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if you've seen my video on why a
protruding belly might not be belly fat
then you're aware that there are other
things that influence the visual
presentation
of our gut just to summarize the video
essentially what happens is
your pelvis gets pushed forward which
influences
where air goes and we develop a belly
breathing strategy
so essentially when we breathe in our
belly protrudes out further but it's not
necessarily fat it's probably just a
buildup of
excess air gas and pressure that we
can't get out of our system
i'm not saying you're going to get a
six-pack by learning how to breathe
better and manage
pressure but what i am saying is that
there are other things that influence it
and we can see
some positive changes within the visual
presentation of our belly
if we learn how to manage pressure
better within our ribcage
and our thorax but it's important to
understand where we're starting from
so there's two main presentations that
we see in individuals
who have this sort of protruding belly
or a belly that might look
not the way they want it to the first
one is a beer belly or a beer gut some
people affectionately refer to this as a
one pack
but this is more along the lines of the
video that i described earlier which i
will link down below
with this presentation it looks like
they just have one big round ball in
their gut
and oftentimes this does have a lot of
fat involved within it
but when they do have that forward
pelvis it really does
pronounce the presentation of this one
pack
the individual might have going on if
this person learned to manage pressure
and not have such a strong belly
breathing strategy
they might be able to bring their pelvis
back in space more which would take
pressure off of this individual's gut
which is holding a lot of the gas air
and pressure
we take in when we inhale the second
thing and the thing i want to talk about
more in this video
is a pooch belly now with this
presentation it looks like there's a
slight indentation
within their abdomen around the belly
button area and you see this a lot of
the times in females
the reason for that is females tend to
be more narrow framed individuals they
tend to have
an infrasternal angle that is very
constricted and compressed and it comes
together like this
now what's happening there underneath
the surface and there's a study that
i'll link below that explains this in
more detail
the diaphragm has descended so when we
inhale our diaphragm comes
downward now the problem is is when we
have restrictions in our rib cage
and within our abdomen we have a
diaphragm that gets descended more
and more because it can't ascend upon
exhalation the obliques are muscles of
forced
exhalation so when we exhale for a very
long time out through our mouth
we do that for long enough we're going
to feel our obliques kick in
so what the obliques are trying to do is
they're trying to compress
the infrasternal angle they're trying to
bring it together so they can find a way
to
exhale the air out of their abdomen what
happens when the diaphragm descends and
it stays descended
then the line of the fibers of the
muscle actually change usually it's
relatively vertical
which allows for the descension upon
inhalation ascension upon exhalation
but when we have a diaphragm that's so
far descended
it actually changes the line the fibers
they start to become more horizontal
which changes the pressure gradient
within our abdomen
when this happens the abdomen is
actually sucked
inward and upward and you see this quite
commonly with people who have breathing
disorders like copd
if you couple an anterior pelvic tilt on
top of that you would have an
abdomen that has a pooch belly but it
also protrudes outward
a little bit more than it probably would
when a pelvis is more
neutral are we ever going to be able to
fully resolve this
it's hard to say i think it depends on
genetics and
age those are two huge factors that we
don't have a lot of control over
the younger someone is generally
speaking the more changes we can see
in sort of a visual sense whether that
comes the posture the belly
whatever the case is but what's
important here is it's not the visual
presentation of our belly that matters
that much what's really important is
how much is that restriction how much is
that presentation limiting your ability
to move
and that's what i really care about it's
not always going to be resolved 100 can
it get better
i think so but it just depends on those
other factors
so when addressing this pooch belly we
want to make sure that we can get a full
exhale we want to be able to ace in the
diaphragm as it should upon exhalation
a position that's really good for these
people is an inverted position
what i mean by that is the head is below
the level of the hips
and think about it like this when we
breathe in air is a gas and follows the
path of least resistance so that our
lungs are going to fill from the bottom
to the top as it should due to the
influence of gravity but if i flip
myself upside down
then i'm going to fill my lungs from the
top
to the bottom imagine filling up a water
bottle
with it tipped upside down that's
essentially what's going on
this is also going to allow us to get
air into our rib cage first instead of
potentially our belly
that's going to be advantageous for
restoring function as well
when i'm in this inverted position what
i'm trying to do is directly stack my
pelvis on top of my rib cage
we have this stack going on which means
our diaphragm
our pelvic floor and our thoracic
diaphragm are aligned
that allows for simultaneous
ascension and descension upon inhalation
and exhalation as it should in normal
breathing
if we are not stacked and we have an
anterior pelvic tilt then we lose the
ability to simultaneously ace in and
descend effectively
i'm going to be very relaxed in this
position and i'm just going to breathe
for about
five breaths in through my nose out
through my mouth another position that
is really good for this is a quadruped
position just in all fours position
this is great because gravity's going to
push down on me and expand my chest wall
which will allow me to then
get this expansion up top that's very
much often missing in these types of
individuals
in this quadruped position i want to
have my hands directly underneath my
shoulders and knees directly underneath
my hips
i want to tuck my pelvis posteriorly
slightly and we don't want to
excessively round our back here
we just want to unlock our elbows a
little bit
push the floor away slightly which is
going to bring our rib cage back
and then keep that with our head up
we're going to breathe out through our
mouth with that big open side
and then we're going to inhale through
our nose we don't want to feel our abs
excessively here
we just want to make sure we're getting
full exhales
