How To | Doing Your Pelvic Floor Exercises

A recent conversation surrounding pelvic floor exercises, and whether women actually take the time to do them, has prompted a little post from me about how you can keep yours healthy and strong. Apparently there are a lot of pelvic floor prudes

I can not imagine not doing my pelvic floor exercises and I can not stress the importance of doing them enough. I am not a medical practitioner in any way shape or form, and none of this is medical advice, but this is a post about my pelvic floor background and how I’ve gotten in back into good shape after two children.

After I’d had Toby, which was a rather traumatic delivery, even before they’d stitched up my episiotomy cut the registrar leant over to tell me that she was concerned about the lack of tone around my muscles “down there” and that she would be referring me to physiotherapy to have it monitored. Let’s not go into the fact that she must’ve been so concerned about that, that she actually stitched me up on the wonk. Anyway..

After months and months of waiting for an appointment, I finally got one through. However, I was already pregnant again and due to the “board of physiotherapy people”, I was unable to be examined. Because it’s an internal examination, sometimes requiring a lovely penis shaped device, rather than just their fingers, they don’t allow anything internal in case it triggers a failure of pregnancy, and so they remove any responsibility of that by not offering one. Great. Back to square one.

In the year that I waited for an appointment I had been struggling a lot with continence issues. I was wearing sanitary towels to play netball, because liners were not enough, and even they were soaked because you know… jumping up and down. I could barely hold my wind if I coughed, sneezed or my legs, for whatever reason, were quite far apart – no, not like that.

These had improved slightly, but after falling pregnant again, the pressure obviously builds up again. So after I had Ted, I had around 8 months of physiotherapy. Now, I finally had my internal examination and was deemed that on a scale of 1-10, I was around a 2-3, which was pretty bad. It basically meant that I was barely holding my pelvic floor against gravity and so I was put on quite an intense course to try and get this back up. The below outlines parts of the programme I had, what you can do to improve your pelvic floor and how to actually execute your pelvic floor exercises correctly.

Improving Your Pelvic Floor

Obviously, there really is only one way to do it. And that’s by exercising the muscle little and often. There are other ways, like with weighted cones, expensive gadgets and the such, but I’ve managed to get my pelvic floor back up to a 7-8 on the scale just by doing the standard pelvic floor exercises. Don’t get me wrong, if there was a product out there that did all the work for me, I’d definitely give it a go, and I’m more than willing to try and get my pelvic floor up to an 8-9 though I don’t think it’ll ever be a 10 again.

Good Pelvic Floor Technique

Ok, so. You must start sitting down. Do not go straight into pelvic floor training standing up, unless you do it regularly. You won’t gain much from doing that straight away. While you’re reading this just pretend you’re stopping yourself from having a wee. You should feel like you’ve isolated one muscle, though it can sometimes feel like you’re moving another one. It kind of feels like the muscle right at the bottom of your bum cheek when you’re sat down.

Secondly, just pretend to try and stop yourself from having a poo. Totally different muscle, totally different feeling. Now, pretend to stop your wee and poo at the same time. It kind of feels like the middle of your bum cheeks are being drawn in.

Now, do them together. Stop yourself from weeing, and then pooing and hold it all in one big movement. Once you’ve got that try and draw it up as high as you can. That my friends, is your pelvic floor muscle. It’s pretty long and runs from the front to the back, it’s kind of like a sling that holds everything in place. I know I’ve got mine right because it feels unnatural and my belly feels like it’s being sucked in. I think anyone could tell if I was doing my pelvic floor. I’ve either got a startled look on my face or my eyebrows go up and down with the movement and concentration.

Do not tense your abs when you’re doing your pelvic floor. Let it hang loose over your trousers if you’ve got it, seriously this is the time when you want to flaunt it because sucking in your tummy does nothing but make it harder.

My Little Pelvic Floor Exercise Programme

Now this is just what I was assigned, for me and the strength of my pelvic floor. But, I don’t see how it can’t be beneficial for anyone who wants to improve their pelvic floor hold. I did these exercises and these were changed roughly every 4-6 weeks.

I was told to start my exercises sitting down. Because I could only just hold my pelvic floor against gravity, it would have been pointless and a huge struggle for me to do them standing up, so definitely start by sitting. You want to alternate between holding them for short periods of time as well as longer periods of time.

• Hold for one second, release for one second – repeat this 10 times.
• Hold for three seconds, release for two seconds – repeat this 10 times.

If at any time you feel like you can’t hold the longer squeezes, then definitely do two lots of the two second holds. Don’t not do it. If you feel like you can hold it for longer, then do so, but if you feel like the squeeze is not quite right, then release. I added a second on to this every one-two weeks, depending on how I felt I was progressing.

When I was a little more confident and was holding at around four to five seconds, I was offered the choice of making the squeezes a lot longer and/or progressing to a slightly more upright position. Stand over a work surface as though you’re reading the paper. You really want to have the upper part of your body higher than your bottom half, so don’t kind of curl over into a right angle if the surface you’re learning on is lower. If you don’t have a surface, use a wall or chair to balance yourself.

• Still make sure you’re doing the quick squeeze and release, but probably up this to two-three seconds, with a 1-2 seconds rest
• For the longer hold you really want to be holding between four-six seconds with a 2 second release. Again repeat these 10 times.

This is where I progressed quite quickly to a 7-8 second hold and yay me, I can now do them standing up. It’s literally just a case of knowing what you’re capable of, but don’t try and be super amazing and think you can hold it for 10 seconds right away because chances are you won’t be able to. You want to work up to it gently. Remember these need to be done a minimum of 5 times a day to see any improvement. Work out your own little pelvic floor programme if you must, this is merely a guide, and like I said it isn’t medical or professional advice in any capacity.

How Do I Remember When To Do Them?

There are lots of little ways in which you can remember to do your pelvic floor. I used to have an app on my phone that reminded me 5 times a day. And after almost a year of physiotherapy and knowing how hard I worked to get it back into shape, I just remember! Here are some other ways to trigger doing your exercises;

• While the kettle is boiling
• When brushing your teeth
• If you stop at a red light when out driving (thanks Hannah!)
• When feeding the baby
• Every time you go to the toilet (great way to assess if you can actually stop mid wee!)
• When someone asks how often everyone does them on Facebook (isn’t that right, Lucy?)

It’s just little things that might jog your memory! Someone also mentioned that the best time do them, apparently, is during sex (I think you might be the only person Eilidh). Seriously.. if someone is having sex 5 times a day and manages to do their pelvic floor exercises throughout the duration, let me know!

What Else Should I Know?

It’s not just pregnancy that can affect the pelvic floor, as with anything, it also wears with age. So, the more you exercise it now, the better it will be as you get older. If we all did it, it’s unlikely Tena would still be in business!

The pelvic floor doesn’t just affect your bladder. It does help with muscle control for the back passage too!

It doesn’t matter if you’ve only ever had caesarean sections, you still need to do them. Just because the baby didn’t come out that way, you’ve still had all that pressure on the muscle, and like I said the pelvic floor muscle also wears with age, so you don’t even have to have had kids to be doing it!

These are great for post pregnancy recovery as it encourages blood flow to all down below areas, and in men it helps after prostate surgery.

That’s right, these exercises aren’t just for women! We don’t get all the fun because men are affected by this too, it’s just much less known and talked about.

I guess that’s kind of it really. If you have any more questions about it, or want some more clarity on something, I’m more than happy, but otherwise this is the basic bread and butter.