How to Engage Your Core Even During Pregnancy

A lot of people find this very surprising but if you’ve got a strong core throughout your pregnancy then you can actually see it engaging. So what I want to first tell you about is that the core is very intricate to activate, you need to be up to activate your predominant muscle which wraps around the entire torso, that muscle is called your transversus abdominis, okay, so it’s activating your transversus abdominis with your pelvic floor muscles.

 

Now unfortunately 1 in 3 people think that they’re activating their pelvic floor muscles correctly when in fact they’re actually tensing them which is pushing down on the pelvic floor which can create all types of problems.

 

So making sure that you’re lifting your pelvic floor correctly throughout exercise it’s very very important, and then making sure you’re working your pelvic floor with your transversus abdominis, not just your 6 pack muscle, not just your obliques, but the TA, the transversus abdominis, and you need to work your pelvic floor and that muscle together as one.

 

Once you’ve got a strong core throughout your pregnancy, post-birth you’re going to have no abdominal separation or it may only be 1 to 2 finger width apart. Where there are a lot of women who unfortunately don’t have this information about engaging their core correctly, post birth they might have 5 fingers separation through their abdominals.

 

So what I want to show you is when I’m in engaging my core on the breathe out, you will see the tummy literally shrink in, it’s like giving baby a little hug, okay, so breathing in, and exhaling, breathing in, and exhaling, breathe in, and exhaling.

 

So you can see the tummy pulling in, the belly button pulling back towards the spine, but it’s also a feeling of the sides of the waist pulling in as well. And then of course those pelvic floor muscles need to lift correctly.

 

So if you are pregnant and you are struggling to get that movement through the tummy and you’re not sure if your pelvic floor is working properly then please seek professional advice from a Pilates instructor who is clinically trained.