Your pelvic floor and your breathing are vitally important to how your core works in the saddle…

The core is made up of the diaphragm muscle at the top, the abdominal muscles at the front and sides, the pelvic floor muscles at the bottom and the spinal muscles at the back. These muscles form a cylinder from your ribs right down to your pelvic floor. You can see in the image how your pelvic floor and diaphragm move in synergy when we breathe in and out. It acts a little bit like a piston to help expel the air from your lungs.

The whole core needs to work together for breathing and to help stabilise the spine during riding. If we have dysfunction in one part it will affect the whole mechanics. Individual muscle tensions and weaknesses, injuries or pain can cause abdominal or pelvic floor issues by making us compensate with other body parts. This causes parts of our body that should be helping us to breathe become ineffective. Often a person’s neck, jaw, shoulders and diaphragm are working overtime to compensate.

Dysfunction in the pelvic floor can be caused by:

• Pregnancy
• Pelvic Injury
• Pain
• Stress

If we have an imbalance from left to right side in the pelvic floor muscles, this can cause crookedness and