(Read my blog post Strengthening your Pelvic Floor with Hypopressives that includes a peer reviewed study on an 8 week program, plus additional information about the method.)
Contrary to what many believe, strong superficial ab muscles and weak pelvic floor endurance muscles may cause you pressure issues one day.
Most traditional abdominal exercises (Pilates series of 5, crunches, sit ups, roll-ups), while being completely functional and necessary, will also put pressure downwards, or outwards, causing the weakest part of the fascia to possibly herniate (hernia). If you are experiencing hernias, genital prolapse, urinary/fecal incontinence, diastasis recti, LPF is a perfect place to start reeducating and reinforcing the body against these symptoms.
LPF is also a perfect place for a woman to regain functional strength postpartum (but you must wait >6 weeks vaginal, >3 months if abdominal surgery). Helps constipation by repositioning organs to a more optimal position. Erectile and pudendal pain/dysfunction also benefit from this unique practice. YES both men and women may need this practice at some point in their life.
Part of my own experience with low pressure is in the mobilization of scar-tissue around an old injury in my lower t-spine, well as an appendectomy scar. This technique gives the area such a unique mobility from the innermost layers of fascia.
Dr.Tamara Rial, PhD, CSPS, a pelvic rehab professor & her cofounder Piti Pinsach developed a method of postures that focus on form, breathing, and the hypopressive maneuver.
A few methods inspired their creation:
1.Yoga Pranayama Maybe you’ve experienced some nice breath work in a yoga class? Uddiyana Bhandha specifically? This is an ancient practice where you pause your breath (at the bottom of an exhalation) and pull your diaphragm up eccentrically, to create an expansion of your rib cage, creating a vacuum for abdomen & pelvic floor. It was done to clear the abdominal chakra, decongest and stimulate circulation within the lower ab region.
2. Dr. Bernadette Gasquet (1980’s France) also inspired this method by causing physios to rethink the way they were rehabilitating postnatal women with her book “Abdominals: Stop the Massacre”
3. The method of Francoise Mèzières, a French physiotherapist, also inspired the development of Low Pressure Fitness with her work on muscular chains and flexibility within the posterior chain. Mèzière went against the grain of the accepted body-builder kind of way that PTs applied rehabilitation in the late 1940s and focused on flexibility within the posterior chain. She created her method of Global Postural Reeducation, including unique postures, tailored for each patient, that were carefully aligned and monitored so that the intended area could not escape the stretch (compensations), and had notable clinical outcomes as patients were able to hold the postures along with alignment corrections.
In the 1980s in France, these methods inspired the use of the abdominal vacuum in rehabilitation of postpartum women.
In 2014, Dr. Tamara Rial, in Spain, developed sequences of postures, the method of Low Pressure Fitness, where she combined multiplanar, core-strengthening postures (named after goddesses and gods) combined with flow of breath work and the abdominal vacuum (hypopressive). These postures may take a few classes to start perfecting, and the breath training takes practice, but they are very user-friendly. The classes begin with breathing techniques that will calm down the heart rate and train efficiency in breathing, combined with functional core warm ups, abdominal massage and myofascial stretches to create mobility (this is important for the work we are doing with the diaphragm), and a flow of goddess postures with vacuum in each one. A general cool down follows.
Comments