Pelvic Floor Wellness

Pelvic floor muscle exercises are exercises you can learn to help your pelvic floor muscle function. They aim to improve pelvic floor muscle strength, relaxation, endurance, power, timing, and coordination. Kegels are a form of pelvic floor exercise where your muscles are contracted and then relaxed. It’s important to note that pelvic floor muscle training goes beyond doing Kegels and can be incorporated into exercises that you may already be doing.

In order for pelvic floor muscle training to be effective, pelvic floor muscle function should be directly assessed by a qualified healthcare professional, and a progressive and supervised program tailored to your individual needs and concerns should be followed.

The most basic pelvic floor exercises (and the ones people are most familiar with) are Kegels. To do this, contract your pelvic floor like you are stopping yourself from passing gas and stopping the flow of urine. This should feel like a tighten and a lift. Try holding for 2-3 seconds, then relax. Make sure you relax completely and repeat this up to ten times. Next practice holding for longer - hold for up to 10 seconds and repeat this ten times. Finally, you can practice doing a quick contraction, followed by a full relaxation, and repeat ten times. Do these three times per day. It is recommended to do these exercises for 3 months to improve awareness and basic strength for the pelvic floor muscles.

If you are unsure or having trouble finding these muscles, you are not alone. Research has shown that up to 50% of women do a pelvic floor contraction incorrectly. Contact a pelvic health physiotherapist in your community to learn Kegels correctly.

Some things to note:

✗ Don't contract your pelvic floor while you're peeing. The toilet is not the time to do your pelvic floor exercises!

✗ Don't tighten your buttocks, thighs, or tummy muscles while you're doing your pelvic floor exercises. These muscles should stay fairly relaxed.

✗ Don't hold your breath.

Once you’ve achieved basic strength of the pelvic floor muscles, it is important to address other factors that affect your pelvic floor function and to integrate the pelvic floor into higher-level exercise.

Core exercises

Core muscles include your pelvic floor muscles, diaphragm (the large muscle located under your lungs that helps you breathe), and the muscles of your abdominal wall and lower back. They are closely linked and coordinated to provide support for your skeleton and pelvic and abdominal organs.

Having a strong core is important, but if your muscles aren’t coordinating with your pelvic floor you could start to develop pelvic floor symptoms. Make sure to work with a professional trained in pelvic health to learn how to do these exercises properly, especially if you’re recovering from pelvic or abdominal surgery, if you’re having pelvic floor symptoms, or if you’ve ever been pregnant.

Posture

Paying attention to your posture may help decrease some of your pelvic floor symptoms. There is some debate about how much posture can affect the pelvic floor, and it is an area of active research.

Lifting

Lifting heavy weights tends to get a bad reputation when it comes to the pelvic floor. If you do a lot of heavy lifting, especially if your occupation involves repetitive heavy lifting, this could put a lot of pressure on your pelvic floor and affect how it functions. On the other hand, lifting weights is a great way to build muscle mass, which is important for your overall health. It’s important to learn how to lift, so you can minimize the pressure on your pelvic floor:

1. Contract the pelvic floor as you lift

2. Remember to breathe out as you lift

Depending on the details of what and how you’re lifting and what kind of pelvic floor symptoms you are experiencing, there may be other pieces of advice that will be helpful to you. A pelvic health physiotherapist or trainer can help to modify or retrain the way you lift, to minimize the impact on your pelvic floor.

Running and Jumping

You may not realize there is a problem with your pelvic floor until you try running or jumping. Because these activities involve a lot of impact and up and down movement, your pelvic floor muscles must be extra strong and coordinated to function well. For some people, it is possible to work on the strength and coordination of the muscles to get to the point where they can run or jump without symptoms; for others, these activities may need to be modified. For example, you may do well by decreasing to a run/walk rather than a continuous run or modify skipping so you hop from one foot to the other, rather than skipping with both feet together. Work with your pelvic health physiotherapist or trainer to develop an individualized training program to help you get back to doing those activities that you love to do.