By Nik Herold of The Fitness Doctors

The other day, Suzy mentioned in her Better Sex With Kegels article, the importance of strengthening your transverse abdominals as part of your conditioning regimen for your pelvic floor muscles. The connection between the TVA muscles and your pelvic floor muscles that Dr. Laura Berman mentions in the transcript within Suzy’s article, is that the pelvic floor naturally tightens when the transverse abdominals are contracted. Indirectly, strengthening the TVA group, helps strengthen the pelvic floor. (And also helps the other muscles in maintaining a flat stomach).

Today I’ll explain a little bit about the TVAs and the other “small” ab muscles and why they are important, and in an upcoming post I’ll give you some exercises you can do to strengthen the TVAs.

Most of the literature on Transverse Abdominal training is for lower back pain.  It’s main purpose is to act as a weight belt for spinal stabilization during major exercises such as dead lifting, squatting, and other big movements.  

TVAs act in conjunction with two other “small” muscle groups in the “inner unit” (think of this as the deepest of the core muscles) of the core such as the multifidi, and the pelvic floor.

The reason we train the TVA (through compression exercises such as drawing the navel towards the spine) is largely because people OVERTRAIN their more superficial muscles in the outer unit (e.g. external obliques, rectus abdominis AKA your Abs, psoas/hip flexors, erector spinae AKA lower back muscles).  

So think of it this way: we do a TON of crunches, side bends, chops and rotations, and situps.  We BELIEVE we are getting our abs stronger–and we are to some degree–but we often miss out on another very important component: the smaller stabilizer muscles.  These muscles include–like I said above–the multifidus, the pelvic floor and the transverse abdominis.

There is a delicate balance that needs to exist between the inner and outer unit to provide optimal spinal stabilization and joint stiffness to avoid injury. Normally, the TVA and other inner unit muscles fire. However, because we jack them up through sitting and poor posture throughout the day, they lose their ability to fire as we get older.  

The nervous system SHOULD be able to fire the inner unit no problem.  We just mess that up and neurologically shut them off. That is why every good training program should incorporate some conditioning exercises for this inner unit of smaller abdominal muscles! Check back for upcoming posts with exercises for this small group of very important muscles!