Tips for Training the Pelvic Floor
Happy Women’s Health Week 2021! This week gives women a great opportunity to focus on putting your physical, mental and sexual health first. And Day 1 is all about movement and the importance of exercise.
We all know that part of being healthy is exercise. There are so many benefits that regular exercise has for our bodies and our mental health, and it’s one of the biggest factors in preventing cardiovascular disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes and musculoskeletal pain (to name a few).
So we push ourselves to “find our 30” minutes of exercise, go for the morning walk, join gyms and attend exercise classes. The age of social media has been fantastic for empowering us to exercise from home, using Youtube, Facebook, Instagram and even TikTok to get us out of our chairs and moving.
When it comes to keeping our muscles pumping and our joints moving, we’ve got it covered (usually). But how often do you think of your pelvic floor as a muscle to be trained? Do you know what to do? As women, we often hear about how we should be regularly practicing our pelvic floor exercises (or Kegels). But it turns out that almost half of us don’t know how to correctly perform a pelvic floor contraction! So, let’s learn.
A Quick Overview
The pelvic floor consists of a sling of muscles from your pubic bone to your tailbone. You may know these muscles as your bladder-holding muscles, but they support all your pelvic organs (including your uterus and bowel). When contracted, the pelvic floor squeezes to firmly close the openings of these organs then lifts to provide support.
These muscles are also very important in sexual function and orgasm.
Your pelvic floor works in conjunction to your abdominal wall and diaphragm to form your deep core muscle system. This is immensely important for strength and stability of our low back, hips and pelvic support muscles.
So How do I Contract?
Start by picking a comfortable position – most people start with sitting but you can do these lying down with your feet bent onto the ground (crook lying), lying on your side, on hands and knees or in standing. There are hundreds of ways to cue a pelvic floor contraction, including:
Trying to stop the flow of urine
Draw in/lifting up a tampon
Imagining the vaginal canal as a straw and trying to suck up a milkshake
Holding in a fart
You should be able to both contract and relax your pelvic floor muscles without using any other muscle groups. Common compensatory movements include:
Breath holding
Squeezing your glutes
Squeezing your thighs together
Clenching through your abdominal muscles
If you don’t feel like you are able to contract your pelvic floor muscles correctly, have trouble relaxing them or even if you can feel anything happening, you can book in with a women’s health physiotherapist for an individualized assessment and prescription of a pelvic floor muscle training program.
