Pelvic Power with the Magpies!
Last week I had the amazing opportunity to present a lecture to the New York Magpies about pelvic/core control, demonstrate how this relates to their very fun and exciting sport of “footie”, and introduce concepts around women’s health. We spoke about kegels, we got our gluteals firing, we jumped, we tackled each other, and we found our balance as female athletes. This was single handedly one of the best experiences of my NYC physical therapy career, because not only was I able to pass along my current pelvic wisdom to many open minds, but I was able to learn a great deal about what these ladies have to offer as top-notch athletes right here in New York City.
What is Australian Football anyways?
Prior to working here at the Center for Spine Care and Mobility in Manhattan, I could not tell you what Australian Football was, how it was played, or what kinds of things are important to concentrate on during training. Strength and power were a given but how this related directly to footie was still a little bit of a mystery for me. After doing some research on the game and working with a few of the Magpies here at the clinic, I started to understand how important this information was for them with balance and power in their sport. It became apparent this information needed to be shared with everyone. It’s here that I have to thank one Lady Magpie in particular for helping to organize this great opportunity for all of us – thank you so much Drea!
NYC Physical Therapist Explains: Back to the Basics of Movement
So, to get everyone ready for the information at hand we started pretty slow, took everything back to the basics and began with demonstrating some simple exercises. If you have ever been to physical therapy for a condition related to your back or hips, you have probably performed a bridge during the therex portion of our treatment. What I love about the bridge (as you can see on our Instagram – I have posted a couple of videos already) is that we can use it for different muscle activation, mobility of the spine, and ease of pelvic floor contractions with movement. We were very lucky to have a few great volunteers who were able to demonstrate the different muscle firing patterns during a bridge that night with doing nothing else but changing a few cues here and there. We went from feeling our glutes “kinda” firing and our back doing a great portion of the work to feeling our glutes move our bodies into hip extension.
Why Athletes Should Be Concerned with Pelvic Health
After this we opened up a bit to talking about what I do here in physical therapy with pelvic health, and why it is important for every woman to know about how their pelvic floor works. We spoke about different muscles, how to check whether or not these muscles were stuck in a holding pattern, and how to strengthen these muscles. Of course, we also mentioned some fairly common “unpleasant” conditions like stress urinary incontinence and pelvic pain and how to go about getting help for these conditions which definitely sparked some interesting conversations. Oh and since we are on that topic…
PSA – Ladies, you never should feel like these things are normal! If you are experiencing pain or any sort of adverse conditions please seek out help! Many medical professionals, including our NYC physical therapists can help treat these conditions! We don’t have to live with pain and dysfunction for our entire lives.
Tackle me, I dare you to try!
Back on track now, after all the preliminary details were ironed out, we were able to get into the fun stuff. So, we tackled each other (nicely), and got under the bar and power lifted, and jumped on one leg! And guess what, with every demonstration of pelvic floor activation and low core control we increased our bodies ability to create power and we all became a little more stable and efficient with our movements. This brought us deep into conversation, and we easily lost an hour demonstrating all different mechanics and pelvic strengthening patterns. It was wonderful!
Thanks Again Ladies!
Thanks again to all the wonderful ladies that came out that Wednesday, I had an incredible time! Can’t wait to see how you all do this year and how each of you integrate all the information we spoke about the other night into your training and competition. Good luck this year girls, can’t wait to work with you all again!!
