Treating Hernia's with the Tupler Technique

A few of my recent clients have hernia's, so I will post their progress. I had a client this summer (she had 3 children, last two were 18 mos old twins) who had a small umbilical hernia and after the first time she trained with me, reported her hernia went in and stayed in within two days of completing her exercises and wearing her splint. I regret not taking before and after pictures.

I have a current client who has done the program for six weeks. She had a hernia as well, and now the opening at her belly button is closed except 1/2 or 1/4 of a finger tip area. Her organs were completely easy to palpate above and especially below the umbilicus and now, only muscle is felt with light palpation.

Another current client, who did the exercises for 1 week and was able to decrease the diameter vertically and horizontally by 1/3, depth by roughly 1/2, and the appearance of the hernia completely changed. You could visually see it when she lied on her back, but now you cannot. she is a personal trainer and had to alter her way of training, cutting out any exercises in which she could not keep her transverse "in" at the 5th floor (belly button to her spine) and did 5 or more sets of Tupler contractions a day last week.

I currently have another client, who was scheduled for surgery last week, and was going to see me afterwards to strengthen her core. I suggested she try the Tupler Technique first, before going under the knife and having a whole new set of issues to deal with. Even if she is not able to heal her hernia, she would know how to use her core correctly and avoid undoing the surgery. I will keep you posted with her results!! She lives two hours away, so I am skyping her inbetween visits here, and will see her again in a few weeks.

Why splint?? How to apply the diastasis rehab splint.

The diastasis rehab splint: is it necessary???
If your diastasis is 3 fingers or more, you will definitely want to wear a splint! This will help approximate the two sides of the rectus abdominus, putting the connective tissue in a better position to heal and make your exercises even more effective and help you to heal and close the gap much faster. The muscles will also be stronger and you will get more out of your exercises if you wear it.

This video will help you know how to put it on correctly and help you problem solve if you have been wearing the splint, but having some trouble with it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njRfzkarEkw&feature=youtu.be

Showing less in the third pregnancy, is it possible???

After contemplating why I was showing so early, I think I can attribute it to 3 things:
1) I was pregnant - thus, my body had extra relaxin to help make things nice and stretchy especially at any weak spots in the body, like weak joints or at the belly button where there is a weak spot in the connective tissue.
2) I was doing modified push-ups in bootcamp class - MANY of them! I was one of few doing girly knee push-ups, because I felt I could not keep my transverse muscle all the way the the spine (a key to this technique)0 while doing regular ones.
3) I was doing lots of PLANKS. I was doing them for 10 seconds because that is all I felt I could do and still keep my abs ALL the way in - and the instructor wanted us to do them for 1 min at a time!

So there is my formula Relaxin + push-ups + planks = full blown difastasis.

This is why I now recommend for all my clients to AVOID exercises performed in hands and knees or any bellydown position! You have ALL the weight of the organs on the connective tissue that you are trying to heal. All this weight on my stretchy relaxin filled connective tissue was too much and quickly gapped my abdominal separation. Even though I felt I could keep my muscles to my spine with my modified techniques, I could not keep the weight off my connective tissue.

I though I was doing better than the rest in my class - because when they did these exercises unmodified I could see their organs LITERALLY drooping towards the ground due only thin connective tissue over their organs instead of protective muscles.

Soooo..... to close my story, I have been extremely vigilant in my Tupler Contraction exercises, avoided exercising in a bellydown position, and I was showing LESS at 2-3 months than at 6 weeks! And, I continued to not show for quite a while, and continually recieved comments about this from those who knew I was pregnant.

Now, I am 8 months pregnant, and although VERY short torsoed, I still get comments about my belly being small. I would definitely attribute this to the exercises and splinting this ENTIRE pregnancy. This has made SUCH a diffference!! I have had much less uterine ligament twinges/pain as well. My back has felt better, and I have not had trouble rolling over in bed like in past pregnancies, as the splint gives me great support.

Usually pregnant women show more and sooner with each pregnancy, and the ONLY way I know to reverse that is the TUPLER TECHNIQUE® which is what I teach here at Reclaim Your Core!