Welcome back. Today we're going to be talking about the core. And if you've been here for a long time, you know I am a major advocate for understanding how the core works, how the deep core works, the pelvic floor, how it affects our full body strength training, how it affects our daily functionality with back pain, with hip issues, with leakage, with so many different things. And I have a ton of

episodes on this. But something I've noticed is often we think that the pelvic floor and the

core is really only important right after we have babies or during pregnancy. And while this is

totally true, this is a very heightened window where the pelvic floor and the

core take truly a beating while you're growing the baby and then postpartum, something most

people don't realize is your pelvic health is actually affected by a lot of different things.

Obviously postpartum and pregnancy, but perimenopause and menopause actually greatly impact

your pelvic floor health as well.

I'm going to quickly explain how when estrogen declines during this phase, it affects your

connective tissue, which affects your elasticity. So then these muscles don't respond as well as

they did before. This often will show up as leakage when you're sneezing, when you're jumping, when you're just

doing normal activities. So basically your core doesn't connect as well and it can even cause

increased pelvic floor tension or decreased pelvic floor tension. So a weak or a tight pelvic floor.

So me bringing this up is really all about how the core is a lifelong journey.

We always have to be aware of it.

We always want to be working on it.

And we always want to be adjusting and adapting to make sure that our core is stable, that we

have strong connection to the rest of our body, that it's bracing our body, and that it's

doing its job.

Because even if you develop some

imbalances in your core right after you had a baby, it can linger for 20 years, 30 years

afterwards. I have women in their 60s who I'm trying to have them help reconnect their core.

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