Hey guys and welcome to your movement minute. My name is Ryan Maxx, today we're going to talk to you about bracing. What is bracing? Well, we all know that we need to engage our core before we move, or to make sure that we are stable when we move. But what does that really mean? A lot of times it's pretty nebulous in terms of how it's understood. So today we want to make sure that we can clarify exactly what bracing means and how it would reflect in your movement process as you're going about any exercise that you would do. Just remember that bracing isn't just about crunching your abs and pulling your spine into flexion. That's commonly what it's referred to or thought of. The reality is we are trying to create intra-addominal and intra-thoracic pressure. Although it seemed like complicated terms and reality it's pretty simple. We're trying to create an internal system of pressure to keep our spine stable and the different segments of our spine. What that really has to do with is the lumbar portion of our spine, the thoracic portion of our spine, and the sacrum and pelvis portion of our spine. So when we think about creating abdominal pressure, what we have to think about is contracting our abdominals and flexing them down. You can do that by breathing out. That's what we use these respiratory training devices to improve the active contraction of your active respiratory, expiratory muscles. Running out, that rocks our hips forward or under, pulls our ribs down and basically pulls the ribs towards the pelvis. That's going to pull our back into flexion or rounding. I'm going to hold that pressure or tension by contracting my abs and then I'm going to breathe in. As I breathe in, I'm not letting go of my abdominals and that tension relationship between the abdominals and the diaphragm pushing down is literally shifting your organs down where it towards your pelvic floor. What that does is it pushes pressure on your transverse abdominis, which literally extends your spine a little bit because of its attachment on the thoracolumbar fascia. That's a line of tissue on the backside of your spine that helps to pull your back into extension. Literally maintaining the contraction of your abs and then breathing in, literally opens up the facet joints of your spine and gives them space and literally elongates your spine and into extension as long as you don't just let go of your abdominals. They have to stay stiff. At the same time, if I'm pushing my diaphragm down into my organs, there's pressure down low and that has to do with your pelvic floor. There's three muscles, iliocoxogeos, puocococsogeos, and ishiococsogeos. All of those muscles have different really processes but what we're really thinking about is squeezing the back sphincter muscle, the anal sphincter. What you're going to do is you're going to contract your abs, you're going to breathe in and you're going to squeeze your pelvic floor from the backside. We're going to call it a back side, you know, kegul, not a front side, not the urethra side, but the back side. So if you do that, what it's going to do is create a force closure for the spine here, the thoracic, as you create intrameduminal or intramed thoracic pressure. The lungs fill, the ribs expand. You're not letting them lift because your abs are tight. Those the ribs open circumferentially and it pulls into that thoraculumbar fascia, creating rigidity for your spine. Man, it's stable. Now you would do that and hold the pelvic floor to keep the sacrum and the pelvis stable before you would move into hip extension or flexion or any other movement. So that truly is what bracing is all about. Intrameduminal pressure, crunch, and breath in. With thoracic pressure through the expansion and then pelvic floor contraction to stabilize the lower segment. If you have any questions on today's topic, reach out to us at adminitpludialthandvitness.com. This was your movement minute on bracing and pelvic stability. We'll talk to you soon.