There are three types of hernias: inguinal, umbilical, and hiatal. Learn how to avoid getting a hernia from a certified personal trainer in this health video.
UNIQUE ANDERSON: Hello. My name is Unique Anderson and I'm a certified personal trainer. Okay. In this clip, we're going to talk about hernias. Oh, hernia, it's crazy. A hernia is when part of your digestive system like your large intestine kind of slips into your scrotum or your inguinal canal. We're not going to talk about that. Let's just throw that out there, all right? The main thing is that when your stomach, your guts, kind of just fall down into your lower abdomen. That's what a hernia is all about. We got three types. We have an umbilical hernia, when this actually kind of protrudes out. It kind of looks like a little lump here, all right? Then you have an inguinal hernia, when it's actually more into the lower abdomen cavity of your abs. Then you have a hiatal hernia. Hiatal hernia is usually--there are really no symptoms with a hiatal hernia. It's most of the time when you have like a heartburn or when you feel like you're about to vomit, that's when you have a hiatal hernia and a lot of people don't even know they have those. It's usually prevalent in people that are overweight and over 40. Inguinal hernias usually happen to you guys out there. Women can do it too, though, don't get me wrong. But most of the time, when you're lifting an extremely load and you go. Believe it or not, when you're putting any pressure where you're constricting your air vessels, your air cavity, meaning to hold your breath like a push-up. If you're here and you're holding your breath the whole time and trying to force it through, you're actually putting in about 1,500 pounds per square inch in your body and that's enough to actually just have a hernia. So rule of thumb is that when you're lifting anything that's pretty heavy and you automatically have like a lower abdominal pain, like a lower abdomen pain, 9 times out of 10, it's a hernia. The main thing we can focus on is really I can't tell you how to treat a hernia but I can tell you how to prevent a hernia. And the main thing we're going to focus on is diaphragmatic breathing. A lot of guys, a lot of athletes, a lot of women, we all have problems with breathing. We kind of tend to forget about breathing when we're working out. So the first thing you want to do is just of kind of like get on a couch or you can get on a floor, for my instance, I'm getting in the mud, and we're going to lay down. And what diaphragmatic breathing is when you're breathing in, your stomach pushes out. So mainly like when you're taking a deep breath in, your stomach doesn't come in, it's pushing out. It's going the opposite direction of your normal breathing; and then when you're breathing out and exhaling out, your stomach comes in. So this is how your stomach should look. I'm breathing in here and then I am pressing out and bringing the stomach in. I'm breathing out and my stomach is coming in. One more time, I'm breathing in. My stomach rises up and then I'm pressing out bringing my stomach in and breathing out. Also, what I had talked about in a couple of other clips is ab planes. We got a side plane that you can do. Focus on strengthening the muscles around your internal and external obliques, focusing on your breathing, the same deal, the diaphragmatic breathing. The main thing you want to do is make sure that you don't hold your breath and don't lift something that you really can't lift. Think about this, if you try to lift a load that's extremely heavy and you can't spot it--you can't do it on your own, then you shouldn't be really doing it. Because to be quite honest, you're not even going through the full range of motion that you need to anyway and you don't want to have a hernia, because hernias can be very, very painful and they're very, very hard to get past because you're going to always be thinking about that in the back of your head.
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