Muscular Skeletal Disorders
So my job as a pilates instructor, when I see clients who come in with a problem I address and see what their problem is. Most of the clients that I see have some kind of muscular imbalance which results in pain. Some of this problems include lower back pain which may indicate a herniated disc, some people have sciatica, some people have scoliosis, and there are just general aches and pains that come about from poor postural patterns, and poor and incorrect movement patterns that have developed for a long time. People come in, if they are an athlete and they have a repetitive stress injury some of the clients that I have worked with are muay thai fighters for example and they are fond of doing repetitive round house kicks, yet there are a lot of torques and imbalances in their body. My job is to try and re-correct that balance and to try them to get them to a little bit more of the symmetrical place.
Alright, this is Erin and she is a muay thai fighter. Erin why do not you go ahead and show what your usual muay thai stances are like, great. So, she is often going to throw with her right leg, great. So, what we found actually is because of the repetitive torquing of her pelvis as she throws her right leg. This whole right side is completely compressed. We actually had x-rays done and you can see her pelvis that her pelvis is rotated back and her right side is also compressed. So, what we are going to try to do day is to try to make her pelvis a little bit more even and also to lengthen out the right side of her torso so that she is a little bit more balanced. Okay, so what we are going to do, have you sit down, Erin, and left hand is going to be on the bar. And this exercise is a side bend to try and open up her right rib cage. So, go ahead inhale, breath deep, and as you exhale pull the bar down. You are going to extend your right arm out and shift your ribs into my hand. See how this opens up the rib cage and as she side spins over, she is going to anchor her pelvis down so that is grounded and we open up the distance between the bottom ribs and the top of her pelvis. She can rotate her upper body, we could increase more of a stretch here, excellent rotate back to face to front and just kind of lengthen back up at all and bring the arm down.
When there is an imbalance on the body, we usually do stretching out the right side. We turn her around and do the left side to stretch out to the left and then come back to do the right side to try and this open this side again.
So that was just one example of what a muscular imbalance can do to the body and what exercise can be done to address that imbalance. For more information you can check out my website Joanleepilates.com.
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