How To Look After Your Pelvic Floor | Milk & Love

When I was pregnant with my first baby a family member (you know who you are!) introduced me to pelvic floor exercises, and told me I should probably start doing them daily now that I was pregnant, to avoid wetting my pants in the future. OMG. Peeing my pants?! Horrific.

Funnily enough, I thought about it, and I probably gave it a go for about a week. But like most things, over time the urgency to avoid incontinence and my ability to remember to do them waned. Every now and then, I’d remember with a start, and do a couple, before forgetting again. Does that mean I’m going to end up with a wee problem?

What are pelvic floor muscles anyway?

Your pelvic floor muscles are a firm and thick group of muscles that stretch from your tailbone to your public bone, and across between your sitting bones. Basically they act like a strong trampoline to support your pelvic organs, including your bladder, bowel and uterus. In its simplest version, as you get older, the muscles weaken and you end up with issues such as incontinence.

We are all being taught to do our pelvic floor exercises, or kegels to strengthen these muscles to help prevent incontinence. However there is some research to suggest that about 50% of women don’t do their exercises the right way anyway, and can be making things worse. And then there are the teachings of Katy Bowman, the director of the Restorative Exercise Institute, who has studied biomechanics (how your body moves and works), and developed her own online courses and classes to help retrain us all about how we think about our body, and how we move.

Why don’t kegels work?

If you read through Katy’s work, and interviews with Katy you’ll be shocked to hear that women who have never had a baby, and men, are equally affected by pelvic floor disorder, it’s just that child birth can accelerate the weakening.

Even more shocking is reading Katy say that kegels don’t prevent pelvic floor disorder. 

Let me say that again. Kegels don’t prevent pelvic floor disorder. In fact, Katy has been quoted as saying that a lack of glutes combined with kegels can CAUSE pelvic floor disorder. What is a woman to do?

Can the pelvic floor be TOO tight?

Even more interesting, I had a discussion with the lovely Dahlas from Body Fabulous recently who shared with me the increasing incidences of “over active pelvic floor - causing many women to carry high and have breech births. This can be contributed to having a very high stress lifestyle and not relaxing and releasing the muscle. Also putting too much stress on the pelvic floor with un-safe exercise during pregnancy”

As I understood it the problem is that many women these days are holding a lot of stress in their bodies, causing tight pelvic floor muscles, which in turn, is causing issues with childbirth. Some of these are babies being carried too high and not descending into the pelvis in preparation for birth, and also of breech babies.

It’s all too much! What’s the answer?

The answer, as always, lies in having balance, and approaching your body health as a whole and not an isolated exercise. Your pelvic floor muscles are like any other muscles in your body, and need to be exercised AND relaxed. Kegels can be part of your exercise regime, but make sure you're doing them properly, and relaxing them as well.

Exercises that work your core muscles and posture will help to keep everything working together well. Squats (done correctly, more tips here), lengthening through the backs of your legs with good stretching, doing plank poses to help get your core muscles working, along with avoiding sitting for long periods, and avoiding wearing heels (!!) as much as possible. If you're having any leakage, get onto it asap and work with a pelvic floor specialist to help correct your pelvic floor before it gets worse.

For more great information on having great alignment and keeping everything working well, I’d also recommend Katy’s $5 app "Down There for Women"  or check out Katy’s website for more informative info on how to keep your body working well!

PS. If you have painful periods, I'd also recommend reading this article by Katy