- Protect your pelvic floor and do no damage!
- How incorrect gym activities can damage your pelvic floor, and how you can prevent it!
Pelvic floor muscles that are not in tip-top condition are easily weakened further by gym exercises. Strengthen your pelvic floor muscles BEFORE you join a gym or start working out!
Abdominal exercises such as sit-ups, curl-ups and crunches create pressure on weak pelvic floor muscles and can cause or worsen incontinence and prolapse. Damage is even more likely if you exercise at speed. Strengthen your pelvic floor BEFORE you do these exercises!
Running can put too much strain on weak pelvic floor muscles causing embarrassing urine leaks, but also doing invisible internal damage. Strengthen your pelvic floor BEFORE you start running again!
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Check out the myths about exercise and the pelvic floor on the right |
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All women can damage their pelvic floor muscles by inappropriate exercising. Pregnant and postnatal women, and women in their menopause years and older are especially vulnerable.
Before you begin any gym program, it is very important that you:
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Think about your own pelvic floor history. If you suffer from incontinence, have had children, have a prolapse, or aren't able to contract your pelvic floor muscles correctly, you probably need to work on your pelvic floor BEFORE you put it under any strain during your gym program. |
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Discuss any pelvic floor problems with your gym instructor. Your instructor won't know you have a problem unless you tell her. If you don't tell, you may be given exercises that are damaging to your pelvic floor muscles. |
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Take responsibility for your own pelvic floor muscles by: |
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Understand that a flat six-pack muscle (rectus abdominis) might look great on a man in his 20s, but can be damaging for a middle-aged woman to achieve unless she strengthens her pelvic floor muscles to the maximum first. |
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Concentrate instead on building the core stability muscles including the transversus abdominis which connects with the pelvic floor |
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Avoid situps, crunches, weights, curlups, running or any other activity which creates internal pressure on the pelvic floor muscles until you are sure that your body can manage. |
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If you think your pelvic floor muscles are weak and you don't trust yourself to exercise them correctly, consider having your pelvic floor assessed by a women's health physio BEFORE joining a gym. |
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Read My Pelvic Flaw by Mary O'Dwyer (Pelvic Floor Physio) for heaps of information on protecting your pelvic floor muscles whilst staying fit. |
This article is one of a series developed by Pelvic Floor Exercise. It is available for reproduction on other websites, but we ask that you tell us you are using it and provide a link back to us at Pelvic Floor Exercise.
Please email us, and we'll provide the text for your link.
Thank you.
Updated March 2010
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