foot to core sequencing

What do feet have to do with one's core? Turns out, everything. It all starts at the feet. The most functional movement humans do is walk. If our parts are aligned and neuro-muscularly coordinated we walk and work with ease and without pain. There is a sequence to neuro-muscular firing that is essential to this coordination. Think of a string of fire crackers, each causing the next to ignite. That's efficient. If you had to keep lighting every couple fire crackers you'd get frustrated and you wouldn't get the same effects.

So here's how it works:

We must have enough inversion of the foot in order to effect external rotation of the tibia which, in turn, causes internal rotation of the femur, activates the glutes, then initiates firing of psoas, pelvic floor and respiratory diaphragm. It's a neuro-muscular firing cascade that happens from the ground to the core by virtue of our feet impacting the ground.

We also must have enough eversion of the foot, have enough ankle dorsiflexion and be able to get over our big toe in order to effect adequate propulsion. A number of compensations reveal any inadequacies—walking with feet pointed outward, rolling the feet, twisting the leg, throwing the leg to the side or picking up the foot early. Have bunions? or flat feet? They're the result of compensations.

Neuro-muscular firing initiates while we are anticipating where to place our foot, even before the step is taken. There's an unconscious planning that takes place in walking (and running), one that either serves us well or has become a pathological habit. People who have been raised shod have more foot, ankle, and leg injuries than people raised barefoot because the sensory ability of the small, intrinsic nerves of the feet have been dampened. A shod foot trying to walk is like a ear trying to hear underwater—distorted and unsure.

Getting some barefoot time in each day can re-awaken those small, intrinsic nerves, improving balance and proprioception while protecting you from injury over the long term. Many runners who change from shod to barefoot, or minimalist, get injured because they try too much too soon. It takes some time for the nerves to waken and for your body to adjust to using your muscles in new ways. Take it very slow and gradually decrease your shoe's support over time.

Check out Harvard's website on "Biomechanical Differences Between Different Foot Strikes" for more, really cool information.

How to do a Kegel

A Kegel is a type of pelvic floor contraction, first described in Western medical literature by Dr. Arnold Kegel in 1948. Contracting the muscles of the pelvic floor (one's bottom) strengthen and tone them and can have beneficial effects for many women experiencing stress incontinence. (Other types of incontinence don't respond so well to these exercises alone.)

To find these muscles and to learn to perform a Kegel, stop the flow of urine while urinating and then allow the flow again. If you are successful, you just did a Kegel; you've located the muscles that you want to work with and you've executed the movement that you want them to do—contract and release. It's okay to do this several times in order to embody your learning.

However, the exercise itself should *not* be done while urinating. Doing the exercise this way runs the risk of creating a detrusor (bladder muscle) dyscoordination and more incontinence or leaking.  And Kegels are most useful if done standing as this is the position in which most women experience incontinence or leaking. Try doing pelvic floor contractions in various positions—lunge to each side, lunge forward, bend in plies. This will enhance neuro-muscular coordination between the large muscles of the thighs and buttocks with the muscles of the pelvic floor.

It's recommended to hold pelvic floor contractions for 10 seconds. This is an arbitrary number that will likely cover the amount of time it takes for a bout of laughing, coughing or sneezing.

To engage the more difficult eccentric movement of the pelvic floor muscles, don't just let go when done with holding a contraction. Slowly and deliberately lower the intensity of the contraction, releasing with control. This is much more difficult than the concentric movement of contracting the muscles and it will garner you much greater reward.

Popular myths surrounding incontinence or urinary leaking

The three things that most people do when they find that they are suffering from any sort of incontinence or urinary leaking are to decrease their fluids, increase their frequency of urination and to stop exercising.

They figure that if they're leaking fluid that they must be taking in too much or that decreasing intake will somehow make it less likely to leak out. They figure that if they have been urinating every three or four hours and leaking in between, then maybe they can stave off that leaking by going more frequently. They figure that if they have been leaking on impact when exercising, then maybe they should stop exercising. All of these are rational; all of them are wrong and set up the bladder for more incontinence.

If a bladder is already compromised, it may be that there are false signals relayed to the nervous system indicating an urge to urinate when the bladder is not full. Often this is from irritation within the bladder or from dyscoordinated neuromuscular activity of the bladder with other surrounding structures. In any case, the strategies of drinking less and urinating more are strategies of dehydration. This is never healthy systemically and actually makes the bladder worse off as it atrophies over time. The bladder has a muscular layer, the detrusor, and like any muscle, needs to be worked to stay healthy. Unlike other muscles, the detrusor is only worked when filled and stretched. The detrusor is stretched by the bladder filling up to functional capacity, by drinking fluids and urinating infrequently.

There are studies that show that any exercise done regularly, even if it doesn't address the pelvic floor itself, will improve the condition of the pelvic floor over time. If there is leaking on impact, the leaking is not caused by the impact; it is caused by the neuromuscular dyscoordination. One might consider switching to a low-impact exercise or wearing pads while continuing the higher-impact exercise.

So, counter-intuitive as it may seem, the best course of action when one starts leaking or experiencing any sort of incontinence is to drink more fluids, urinate less frequently and keep exercising (or exercise more). Work that bladder!

