Which of the best abdominal hernia exercises to choose for your abdominal hernia recovery?
And come to think of it, which abdominal exercises do you need to avoid
to reduce your risk of abdominal hernia worsening?
Hi, I'm Michelle. And today I'm guiding you through how to do abdominal exercises,
and the best exercises to choose to improve your abdominal hernia support,
then I'm going to guide you through some of the exercises that you really need to avoid
to reduce your risk of abdominal hernia worsening. Now the best exercises to choose are for the deep
abdominal core muscles. And we're going to start those straightaway, I'm going to be taking you
through these muscles, they wrap around right through your trunk, and they attached to your
spine, just like a corset that you can see here. Now to do these exercises, all you need
is a cushion or a pillow to support your head while we're doing them in line, you can do them
either lying on the bed, or you can do them on the mat at home too. So let's get started now.
Now we're going to do these abdominal exercises in two different positions.
The first position is lying on your side, and the second position is upright. So we'll start
with the lying down exercise, remembering that we're using the deep abdominal muscles and you
may not have used it in these in the past. So I'll just take my time and talk you through
how to activate these muscles correctly, so you can use them during the course of your
day. So coming into sidelining and remembering if you're lying down with an abdominal hernia,
lie down sideways, not backwards, because that uses your abs so come into line sideways.
Now in this position, pillow underneath the head so that the head is supported,
knees are bent, and a slight inward curve in the lower back. You can't see that here with
me. But that's the position we're starting with. Now the muscles that we're after,
and these muscles down here. So this is where the course that is that wraps around through the spine
and this is that protective belly course, it when these muscles are active, it's just like wearing
a belly band, which is why it's so beneficial with abdominal hernia. So the head comes down,
bring your top hand and place it just inside this a bone near your pelvic bone, I like to put the
heel of my hand on that bone there, and then slide my hand down, then let your belly relax
forward. Take a deep breath in and out and let your belly really relaxed with a bulge forward.
Now in that position, what we're going to do is using the hand here,
drilling gently that lower part so you're drawing it in. And this is a really gentle,
subtle movement, it's not a great big heart. Enjoy that like that and your back curve stays the same
throughout. So what you do with that hand is you move it in, and it just moves in just a fraction.
And then you try to breathe as you hold that contraction, can you breathe with it.
And now see if you can relax and let go.
Now sometimes you might find the pelvic floor muscles, the muscles in and around
your pelvic openings might contract at the same time, that is absolutely fine. In fact,
that's a great thing if that happens. So let's do that one more time, so with your normal breathing,
so breathing is really important with this. So hand across that area,
fingers across through the lower abdomen, and you're aiming to move those fingers feel
those fingers move inwards slightly with the contraction, but nothing should happen up here.
If you're noticing that this part is moving in, you're activating too strongly, this is a really
gentle contraction, these muscles should work all the time throughout the day.
Unfortunately, we just sometimes forget to use them. If you had surgery, if you're overweight
or you've had a baby, these muscles stopped working. So abdominal surgery is what I mean. So
using the hand over there, again, let's go to the normal breath. Breathing in and out,
and out. Now very, very gently draw in that area just below your navel, move the hand,
the hand should just just move in with a tiny bit. Now see if you can keep breathing
and keep holding. Keep breathing and holding, keep breathing and holding those muscles on,
and breathe and hold, and slowly, slowly relax. Now that is the technique to start
this and I really like doing this inside line because you can really feel the muscles working
in that area and you can even look down you can see that lower abdomen move in and out.
Now let's move into our second position for these exercises so that you can do them during the
course of the day. And that position is sitting or you might like to do them in standing as well. Now
when you're doing your abdominal hernia exercises, the second position to use is either sitting
or standing. You need to train these muscles so that they work during the course of the day,
not just lying down. So you might like to start with the lying down exercise that I just showed
you. But then practice doing these exercises in sitting and standing at regular intervals during
the course of the day. Now, this is how you do this same technique in sitting or standing, the
very first thing to attend to is your posture. If you slumped forward, then your abdomen is going to
bulge and more likely that your hernia will bulge too, so the very first thing you can do is to lift
and you're lifting through the crown of the head towards the ceiling and you're raising your chest
as if there's a string from 45 degrees lifting you up, so you're actually lifting the chest
and the shoulders back and down away from your ears. Now in that position, again, you can bring
your hands around through the front of the belly, the way I showed you before with the single hand.
Now relax your breathing so breathing in and out. And again, in through the nose
and out. Now what I'd like you to do is this area, this lower area,
just see the contents the area a little bit underneath your briefs,
drawing it backwards in towards your body, just a tiny bit. Now see if you can hold that
and hold, and relax it down. Remembering the key things are, this is the area that we're
contracting, and you're not pulling up through here. Now let's do that one more time. But this
time, let's try to breathe throughout. When these muscles are really working. If you haven't used
the before, you'll find that you want to hold your breath and that's totally normal. You'll
find that as you practice this, this will get much easier and you'll be able to breathe normally.
So let's do this one more time, hands up over the lower abdomen. Think about your posture,
lengthen your spine nice and tall. Breathing in and breathing out, and now very gently draw in
the lower abdomen if you can, and now try to just breathe normally, breath in and out. It's very,
very subtle. It's much harder than it looks, isn't it? Keep breathing, and out and relax. So
that is the exercise to practice during the course of the day whenever you can think of it.
So it might be when you're standing waiting in a queue. It might be even when you're going
for a walk as you start to improve. But that is the exercise aiming for up to 10 second holes,
and really ideally trying to do these exercises up to 10 times a day. But the more you can do,
the better, providing that you're actually using the correct abdominal exercise technique.
Now which abdominal exercises do you really need to avoid to reduce your risk of abdominal
hernia worsening? Well, surprisingly these are some of the most common exercises.
They're the exercises that exercise or train your upper abdominal muscles or your six pack muscles
that you can see here. Now when these muscles contract, they increase the pressure within your
belly. So they actually squeeze and they actually increase the pressure downwards and outwards
for these are exercises that really need to be avoided. Now some of these exercises
that you can see on screen here exercises like your typical abdominal curl exercises,
particularly your roller ab roller, those exercises are really intense on the abdominal
core. And don't forget some of the other exercises like your Pilates Reformer exercises
that are intensely loaded. And even some of the yoga exercises that you might find like a V set
that actually involve both the legs and the upper body raised off the ground at the same time.
So really important to avoid these types of exercises to optimize your recovery,
and choose the abdominal exercises that I've already shown you earlier in this video.
So I really hope these exercises help you understand which are the best abdominal hernia
exercises to choose for your overall support. Try and do these exercises regularly throughout
the days I've mentioned. And if you found the information helpful, or you'd like me to actually
make more videos along these lines, I welcome your comments and really appreciate a like below
because then YouTube will share the information with other people too that might benefit.
Thanks so much for watching today. Look forward to seeing you in the next video. Goodbye for now.