The Biggest Mistakes Women Make When Treating Their Pelvic Floor & Leaking Issues Mistake #2

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 The Biggest Mistake Women Make #2

Mistake # 2

Most women know it’s a good idea to work on their pelvic floor. Some of you refer to them as Kegels and it’s all about making sure you can switch them on and hold them on.

……….and that is about as far as it goes!

It’s SO interesting listening to women talk about their pelvic floor beliefs when they don’t know that I’m a physio and know a whole bunch more about it than them.

They talk a lot about having to go for a pee before they do anything activity wise. They might even joke about how they wouldn’t still dream of going on a trampoline. They also need to just try a little harder and be a bit more religious with their pelvic floor exercises.

Most women believe this ONE Holy Grail pelvic floor exercise is all the answer strengthening your pelvic floor and keeping dry. Now, if you don’t want to be doing much with your daily life and you are happy being very sedentary, sitting in your chair and not moving around then that may be the case. However that’s not what most of you want to do. You want to be running. You wanna be jumping, you wanna be busy, you wanna be playing with your children or grandchildren, you wanna be lifting, you wanna be carrying, you wanna be able to sneeze, cough, hell you need to be able to laugh, and I just don’t mean a little titter you wanna have a great big belly laugh that catches you out by surprise, and you wanna stay dry whilst you do it.  Sound familiar?

Doing this ONE exercise regularly is only PART of the solution. The other part involves PROGRESSING your exercises based on what you WANT and NEED to do…..and stay dry whilst doing!

It’s great you can switch your pelvic floor on when you’re quietly sat in your chair or driving or lying down. But the big challenge comes when you add gravity or when you add extra loading like when you jump or run or you lift and carry something like a child or a plant pot, or your shopping.

Your one little static pelvic floor exercise is NOT going to stand  up to the test when you add bigger loads and forces on your body is it. It’s obvious when said like that right?

Again, pelvic floor exercises need to be progressed to add movement, extra load and to train these muscles to work with all the other muscles in your body. It’s great you can contract your pelvic floor whilst you are sitting still and not moving but that isn’t generally when you leak is it!

You also need to consider that muscles take time to strengthen and you can’t go straight from a very static, isolated pelvic floor exercise (in sitting or lying), to a high load, impact task like running, in one step. Your pelvic floor needs a chance to gradually strengthen up ladies. You’d never expect to be able to go from a 2 kilo bicep curl to a 20 kilo curl in one go would you?  So why think that way about your pelvic floor.

Your expectations are unrealistic here ladies and I’m trying to help you change your mindset and your beliefs so you can get a better outcome by doing things differently this time.

Another thing to add here, is that the problem with your pelvic floor might not be weakness, as you believe. It might be that those poor muscles are working like stink already! More than they should and they don’t know how to relax. If they are working like crazy already and then they need to work more when you cough or sneeze, they just haven’t got anything left in the tank! So you will still leak and believe you just need to do more pelvic floor exercises…..which won’t work in this case and will make matters worse.

So lets change mistake number 2 and start realising that strengthening your pelvic floor back up doesn’t just involve one low load, static exercise. It involves a progressive plan of exercises with gradually increasing loads, forces and movements.

originally posted 2nd Deceber 2021