Pelvic Floor Exercises
If your symptoms of urine leakage usually happen after coughing, sneezing, laughing, or lifting heavy objects, your doctor may ask you to perform pelvic floor exercises.
Pelvic floor exercises are designed to strengthen the muscles located around the bladder opening. By exercising these muscles, you may improve your symptoms. In order to get the maximum benefit from these exercises, it is very important that you perform them correctly.
How to Identify Your Pelvic Floor Muscles
You can identify the muscles located around the bladder opening by starting and stopping your urine stream. If you are able to stop your stream you are using your pelvic floor muscles. Stopping your urine stream is only a way to identify the pelvic floor muscles. Flow-stopping should not be used as an exercise
Another way to identify the muscles used for pelvic floor exercises is to tighten the muscles around your back passage (as when holding back wind or at the end of a bowel movement). Because they are part of the same muscle group, the muscles around the back passage always work with the muscles located around the bladder opening.
A proper pelvic floor squeeze also lifts upwards as it squeezes. You can use a hand mirror to see if you can notice an upward movement when you contract your pelvic floor muscles.
When you are doing a pelvic floor muscle contraction, it helps to pull your bellybutton in towards your spine at the same time. This tummy action will help you to achieve a get a better pelvic floor muscle contraction.
When muscles are weak, it’s often difficult to know if they are actually working or not. It may take several tries to locate these muscles. Try not to use your stomach, buttock, or leg muscles. See your health care provider if you have difficulty identifying your pelvic floor muscles.
Slow or Quick Pelvic Floor Exercises?
There are different types of pelvic floor exercises: the quick pelvic floor exercises and the slow pelvic floor exercises. Every pelvic floor muscle squeeze needs to be done as strongly as you possible can. This is called a maximal squeeze and it is the ONLY way that muscle strength can be improved.
In performing the quick exercises, the pelvic floor muscles are rapidly tightened and relaxed. During the slow exercises, the muscles are tightened for 6 seconds and then relaxed. Try to complete six maximal slow squeezes, three times a day as well as six fast squeezes. Pelvic floor exercises may be done with other activities, such as watching television, ironing, or relaxing. Because it may take several weeks to notice an improvement, it is important that you continue doing these exercises. Regular periodic follow-ups with your physician will assess the benefits of these exercises as well as provide the opportunity to review your pelvic floor exercises technique.
If your symptoms do not improve, ask your physician, nurse, or therapist to help you. Many individuals need a health care provider’s help to identify the correct muscles to use, and help them tailor an exercise program to suit each individual.
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