05/12/2026
Pelvic floor: if you train your ABS wrongly (or if you DON'T train them) you damage yourself! This is why and what to do.
Almost no one connects pelvic floor problems to abdominal problems. Yet the connection is direct, anatomical, and once you understand it completely changes the way you look at training the trunk.
The pelvic floor is not a stand-alone structure. It is the bottom of a pressure system that involves the whole trunk, and the health of that system depends on how the structures that make up it work: the diaphragm above, the pelvic floor below, and the abdominal wall around it.
Imagine a basketball. Its walls hold the internal pressure evenly because they are stretched on all sides equally. If a part of the wall gives way or weakens, the internal pressure does not disappear: it focuses on that area, or worse, it descends towards the point of least resistance.
In the human trunk the point of least resistance is almost always downwards. On the pelvic floor.
Every time intra-abdominal pressure rises, during an effort, cough, sneeze, run, jump, lift weights, the system has to manage it. If the abdominal wall is toned and functions well, that pressure is contained on all sides and the pelvic floor receives only its physiological share, the one it is measured for. If the abdominal wall is weak or doesn’t activate properly, all that pressure goes straight downwards, and the pelvic floor is just running what should be distributed throughout the system.
The central muscle in this mechanism is the transverse of the abdomen, the deepest of the abdominal wall, the one that wraps the trunk like a belt from the inside, and whose main function is exactly this: to hold the pressure laterally, to distribute it, to prevent it from discharging all the way down.
It's not the abdominal re**um that forms the six-pack. These are not external obliques. It’s a deep muscle layer that in most traditional training programs is completely ignored while working on the surface.
And this is where the damage is created.
Surface abdominal exercises, crunches, sit-ups, leg raises performed with extended knees increase intra-abdominal pressure and direct it downwards without activating the inverse. If the pelvic floor is in good condition it can handle it. But if there is already a hypertension, a weakness, a postpartum scar that has altered the mechanics, each repetition becomes a downward spike on a structure that cannot handle it.
Not exercising at all is not the solution: a transverse that is never stimulated becomes progressively less reactive, less able to activate automatically during daily movements, and the pelvic floor becomes without its main protection.
The good news is that transverse and pelvic floor work synergistically: when the transverse activates, the pelvic floor responds automatically. I'm part of the same neuromuscular reflex. This means that a program that includes upside down work also improves the pelvic floor response, not only as a side effect but as a direct consequence of the synergy between the two structures.
Training your abdominal well, paying attention to muscle depth, pressure management, coordinated breathing with movement, is probably the most beneficial thing you can do for long-term pelvic floor health. Much more useful, in many cases, than isolated pelvic floor work itself 💪
If you want to start working on these mechanisms with a comprehensive approach, you can access for FREE the first lessons of "Beyond the Kegel", the course that my collaborator Angela Torretta and I dedicated to the pelvic floor and pelvis.