You might want to check out the List of Bladder Irritants in my Treasure Trove (tab in navigation bar).

Neurology & the pelvic floor

I'm always stressing the central role of the nervous system in the functioning of our bladders and pelvic floors.

Eric Franklin, PT:  "In the opening stages of training, the building up of strength is almost wholly neurogenic. An actual change in muscle substance is called a myogenic change, and this only happens after a relatively long period of training."

Janet Hulme, PT:  "Even muscles you are not aware of being able to control, like the bladder, are affected when you change muscles you can control."

Diane Lee, PT:  "Exercises for PFM are not intended to improve strength! Coordination and endurance is key!!!"

Dumoulin & Hay-Smith (2010) found in randomized trials "support for the widespread recommendation that PFMT be included in first-line conservative management programmes for women with stress, urge, or mixed, urinary incontinence." as compared to no treatment, sham treatment and placebo.

Neuromuscular coordination is the goal of pelvic floor or pelvi core rehabilitation.

Tissue Talk: tensegrity

Here's a fascinating and creative take on functional structure:

Tensegrity is a term popularized by Buckminster Fuller when he built the first geodesic dome. These buildings transfer loads through tension beams which are connected in triangles. The integrity of this tension system is crucial to the stability of the structure (tension integrity = tensegrity). When a force pulling in one direction is equally opposed by a force pulling in the opposite direction, stability is achieved for that direction only. For complete rigidity of a structure the various lines of force form a series of isosceles triangles. These are called tensegrity structures. Our bodies do not require this amount of rigidity, in fact our function would be limited because of it. However, the linking together of muscles through their connective tissue bonds (fascia, ligaments, and bones) can create momentary tensegrity systems that assist in the transference of force without too much compression through the joints. Exercises, which connect muscles both individually and collectively, provide tensegrity for the direction of load being imposed.

---Lee, BSR, FCMAT, Diane, An Integrated Model of "Joint" Function and Its Functional Assessment, 4th Interdisciplinary World Congress on Low Back & Pelvic Pain, Montreal, 2001.

Proprioceptive Neuro-muscular Facilitation (PNF) tests and treats patterns of movement that utilize all of a joint's movements through all three dimensions. Since most muscles' tendons and their attending structures (fascia, nerves) attach to their nearby joints, taking a joint through its functional patterns that include abduction/adduction, extension/flexion, and internal & external rotation challenges all of the structures' strength, mobility, range of motion and, most importantly, neuro-muscular coordination. The points in the movement that present as weak, ratchety or painful reveal dyscoordination of a system of structures through that particular part of the pattern of movement. This need not show up in testing single muscles in single planes of strength such as is done in kinesiology. And building strength alone will not provide results. The system as a whole must be reeducated in how to behave as a system. PNF provides systemic functional reeducation.

Tummies & Posture

The pendulum keeps swinging back and forth between two camps. There are those who say that we should pull in our tummies to keep our abdominals strong and promote core strength and there are those who advocate for not pulling in our tummies, that we should maintain our lumbar curves. Right now we are in an era of 'let it all hang out'. Actually, the two camps are not entirely mutually exclusive, yet both are wrong.

We do want to activate our transvers abdominus throughout our day, while maintaining our lumbar curve and while allowing our tummies to move with our breath. This means pulling in our tummies slightly, about an inch, while not maintaining a rigidity to that hold. The transverse abdominus is a component of the core, which provides stabilization for functional movement and contributes to balance and proprioception. We do want to strengthen our core. But more importantly, we want to engage our core in concert with functional movement. In this way we educate our bodies in neuro-muscular coordination. A strong muscle without neuro-muscular coordination is a bully to its neighbors.

Urology as a subspecialty of neurology, a case study

"It's all about neuro-muscular coordination."

If you've taken my Bladder & Pelvic Floor Health class (whether for patients or for practitioners) you've heard me say this umpteen times. It's one of the major take-aways from the class. You've also heard me joke that "Your bladder doesn't pee, your brain does."  While this is not completely accurate, it serves to underscore an important theme: Your bladder is part of a very complicated neurological system and it operates within that system, not as an adjunct.

I have a patient whose story is an excellent representation. She had an existing bladder issue from a previous trauma when she came to my Bladder & Pelvic Floor Health class. Over time, she was healing herself with the exercises that I taught. However, she recently had a fall that caused a moderate head trauma. She didn't drive for four weeks and she was off of work for seven weeks. She found that her body prioritized the new trauma; her bladder issue, with the new stressors her body was going through, worsened. The concussion left her balance and proprioception compromised. She experiences dizzy spells. These are common neurological symptoms with trauma, and especially with head trauma.

At my Pelvic Floor & Core Workout Series she has shared with us how, in doing the slow movements and really paying attention and feeling her body, it fatigues her mind and body. She's noticed that she gets emotional with the movement and with her impatience in feeling fatigued, and that the emotion and fatigue are both signals for her to take a rest. But she's seeing improvement with these slow, intentional movements that challenge the core, coordinate proprioception and improve balance. Remember, these all contribute to and mirror the condition of each other because they are all neurologically based.

It truly is all about neuro-muscular coordination.