During pregnancy, our bodies change a lot. We hear about ligament laxity, weight fluctuations, and of course those hormones. Did you know there are also changes in how our muscles work? The structural changes of hips widening and tucking our tailbone causes our glutes to turn off. Basically, the brain-muscle message loop is disrupted because it isn’t in its ideal length or position to work. I hear from female patients all the time “I can’t fire my glutes”. These muscles are designed to be the powerhouse muscles - for squatting, running, getting up from a chair, keeping you standing for hours at a time. When they’re inhibited and your body can’t use them to the best of their ability, your brain finds a new strategy to get the task accomplished. The hip flexors, back muscles, and piriformis are a few examples of muscles that get overused as an alternative strategy. Sometimes the new strategies work for a while until something breaks down. Research shows these changes can cause issues as many as 8 years later!  

Physical therapy can help you sort out these imbalances and teach you better ways to move. My job is to find where something went wrong (muscle? Joint? Posture? All of the above??), utilize my skills as a manual therapist to start guiding the healing process, and teach you better ways of moving that will help your body, not hurt it. It’s not about giving you a set of exercises. It’s 1:1 dedicated time to teach you how to use your body better.