I’m amazed at the moment about the amount of ladies that don’t know enough about activating their pelvic floor! This is especially concerning for mums after having a baby. I don’t think it is stressed enough that we need to continually work on this area and strengthen it or we are going to be wetting our pants constantly or even worse end up with a prolapse!
The technique I explain in my Pilates classes is:
close the front passage, close the back passage and pull up through the middle
OR
Imaging drawing a ribbon up through the front passage on your out breathe and slowly release it. Never let it completely drop, you need to control the movement in both directions.
Another important thing to remember if you have a weak pelvic floor Do Not Do High Impact Exercise/Classes!!! It will do more damage!
As a PT I was trained in activating the pelvic floor and thought I had it all under control, was I sorely mistaken! A few years ago I was doing an outdoor PT session and made all my clients do some star jumps, omg I had leakage! I never realised it was this bad! So thankfully I was lucky enough to know a Physio that did an ultrasound on my pelvic floor (not an internal one either). I was shown on the ultrasound that I was pushing down my pelvic floor instead of pulling up. My abdominals were taking over as they were strong and my core was very weak! I could see the difference in pushing down and pulling up. God I had it so wrong! So with these newly learnt techniques I got to work and did my exercises as often as possible. Within 6 months I had dramatically strengthened my pelvic floor, no more sneezing and wetting my pants hehe!!
Another interesting bit of info is that when we are ovulating and menstruating our pelvic floor seems to be weaker. This is due to our muscles relaxing to release an egg and to clean out and the end of the month. Has anyone noticed that it’s weaker at these times of the month? I know I certainly did.
So ladies get into the habit of looking after and strengthening your pelvic floor or you will end up with some nasty problems. You can do the exercises anywhere: whilst your driving, eating a meal, before you go to sleep. I’d also recommend that you hold each pelvic floor contraction for 10 secs and do this 10 times with some little pulses in between. Breathe in, breathe out and pull up the pelvic floor. Remember to fully let it relax also.
Pilates has been awesome to help me remember to breathe into it and activate my PF properly. Do it as often as you can, you don’t want to have to wear incontinence pads or have to have a sling put in. Try and prevent it before it’s too late