Sep 16, 2024Pelvic floor training to improve athletic performance
Want to improve your athletic performance? You might want to consider strengthening your pelvic floor.
The pelvic floor muscles are part of your core and can contribute to overall strength and stability.
A recent story from Mass General Brigham spoke with a sports medicine doctor about how pelvic floor training can improve athletic performance. Below is an excerpt from the Mass General Brigham story.
“The core can be thought of as an anatomical box composed of numerous muscle groups, including the abdominals in the front, the paraspinal and gluteal muscles in back, the diaphragm at the top, and the hip girdle and pelvic floor muscles at the bottom,” explains Jennifer Hopp, MD, a Mass General Brigham sports medicine doctor.
Dr. Hopp leads the Women’s Sports Medicine Program at the Wentworth-Douglass Hospital Portsmouth Outpatient Center. She explains where the pelvic floor is located and how athletes can strengthen their pelvic floor to improve their athletic performance.
Athletes who strengthen their pelvic floor muscles can improve several parts of their overall athletic performance. These muscles help improve strength.
Strengthening your pelvic floor will increase your strength and lumbopelvic stability, which allows for improved coordination and power through your upper and lower extremities.
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Higher core and spinal stability provide a more stable base, which allows the force generated by the upper or lower extremity muscles to efficiently transform into work. When the core is unstable, it will absorb the force generated. This means less force transforms into work.
“Research has shown that baseball pitchers with better lumbopelvic control demonstrated better accuracy and endurance, or innings pitch,” says Dr. Hopp. “Other research has proven that improved core strength can improve swing stability and velocity of golf clubs, tennis rackets, or bats.”
To read the full story from Mass General Brigham, click here.
