When it comes to your core muscles, one group often gets overlooked … until it gets to be a problem!
 
That’s because when we think of our core, we usually only think of the muscles that wrap around our body’s midsection.
 
But did you know that your pelvic floor muscles are the FOUNDATION for your core?
 
They work very hard to support you – as well as all the organs that are inside your pelvic region.
 
Keeping those muscles strong and fit can make a big difference in your body’s overall stability, as well as your digestive and reproductive organs. 
 
This doesn’t just apply to women, BTW – men also benefit from having strong pelvic floor muscles. Strong pelvic floor muscles help with urinary and bowel control as well as sexual function.
 
Many things can affect your pelvic floor muscles, including pregnancy, obesity, constipation, surgery and/or radiation, and just getting older.
 
3 Exercises For Your Pelvic...

An out-of-balance core can make it a LOT harder for you to reach your fitness and strength goals.
 
Before I get into the hows & whys, picture this:
 
Imagine your core is like a flexible piece of tubing made of dozens of intertwining muscles. One of its many jobs is to support your torso and protect your spine as it powers your arms and legs, keeping everything stable, balanced, and strong.
 
Now imagine you bend that tube and leave it for a few hours on a chair. Eventually, some parts of the tube get tighter and others get stretched out – resulting in weakness and imbalance.
 
Keep that scenario in mind! Because we’re going to talk about…
 
SQUATS
 
Imagine putting a barbell on the upper back of the tube that’s been sitting all day.
 
Because it’s out of balance, with the muscles in the front tighter than the back, all those intertwining muscles can’t provide as much assistance and stabilization as they normally would.
...

Exactly what is strength training? Strength training is any planned exercise that challenges your muscles by adding load (weight) to your movements.

By challenging your muscular system you slowly and gradually built your lean muscle mass. As an added bonus you also strengthen your ligaments and tendons that surround your joints. 

Why is this important? Strength training lays the foundation to building a highly functional body. In the end this helps your body perform optimally so that it eases the demands on the body when you go about your daily activities. 

One of the cool side effects of exercising consistently is your body functions better even at the cellular level. That is why after a couple of weeks of exercising, you gain more energy. Amazing that when you exercise you are even making your cells stronger and more efficient! 

Other Benefits of Strength Training:

• Increases in muscle mass increase metabolism, meaning our bodies are able to...

I taught this strength circuit three times this week: to the Wednesday evening crew, Thursday morning Older Adult 55+ crew, and the Friday morning crew. All thought it was pretty intense...however my Older Adults crew didn't complain too much. I promised my clients I would also be tortured by it Friday afternoon. I had so much fun I decided to film myself to share :)

Being my first time filming myself performing a workout, I realize after the fact that horizontal filming is the way to go (not vertical as most of this footage is) and definitely some of my camera angles need improvement, a bit too much of the bright ceiling light. Oops!

I did not make all my clients work as hard as the video shows...well except for my client Agnes! All exercises can be modified. The wonderful thing about small group personal training is I tailor the exercise to suit each client to be successful and safe in their joints. 

The workout:

Warm-up

5min dynamic stretches and...