During pregnancy and child birth a lot of strain is put on the pelvic floor muscles. This muscle group is deep in the pelvis and supports the weight of the baby before birth. It is important that you prepare your body for child birth with pelvic floor exercises.
Pelvic Floor Exercises
Pelvic floor exercises are designed to target the essential muscles in the pelvic region. These muscles are rarely exercised properly during the average fitness workout. This means even if you are generally fit your pelvic muscles could still be weak and lack tone.
Pelvic floor exercises are recommended for anyone planning a pregnancy. It only takes a few weeks to start toning up these muscles with pelvic floor exercises. This will benefit you considerably during pregnancy and will also help during the strain of childbirth itself.
Problems with Weakened Pelvic Floor
Even if you are not planning a pregnancy you should consider doing pelvic floor exercises. The pelvic muscles are an essential group in the body that assist the bowels and bladder to eliminate waste efficiently. Weakened pelvic floor areas can lead to incontinence and constipation.
Signs of weak pelvic muscles:
- Have you noticed that if you sneeze or cough urine can leak from your bladder? This is a key sign that your pelvic muscles are growing weak.
- Have you experienced a loss in sexual function? This could also indicate that you need to invest some time in pelvic floor exercises.
- Do you suffer from chronic constipation? This can be caused by weakened pelvic muscles that are not supporting your lower gut effectively.
Getting Started
Fortunately pelvic floor exercises are very easy to do and can offer some great benefits to your overall health.
- It is easy to get started and here is a simple exercise that you can practise almost anywhere:
- You will need to stand or lie still when you do pelvic floor exercises. This will help you to focus on the right region and avoid exercising your stomach or buttocks by mistake.
- Identifying your pelvic floor muscles is easy. All you need to do is practice squeezing the muscles you would use to prevent yourself from passing wind or stopping urine mid flow.
- Now you can exercise these muscles whenever you want by simply squeezing and holding them for a few seconds.
- You can do this when you are sat at your desk or watching television. Start off by holding the muscles for about five seconds. Repeat this ten times, have a short break and then start again.
- If you practice pelvic floor exercises frequently you should be able to tone these muscles so that you can hold them for up to 2 minutes!
If you are planning a pregnancy then it is a good idea to invest some time in pelvic floor exercises. These simple exercises can help you prepare your body for child birth.