inhale to expand the ribs AND belly in a 360 broadening of the body, while the exhale makes everything smaller.
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REFERENCES
Berzuk, K. (2014). The Pelvic Floor Muscle: the Link Between Bladder, Bowel, and…Sex? A Review of Current Pelvic Therapy Approaches for Diagnosis and Treatment of Sexual Disorders. Current Sexual Health Reports, [online] 6(3), pp.192–200. Available at: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11930-014-0025-7 [Accessed 28 Nov. 2019].
Baessler, L., Schüssler, B., Burgio, K.L., Stanton, S.L. and v, K. (2008). Pelvic Floor Re-education | SpringerLink. [online] link.springer.com. Available at: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2F978-1-84628-505-9.pdf [Accessed 24 Mar. 2021].
Chapman, E.B., Hansen-Honeycutt, J., Nasypany, A., Baker, R.T. and May, J. (2016). A CLINICAL GUIDE TO THE ASSESSMENT AND TREATMENT OF BREATHING PATTERN DISORDERS IN THE PHYSICALLY ACTIVE: PART 1. International journal of sports physical therapy, [online] 11(5), pp.803–809. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5046973/
Key, J. (2013). “The core”: understanding it, and retraining its dysfunction. Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies, [online] 17(4), pp.541–559. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24139017.
Kitani, Lenore, PT (2012). Effect Of Variations In Forced Expiration Effort On Pelvic Floor Activation In Asymptomatic Women. [online] clinicaltrials.gov. Available at: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01694979 [Accessed 24 Mar. 2021]
Park, H. and Han, D. (2015). The effect of the correlation between the contraction of the pelvic floor muscles and diaphragmatic motion during breathing. Journal of Physical Therapy Science, [online] 27(7), pp.2113–2115. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4540829/
Stokes, I.A.F., Gardner-Morse, M.G. and Henry, S.M. (2010). Intra-abdominal pressure and abdominal wall muscular function: Spinal unloading mechanism. Clinical Biomechanics, 25(9), pp.859–866.