Pelvic floor, Diastasis Recti, and the power of the breath, with Jamie Jones
Peeing when you run, sneeze, or cough? Ab separation? These are so common, but they don’t have to be the norm! In today’s episode, I had the amazing opportunity of talking with Jamie Jones, a personal trainer who works with prenatal and postpartum women who are trying to repair their pelvic floor and/or maintain their pelvic floor strength after pregnancy. Throughout the episode, Jamie shares tips and resources on how to help women learn more about the pelvic floor, diastasis recti, and much more!
Jamie first became a trainer after becoming interested in learning about ways she could safely stay active during her pregnancy with her first son. As a result of not being about to find a lot of information surrounding this topic, she ended up with diastasis recti, a split between her abdominal muscles, as well as pelvic floor issues. As a result, she was determined to find out more and use the information to help other women.
“I just got this extreme passion to help women that wanted to stay active, fit, and strong.”
Jamie trained in both pre and postnatal corrective exercise, diastasis recti repair, and pelvic floor work. Jamie shared what the pelvic floor is and how to make sure our pelvic floor is strong. The pelvic floor is a web of strong muscles that lie underneath all of your organs. Not only is the pelvic floor responsible for holding up all the organs, but it is also responsible for the elimination of your bodily functions. The pelvic floor plays a big role during pregnancy because these are the muscles that are holding up your stomach, the babies’ weight and all the organs inside that are shifting. With these muscles taking on a lot of strain during pregnancy, it is important that we learn how to control them so they don’t become weak. We can even see a lack of good functionality of the pelvic floor results from running, excessive walking, and pregnancy if the pelvic floor is too tight.
We got into talking about ways we can strengthen these muscles without straining them. First and foremost, Jamie expressed the importance of researching where these muscles are located in your body and become comfortable with using them. One activity she talked about was to first find your sitz bones, which are the two boney landmarks in your butt, think of lifting all of those muscles together to pick up a blueberry, lift the blueberry up without squishing it, and then bring it back down. As you become more and more comfortable with this activity, you can incorporate it into your day (around 3 times daily) and the best part is no one will ever know you are doing it!
We dove into the importance of learning how to breathe through your diaphragm rather than your chest. As Jamie shared, knowing how to breathe plays a big role in being able to control your core. Through learning how to breathe through her diaphragm, Jamie was able to fix her diastasis recti without having to do any abdominal work. Jamie is the first to admit that although she does not always do this type of breathing, she tries her best to incorporate it into her day because it creates a comfortability into her lifestyle.
“Learning how to breathe is huge for your pelvic floor. On the inhale you relax the muscles and on the exhale everything comes back up together again. It’s one of those things you practice.”
Jamie ended our chat with the importance of figuring out what your pelvic floor entails and continuing to learn and practice the diaphragm breathing technique. She also talked about the importance of being aware and mindful of how you move throughout your day-to-day life whether it incorporates physical activities or not.
“And I think as women anytime we can take a little more control over our body and just have more awareness and understanding of what’s happening, I just think that’s awesome!”
If you wish to connect with Jamie and learn more about her practice you can find her at:
- [email protected]
- Instagram: PROnatal Fitness
- PROnatal Youtube videos that were mentioned throughout the podcast
