Exercising with Pelvic Floor Issues
This week’s topic is a delicate one.
Hands up if you’ve ever had, or regularly have an “Oops” moment when you’re exerting yourself, either in a daily activity like laughing (I hope laughing is a daily thing for you 😂) or when doing exercise or a high impact activity. You know, that feeling of momentarily losing control of your pelvic floor.
Leakage and/or pelvic floor discomfort is far more common than you would think. Most women will heal well after pregnancy, provided that they don’t rush into exercise faster than their body allows them too. Thankfully our new mums have a lot more access to specialist health care support these days to help them heal without some of the longer term discomfort that earlier generations had to put up with.
Then menopause comes along. 😫
The Estrogen hormone is a major player in our muscle strength and our muscle ‘bounce-back’ or elasticity. Sadly, this hormone reduces significantly during perimenopause and menopause and is the key hormonal reason why women lose so much strength at this life stage.
So when we ‘fitness-types’ talk about how important strength training is at this life stage, we’re not kidding! And we're not talking about aesthetics. The loss of muscle elasticity is also a major reason why we become more injury prone and why all our muscles, including our pelvic floor muscles start to sag. After all, these pelvic muscles have a massive daily job in holding up and in, all our internal organs.
The solution: Exercise your pelvic floor. Like every other muscle, if we don’t use it, we will lose it.
I’m not talking about kegels here (although kegels are important for teaching these muscles not only to contract, but just as importantly, to release and consciously relax).
What I am talking about is how to do an exercise in a way that works WITH your pelvic floor, rather than against it; how to do everyday exercises and movements without that fear of losing it.
There are 3 things you need to do, and I go over these in this week’s video:
1) How to engage your core at the right point in an exercise
2) How to manage your breathing at various points of an exercise **
3) Practice this to the point that it becomes normal for you – which is another reason why exercise like Pilates, which is breath focused, is so important at this life stage.
I also explain the why, as I’m a firm believer in having body awareness and understanding why your body moves or reacts to movement in a certain way. Let me know how you go and whether this helps you. Please also share this with other friends who might find this valuable.
VERY IMPT: If incontinence or prolapse are issues for you, please see a healthycare provider who is a pelvic floor specailist. We have a few good pelvic floor physiotherapists locally who have additional postgraduate qualifications in this area (let me know if you would like recommendations), and I'm sure there there will be someone near you.