How to Assess the Abdominal Wall After Pregnancy & DRA using Telehealth

Who is this Course For?

So you’ve closed your clinic and moved your services to Telehealth.  How do you assess the Abdominal Wall without your hands, through a screen and if you have one, without your ultrasound imaging machine!  I’ve been doing remote consults locally, nationally and internationally for 2 years now and have developed keen observational skills to determine:

1. Is the person’s posture impacting the performance (recruitment strategy) of the abdominal wall muscles?
2. How to tell if the deep system (mainly transversus abdominis) is integrated and responding to the recruit, or connect, cue? for whatever task you are evaluating?
3. Is there balance, or over-activation, between the superficial abdominals (external oblique, internal oblique, and/or rectus abdominis) and if not, is the recruitment strategy creating excessive intra-abdominal pressure and possibly overloading the pelvic floor and pelvic contents (uterus and bladder)?
4. Is the integrated whole abdominal strategy optimal for transferring loads between the thorax, low back and pelvis in standing, sitting and supine tasks?
5. Does the individual have a diastasis rectus abdominis (DRA) and with the strategies they are using to recruit the abdominal muscles are they able to generate tension in the fascial sheaths of rectus abdominis and the linea alba to effectively transfer load across the midline. In other words can they rotate well?

This pre-recorded webinar will cover:

1. Brief anatomy review of the 3 levels of transversus abdominis – this is critical to know for what we will be looking for in the assessment of recruitment strategies
2. Brief anatomy review of the fascia of the rectus sheaths, aponeuroses of the lateral abdominals and how they form the specific structure of the linea alba – this is critical to understand for knowing why recruitment of transversus abdominis is so critical for restoring function for trunk rotation
3. Standing assessment for recruitment strategies of the abdominal wall – video examples of different strategies will be shown
4. Basic tests of how they transfer load in standing (squat and single leg standing) and how we can ‘see’ when regions are functioning well – video examples of both less optimal and more optimal strategies will be shown
5. How to assess the response of the trunk to a single, then double, leg loading task to determine what the deep and superficial abdominals are doing for thoraco-lumbar-pelvic global control.
6. How to visually assess the short head and neck curl-up task and note the impact of different cuing on the performance of the abdominal wall
7. Review stages of training (motor control through to strength and conditioning training) in principles format only

If there is sufficient interest in a followup webinar, I will develop one for self-releases of the superficial trunk muscles (abdominals and long back extensors), how to tell if the various connect cues for the upper, middle or lower abdominals are effective, necessary, or not (not everyone needs to train the deep system), and also we can group practice some of the exercises together! My Akasha studio is empty at the moment so I will be in self-isolation as I do these webinars.

Would really love to help you conduct awesome Telehealth sessions for your postpartum moms who still need our help in this time when the kids are home full time and their loads are unimaginable.