Hi, I'm Michelle and today I'm going to show you four simple exercises and these
are pelvic exercises to help you stabilize your SIJ or your sacroiliac joint. Now,
what is your SIJ, we'll just quickly have a look at it before we start, this is a pelvis
and here is the back of the pelvis, and there's two sacroiliac joints. Now in women and in men,
these joints can become a little bit unstable, and they can shift around or over time,
they can develop some wear and tear, and they can become quite inflamed and uncomfortable.
And usually SIJ pain presents as single sided or one sided buttock pain right
in the middle of the butt. So I'm going to show you four general strengthening exercises today,
your chiropractor or osteopath, or physio, might give you different type of exercises and they're
the ones to go through what specific exercises to go through for this condition. But I'm just
going to show you some general exercises that are safe for women with pelvic floor problems
to do and these exercises you might like to try at home to stabilize and hold the control
of those joints so that they don't slip around and move around. So we're going to get started.
The first exercise I'm going to show you is a bridging exercise and you might have seen this
done before so you'll start laying there obviously lying on the mat, you could do these on the bed or
fairly firm surface at home. So coming into lying down flat. So I'm using little pillow here, coming
right down into lying my neck supported, and I'm bringing my heels in close, so I'm not standing
with my feet right out, my heels are coming in close, so that I can push down through my heels
and activate my bottom muscles because it's the bottom muscles that stabilize those joints. So
lying down relaxed, keeping the inward curve in your lower back, and you get to press down through
your heels, and just gently lift up, lifting your hips off the ground, and lowering down. Now if at
any point any of these exercises cause you're in discomfort, you obviously stop them straightaway.
But you might find that just a small bridge and lift helps you manage your discomfort rather
than going into a full bridge, you might work into a high bridge. As your condition improves.
Now I'm really thinking about pushing down through my heel. So push down through your heels,
breathe out and lift up, use your bottom muscles, and then slowly, slowly lower
down to the lower down is just as important as the lift up. And you can repeat that exercise,
that's your bridging exercise. As you get better, you might start to use a weight and the lovely
thing about this position is you can actually use quite a heavy weight on the pelvis. So can
weight up through the hips with a dumbbell, breathe out, lift up, push through the heels,
try to keep the backs of the thighs relaxed, but really use the bottom muscles and then lower down.
I'll do that one more time for you at home and breathing out your body to be exercising along
with me at home, breathing out, lifting up using your bottom and coming down slowly and relaxing,
making sure you keep that inward curve in the back throughout. So that's the bridging exercise.
The next exercise we're going to do is called the clam. So coming on to your sides, you can roll
over and again, in that sideline position, but my neck supported, I'm straight down, I'm not upon an
angle, not going to hurt my neck. So line down sideways, make sure that your heels are roughly
in line with your bottom. So when you look down behind you can see your feet there, and for this
exercise we're going to do a little lift of the top leg away from the bottom leg, and down. Now
you'll often see this exercise done with a great big roll and that's not what we want because that
eases the lower back. So we're not we're not after the low back muscles here. We're really after
these muscles. They're called external rotators and they actually work to rotate the back of the
hip, holding it back and down and these muscles actually work to hold that sacroiliac joint
together. That's why we're exercising them. So again, it's a slowly fade up and then slowly lower
down, keeping the inward curving the back, if you can, keeping a gentle tummy indoor at the same
time. So you've got a whole lot of really nice core stability going on, as well as strengthen
through the hip and then you might find that when you get a little bit better at this exercise,
you can use a weight so you roll the dumbbell weight down your thigh as far as you can. It's
not going to have any effect or any beneficial effect of sitting up on your hip. But if you roll
it right down there close to your knee as far as you can, and then do small lift, and then lower,
and I'm really thinking bring to glutes, bring to this area out here. Activate as I lift and lower
down slowly. You can see I'm not dropping the leg one more time, it'll lift and lower down slowly
so that's the second exercise called the clam. Alright, we're gonna move over onto our tummies
now. So lying down in that position can put a bit of an arch excessive arch on your back that you
can use a pillow underneath you here, so cushion a little cushion. It makes it much more comfortable
for my pelvis and much more comfortable for my back for this particular exercise.
Now, the first exercise we're going to do is an alternate arm and leg raise,
I'll just start with the leg raise for you at home and this is the leg raise. So it's just
a straight leg lift, and down, and you can see I'm not lifting too high. If I lift too high,
I'm going to arch my back and cause my back discomfort so I'm really just trying to work my
bottom muscles here and get my back extensors working as well. So it's just a small lift,
and lower down, you can feel that if you put your hand on that side that you will feel those muscles
working and taking it down. Now you can progress this exercise provided your shoulders aren't sore,
head right down as you notice the head stays down throughout this exercise,
extending the arms out in front, drawing your tummy muffled in a little bit. So just during
the lower tummy in a tiny little bit, very gently at the same time as you lift, and take it down,
and once again lifting, and take it down you can see that's a small movement and
obviously you're repeating that on the other side. So that's the alternate arm and leg
raise exercise as well. So we've done clam, we've done alternate arm and leg raise our
line down here in this position and finally we're going to finish up with the help of exercise.
Now this is a lovely exercise, again for that sacroiliac joint and providing stability for
that area. Again, your heads down and I place like to place my head on my hands, lift your leg up,
and the leg should be roughly right angle so you don't have to have a little look around behind as
if you're balancing glass of your favorite drink on your foot. And you don't want to drop to spill,
you get to press that foot up towards the ceiling, not spill your drink,
and then lower back down. And you can see I'm not rolling away with that exercise,
I'm actually just lifting the foot on nearly virtually pushing the hip bone into the mat
or into my cushion as I lift and lower down. Now once again, the cushion is optional for your back,
you might find it much more comfortable having the cushion there. Otherwise, you can move the cushion
and just do the exercise flat on the ground. So again, I can feel that using my buttocks,
foot up to the ceiling and coming down. And again, obviously repeat this exercise on the other side.
Okay, so let's review what we've done today, we did some bridging exercises. Then we went on to
our sides, we did the clam exercise. Then we came over on to our tummies we did alternate arm and
leg raise and then we did a little heel prop the end. So you can do any number of those exercises,
you might start with just a couple of the exercises or you might increase up to doing
10 at a time and you try to do those at least three times. That would be up to 30 exercises
of each of those exercises. That's quite a lot, isn't it? So you could choose from
the exercise that you like. Well, I hope that really helps you with your stability
and your understanding of how to stabilize your SIJ. If you'd like some more exercises,
you can subscribe down below and I've really enjoyed that session with you today. I hope
you have too at home. I look forward to exercising with you again soon. Bye for now.