Tight Adductors And Pelvic Floor
Could your pelvic floor be too tight or too strong.
Tight adductors and pelvic floor. Having pelvic floor muscles that are too strong is not necessarily a good thing and can lead to problems it is important that during pregnancy and in the post natal period aka. They are like a hammock. These muscles must be able to contract to maintain continence and to relax allowing for urination and bowel movements and in women sexual intercourse. Pain and discomfort usually increase over time.
This combined with tight hip flexors leads to lordosis of the lumbar spine which has a negative impact on posture. The pelvic floor is inelastic if either the hip flexors or adductor muscles are tight. In the case of running your pelvic floor is actually contracting alongside your quadriceps hamstrings and glutes. Check out our recent post stop stretching your hamstrings read more about anterior pelvic tilt and ways to correct it.
Trigger point pain can be sharp but it is most often a dull unrelenting ache. Half kneeling adductor mobilisation. If muscles are too tight i e. Many people with pelvic pain have pelvic floor dysfunction but specifically hypertonic muscles or muscles that are too tight.
Treating a tight pelvic floor then it is more appropriate to do lengthening and relaxing exercises so that the muscles can return to a normal resting position. Out dated anatomy textbooks will tell you that the adductor muscles are only used to bring the legs towards or across the centre line of the body and that they are weak unless the person either rides horses or is a breast stroke swimmer. Advancing strengthening exercises would only make these muscles tighter and exacerbate your symptoms. The pelvic floor is inelastic if either the hip flexors or adductor muscles are tight.
Even though we are called pelvic floor physical therapists it is our job to assess and treat all aspects related to your pelvic health. The pelvic floor muscles are a group of muscles that attach to the front back and sides of the bottom of the pelvis and sacrum. Out dated anatomy textbooks will tell you that the adductor muscles are only used to bring the legs towards or across the centre line of the body and that they are weak unless the person either rides horses or is a breast stroke swimmer. Below are some of the exercises we use to target the adductors.
The adductor magnus muscle contributes to pain in the groin pelvic area hip and thigh. Low abdominal pelvic groin buttock and tailbone coccyx pain may be from muscles surrounding the pelvis and not the pelvic floor muscles themselves. The rest of your life your pelvic floor muscles stay strong. What is pelvic floor muscle tightness.
The trouble for the pelvic floor is that most of us don t know how to stretch it or notice that it is getting tight.