Can you connect with your pelvic floor? Do you have pelvic floor symptoms?

If you focus on the muscles around your openings (around your anus and/or vagina if you have one) do you feel these muscles doing anything when you breathe or move around? 

You can lie on your side and feel towards the inside of your sit bone to get a sense, or standing and reaching from the front to the inside of your sit bone to self assess.  Do you feel a slight movement here?  

If not, you might have a tense pelvic floor!  If you feel no movement happening here then your pelvic floor might not be relaxing.  This is actually really common and just not talked about as much as  a “weak pelvic floor”.  Doing more kegels is the wrong advice if you're not feeling movement here.  

Goal number 1, is we need to learn to lengthen, also known as relaxing our pelvic floor. A tight muscle can have good muscle strength, it can be weak underneath the tightness, or can have poor coordination.  This is the key to improve pelvic floor function and be symptoms free.

Goal number 2, once we learn to relax and let the muscle go, then we want to make sure we have adequate strength and coordination of the muscle during functional tasks including lifting, jumping, running, sneezing/coughing, and bending.  

Goal number 3, we want to continue to push activity to challenge our body without pelvic floor symptoms (pain, leakage, heaviness etc).  This is done by adding higher level tasks like jumping, running, lifting, etc or tasks appropriate to what you want to be able to do into your routine. We want to train for what we want to be able to do but with good technique and form.  

If you think of a muscle that is constantly holding tension like your neck, it doesn’t feel great, right? The pelvic floor is the same.  If it is constantly held in a tense position it can cause pain, or it can just not work as well.  If you think of a sneeze or high pressure activity, if the pelvic floor is already tense it typically can’t respond as well which may result in leakage or a feeling of weakness/threatening to leak sensation. 

Do the self assessment activity and see what you feel! If you feel nothing, consider practicing to see if you can get your muscles to relax with your inhale.  As we inhale our pelvic floor should lengthen and relax.  As you exhale our muscles are going to tighten just slightly.  If you can’t feel this happening, seek out help, especially if you're having any symptoms of pain, leakage, inability to hold your pee/poop, heaviness/pressure, or not feeling like you're emptying your pee/poop fully after going to the bathroom.  

You do not have to live with these symptoms.  You deserve to feel confident in your body no matter what stage of life you are in.