Last week we had a great few days down at the therapy expo. It was a great event, and brought together a lot of different professions – physios, osteopaths, sports therapists, chiros, and strength and conditioning coaches.

We had a few talks over the 2 days and I was humbled to see there was standing room only for my diaphragm and pelvic floor talk. I’ve spoken about the importance of these tissues in a previous episode, but to quickly recap these tissues are extremely important to assess for cases of MSK pain.

For example, when we go to touch our toes, the first thing that we need to be able to do is depress the rib-cage. To do this successfully we need to be able to bring our diaphragm through a full range of motion (the diaphragm will lengthen as the ribcage depresses). As our diaphragm ascends, our pelvic floor will also ascend.

So when we can bring the ribcage and diaphragm through a full range of motion we can also indirectly affect the tissues of the pelvic floor.

When we think about our patient with back pain who can’t bend over to put their socks on in the morning, these tissues are very important to assess. If there’s a history of stress, emotional events etc, this becomes even more important when we realise the effect that these can have on the respiratory system.

Listen to the podcast to hear my full talk in detail, or drop me a line if you want a copy of the key points 🙂

Dave