Monday, Day 11 - one of the problems with leaving doing a workout until later in the evening is that if you eat dinner with the kids, which of course you do when camping, and they go to bed much later than normal, which of course they do, then the inevitable glass of wine with dinner might turn into 2 and then you’ve got the issue of working out with a few vinos inside you. My physiologist husband came up with all sorts of mechanisms by which alcohol and exercising are bad and incompatible and of course lead to certain death - although he only told me this afterwards!! So today’s workout had become tonight’s and tonights was after a few drinks, and I didn’t die afterwards but I reckon it’s not the greatest idea in the world.
It was pilates and strength again from week 5 of my conditioning programme and the emphasis for pilates was on developing abdominal strength further from last week. As before, the most important thing to focus on with abdominals is the flexibility of the spine - no flexibility, nothing for the abs to do - so this week I started lying face up and doing a load of pelvic tilts and spine articulations side to side. The next set of exercises are what would be traditional abs exercises from any pilates repertoire but I am keeping my head down to keep it tummy safe - from my Garuda training one of the best things I’ve picked up is the idea of leaning back into the ribs and bra strap area in order to give the abs something to anchor on to. After carrying a baby and the ribs lifting in order to give enough space, I often find that the ribs haven’t come back down and stay in a flared position. When this happens the abdominals can’t work efficiently because they attach on to various points along the borders of the ribs - we work a lot on understanding this feeling of leaning back into the ribs and how this sets up the abs to be able to work better. So while I want to work the abdominals it needs to be safe, keeping the head down prevents any abdominal separation getting any worse and leaning back helps the control to be set up.
The strength session was all using the long resistance band and working with a different tempo - this time I’m consciously thinking of drawing up at the front (pelvic floor as well as lower abs) which I don’t normally cue for, but in these exercises I want to draw up the pelvic floor and hold it as I press the resistance band and I count to 3 while holding it - this helps with the endurance of the pelvic floor for those who get tired standing or walking for a while but are fine for the short bursts like sneezing or coughing. To do the first 2 exercises you need to bend your knees slightly and then tuck your pelvis under slightly as well (this is counter to what I would normally ask you to do for a functional activation of the PF).
The exercises are:
1) Standing band press up and out
2) Standing band press straight up
3) Normal deadlift standing on band
4) 1 legged deadlift with band