boiMAG.com "Fitness Article"

For the women, with fewer commutes to the office and less time spent going out, we are moving less and people are looking for ways to fend off joint tightness and pain from sitting.

“Because you’re sitting all day, you might feel your back or your hips tightening up. I’ve had a lot of clients come to me and say, ‘I really want to work on my mobility. I’m just sitting down all day and not really moving. How can we incorporate that?’" says therapist Nakhlawi.

Mobility work, think stretches not only helps relieve tightness in your joints, but it also enhances your workouts because you’re able to move through exercises with a full range of motion. McCall, another fitness trainer, recommends multi-planar lunges for improving hip mobility, for example, especially for those who sit for hours in front of a computer. Cat-cows and good mornings are great for the spine. Aim to do one to three mobility exercises as part of your warm-up before a workout, or one to two mobility workouts a week.

McCall also foresees that the use of mobility sticks and massage guns, like Hyperice and Theragun, to help reduce muscle tightness and soreness.

“There is also a growing understanding of the importance of adding active recovery into workouts. It can be a simple activity like foam rolling or more sophisticated approaches to joint mobility and strength, along with reduction of pain and injury prevention. If you love working out and understand the value of it, you want to do it forever.”

In terms of building strength, few people make time to improve their pelvic floor, the group of muscles that runs from your pubic bone to your tailbone and from sit bone to sit bone. But paying more attention to these muscles is important because they control your bladder and bowel movements, and play a vital role in breathing and sexual function, says Renee Settle, a P.volve trainer, where they’ve created workouts specially designed for strengthening the pelvic floor muscles. It’s also an integral part of core recovery for postpartum women.

“Some of the muscles of the pelvic floor are the coccygeus muscle, pubococcygeus muscle, deep transverse perineal muscle, and the levator ani muscle,” she says. “There are many more muscles that compile the pelvic floor, but beginning with these muscles, activation is important to help support the uterus, bladder, and intestines.”

You can train your pelvic floor with exercises, like glute bridges, marches, heel drags, and squats, that incorporate diaphragmatic breathing. Roup, who created a pre- and post-natal pelvic floor program on The Sculpt Society, includes diaphragmatic breathing exercises in her program to help you contract and relax your pelvic floor, which is essential in keeping it functional.

“The foundation to all exercises and how we move stems from our core and how it connects to your pelvic floor and breathing,” Roup says.

Settle says that incorporating pelvic floor exercises into your routine should be done on a personal basis, as some people need to focus more on strengthening the muscles while others should prioritize releasing the muscles.

Women who have pelvic floor dysfunction after childbirth, for example, might need to focus more on strengthening the muscles and should aim to do pelvic floor exercises twice a week, she explains. On the other hand, some people have a hypertonic pelvic floor, which means that their muscles are too tight and need to be released. These people tend to have pain during sex, pelvic pain, and constipation.

“The best way to know what your body needs is to work with a physical therapist who specializes in the pelvic floor to get a proper diagnosis and then you can incorporate strengthening or release as needed,” Settle says.

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