Lake City Physical Therapy and the Hayden CrossFit crew got together last Thursday night for a night of education and hands-on learning. The topic was pelvic health and the athletic woman. Crossfitters are an incredibly driven group of people and their desire to excel at high levels of physical performance is motivating. Our desire is to be able to teach good muscle motor control patterns so that they are efficient and consistent with no injuries.

The National Institute of Health reported that one-third of all women will have pelvic pain at some time in their life. It will often present with back, hip or leg dysfunction or with issues related to incontinence, bowel constipation or sexual pain. Crossfitters have an even higher incidence of pelvic dysfunction due to the heavy loads they are lifting and the speed at which they train. Over sixty percent of all women crossfitters reported their bladder leaked while they participated in their sport and they usually didn't tell anyone.

Here is the thing: we have made this whole muscle training thing too complicated. Really, all we need is a good, healthy brain to tell the muscles what to do. The idea is that the brain is actually the most powerful tool when it comes to training the body. When the brain engages first, the body has this ability to learn easy training patterns that facilitate the necessary motor control patterns for simple to complex tasks.

In Charles Duhigg's new book "Smarter Faster Better," he reminds us that managing how you think is more important than what you think. How you think is what determines your course of action. How you see what you will accomplish establishes a successful workout regimen. How you feel will give you the motivation to actually do it without any hesitation. These things make the difference in our everyday life choices.

"It's easier to motivate ourselves when we feel as if we power the choices we make", says Duhigg, "you're in charge of your destiny."

The same principles apply to training the body. How you train is everything. If there is a weakness, you systematically go back to the basic training, to re-establish the system. How do you do this? By learning the basic principles that establish good movement patterns from people who know and understand them.

Kinesiology is the study of movement, and that is what I taught at Loma Linda University, School of Physical Therapy for seven years. You have to know normal patterns of movement first, then observe the patterns you see before you and break them down to rebuild them back up again. All high level athletes have to do this throughout their training regimes, especially if they add more weight, increase endurance or do more sophisticated patterns of movement.

The brain is a key part here, because the brain can visualize the activity and see the muscle doing its job. You just have to slow down enough to have the brain facilitate it, then you can power back up to speed. So decide now to use your brain power to reboot the system.

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Sheree DiBiase, PT, is the owner of Lake City Physical Therapy, and she and her staff are trained movement specialists. Come see how to reboot the system using your brain power. Contact our Hayden office at (208) 762-4201, Spokane Valley at (509) 891-2623, and our Coeur d'Alene office at (208) 667-1988.