How to set your pelvic floor up for success in the future?

Our pelvic floor is intrinsically linked to our main breathing muscle, the diaphragm. The more our diaphragm can flatten down as we inhale, and arch back up as we exhale, the more our pelvic floor will move. This is essential to understand for good quality pelvic floor exercises.

Pelvic floor exercises or kegels are an exercise that isolates just the pelvic floor muscles. This is a great way of checking your control and strength. But the pelvic floor rarely works in isolation in our actual lives. It gives a gentle contraction as we walk around with the baby on our hip trying to cook dinner, it gives a strong contraction as our abdominal muscles draw in for a powerful sneeze, it relaxes to give us enjoyable sex. We have to see pelvic floor health as a whole body issue, so learn how to strengthen the pelvic floor in whole body movements.

The pelvic floor has been given its job description and it doesn’t appreciate an increase in workload, like forcing out a dry ball of poo. If we cause chronic strain to these muscles then they will get overwhelmed and injured like any other muscle in the body. Here are 2 common causes of strain.

The pelvic floor muscles are just a single group of muscles in that pelvis, there’s a whole neighbourhood of muscles in that area and they work better as a team. Developing great core strength by training the abdominal muscles helps to regulate abdominal pressure. The adductors, hamstrings, hip flexors and rotators all create balance and force that make the pelvic floors job easier.

It’s easy to forget postpartum that pregnancy caused us to get weaker everywhere, we can’t move as easily when heavily pregnant and need to rest early post partum. This strength doesn’t automatically return; you must exercise to build back up. I regularly see women in clinic who have done their Kegels religiously with no improvement in pelvic floor symptoms, but weakness elsewhere is the issue.

I want to empower you to help yourself, which is why I love writing these articles. We also need to know when to accept help from an expert. Our bodies are unique and therefore advice for you and your symptoms are vital. Don’t pass it off as ‘it only happens on the 2nd sneeze’ or ‘I just won’t go on the bouncy castle’. Intervening at the start is a lot easier than when a symptom has become more established. See a Pelvic Health Physiotherapist for physical therapy. You can do this through your GP or self-fund privately.