Pregnancy can considerably impact your pelvic floor. This is the group of muscles and ligaments that support your bladder, uterus and bowel.
When you consider the weight of your bub bearing down on those muscles for nine months of your pregnancy, and the strain of pushing your baby during childbirth, it’s no surprise that your pelvic floor is compromised.
Your pelvic floor needs endurance to support your bladder and bowel all day, and power to quickly provide extra control when you cough, laugh or sneeze.
It can take three months or more for those muscles to redevelop their strength post-birth. But the good news is, they do recover!
Here are our top tips for maintaining a healthy pelvic floor:
1. Perform pelvic floor strengthening exercises (see below) three times a day.
2. Include pelvic floor exercises in your general fitness routine.
3. Avoid any exercise or activity that strains your pelvic floor, in particular, high-impact exercise or heavy lifting.
4. Always use your pelvic floor before you lift something or perform an exercise that challenges your bladder control, such as coughing, laughing or sneezing.
How to perform a long-hold pelvic floor exercise
1. Visualise the muscular sling running from your pubic bone to your tail bone.
2. Breathing naturally, draw this upwards and inwards around your back passage as if trying to avoid passing wind.
3. Bring the lift through to the front as though you’re trying to stop the flow of urine.
4. Hold this lift as high and firmly as you can. Breathe normally, checking that other muscles, especially your buttocks, hands and feet, are relaxed.
5. In between each lift completely relax your pelvic floor for as long as you held the contraction.
6. Repeat this exercise three to five times each time.
A little trick is to practice your pelvic floor exercises whenever you come to a set of red traffic lights.
The aim is to gradually increase the length of time you hold your pelvic floor, say from three breaths to 10 breaths. Rember though, that it will take time to build up to this.
Muscle separation
Muscle separation occurs when the recti muscles seperate. These are the two large muscle sheets that cover your stomach and run from your rib cage down to your pelvic bone.
This seperation is very normal during the later stages of your pregnancy as belly grows to accommodate your baby. This separation can be accentuated during a C-section, when the surgeon has to pull these muscles apart in order to pull your baby out.
If the recti muscles are strong, they act like a corset around the middle of your body, supporting and protecting your back. When they are weak and separated, this can lead to back pain.
It’s important to find out if you have muscle separation before starting physical activity because certain exercises can place too much pressure on these muscles.
The following technique is a quick and easy way to determine if you have muscle separation. If you do find these muscles have separated, talk to your physio before embarking on a new fitness regimen.
How to check for muscle separation
1. Lying on the floor with your knees bent, place your left hand behind your head.
2. Position your right hand, keeping your index finger and middle finger together, horizontally in the centreline of your stomach between your abdominals.
3. As you lift up your head and shoulders, feel for a gap or bulge with your fingers.
4. If you feel a separation, turn your fingers side on and measure the gap in finger width. More than two and a half fingers is considered a separation.
If you can feel a separation of more than one to two centimetres in your belly, refrain from doing exercises like crunches, sit-ups, abdominal curls and oblique abdominal lifts until the gap has healed.
Working with a pysiotherapist or personal trainer can help you by giving you specialist exercises to mend your muscles, close the seperation, and strengthen your abdominal muscles.
Exercising too hard for your pelvic floor?
If you notice any of the following symptoms while you’re exercising, your workout is placing too much pressure on your pelvic floor and you need to tone down the intensity:
You’re bearing down rather than lifting your pelvic floor.
Bladder leakage or loss of bladder control.
Heaviness or pressure.
You’re unable to feel or engage your pelvic floor.
It’s important to remember that your pelvic floor and abdominal muscles will strengthen over time with a bit of work.
In the meantime wearing SRC recovery shorts can help to provide the support your body is lacking.
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